A reflection on charismatic culture, pastoral responsibility, and the cost of elevating gifting above character
There is a particular kind of silence that has caused immeasurable damage to the charismatic and Pentecostal church. It is not the silence of ignorance. It is the silence of people who suspected something was wrong, who perhaps even knew something was wrong, and who said nothing — because the gift was too impressive, the ministry too large, the atmosphere too electric to risk disrupting.
That silence has a name. It is the fruit of sensationalism. And it is costing us dearly.
The Hunger That Became a Vulnerability
The desire for the supernatural is not in itself a problem. It is, in many ways, a sign of theological health. A church that has given up expecting God to move, to heal, to speak, to break in — that church has, in some meaningful sense, stopped believing the New Testament.
But hunger, when it becomes desperation, stops being discerning.
When we need the spectacular — when the measure of a gathering’s success is whether something unusual happened, when a minister’s authority is proportional to the drama of their revelations, when the atmosphere of awe becomes the primary currency of spiritual credibility — we have created the precise conditions in which deception flourishes and accountability collapses.
The apostle Paul saw this tendency clearly in Corinth. A church dazzled by the more spectacular gifts, ranking members by what they could perform, measuring spiritual maturity by what could be demonstrated. His corrective in 1 Corinthians 12–14 is not to suppress the gifts. It is to reorder the priorities. “Eagerly desire gifts,” he writes — but the whole argument of chapter 13 insists that gifts without love are not just incomplete; they are nothing. “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge… but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2).
The Corinthian mistake was not that they valued the gifts. It was that they valued them above everything else. We have inherited that mistake.
What the Evidence Now Shows
Two cases, separated by decades but united by the same structural failure, deserve our honest attention.
Paul Cain was one of the most celebrated prophetic voices in the charismatic world of the late twentieth century. Associated with the Kansas City prophets and admired across the movement, he was known for the apparent precision and power of his prophetic ministry. Leaders of significant standing built credibility by association with him. His gifting was, by all accounts of those close to him, remarkable.
In 2004, three of those leaders — Rick Joyner, Mike Bickle, and Jack Deere — publicly disclosed that Cain had been living a long-term pattern of homosexual behaviour and serious alcoholism. These were not rumours. They were confirmed, including by Cain himself, who issued a public apology and sought counselling.
What is most instructive about this case is not the sin itself — Scripture is clear that every person, however gifted, is a fallen human being in need of grace. What is most instructive is the admission that followed. Jack Deere, one of the three who finally acted, said this:
“We all have preached that you never put gifting over character — but that is what we did for Paul. We would have fired anyone else. The reason we didn’t is because of his gifting.”
That sentence is worth reading more than once.
Shawn Bolz has been a prominent prophetic voice in contemporary charismatic Christianity, widely known for delivering what appeared to be precise, supernaturally sourced personal prophecies — naming details about people’s lives with striking specificity. In early 2025, Christian content creator Mike Winger released an extensive exposé detailing two categories of serious concern: that Bolz had been mining social media to source information presented as divine revelation, and that multiple credible witnesses had alleged non-consensual sexual misconduct against people in his ministry context.
Bethel Church, with which Bolz had been associated, released a public statement acknowledging that credible allegations of sexual misconduct had been brought to their attention as early as 2019. They apologised for their failure to act with appropriate urgency. Their statement effectively confirmed that a culture of protection — for the gifting, for the ministry, for the atmosphere — had taken precedence over the protection of people.
Bolz subsequently stepped back from public ministry.
These are not isolated aberrations. They are symptoms of a culture.
The Structural Problem
When a prophetic or miraculous gift becomes the primary basis for a minister’s platform and authority, a dangerous dynamic takes root: the gift becomes too valuable to jeopardise. Raising concerns about character, behaviour, or accountability is experienced — consciously or not — as a threat to something precious. Better to manage quietly. Better to wait and see. Better to let the ministry continue than to risk losing what God is doing.
This is precisely how predatory behaviour survives in gifted environments. The gift provides cover. The atmosphere generates loyalty. The sensational creates a kind of communal investment — we’ve seen things here, we’ve experienced things here — that makes it costly to speak.
Paul’s framework in 1 Corinthians 14 is deliberately anti-spectacular. “Everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way” (14:40). The gifts are to be tested, weighed, and evaluated. “Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said” (14:29). The Greek word there — diakrinō — means to distinguish, to discern, to judge carefully. Paul is not calling for the suspension of prophetic ministry. He is insisting that prophetic ministry without communal discernment and testing is not biblical prophecy. It is performance.
John is equally direct: “Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Testing is not cynicism. It is obedience. A culture that treats the testing of prophetic claims as somehow offensive to the Spirit has got things exactly backwards.
The Shepherd’s Responsibility
Ezekiel 34 is one of the most searching passages in the Hebrew scriptures. God’s indictment of Israel’s shepherds is not primarily that they were wicked. It is that they failed to protect: “You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally” (Ezekiel 34:4).
The shepherd’s first responsibility is to the flock — not to the ministry, not to the atmosphere, not to the reputation of the house. When leaders choose the protection of gifted individuals over the protection of vulnerable people, they have inverted the shepherd’s calling. They are, in Ezekiel’s terms, feeding themselves rather than feeding the sheep.
Jesus himself, in Matthew 7, gives us the most uncomfortable test of all for those operating in the prophetic and miraculous: “Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.'” (Matthew 7:22-23).
Gifts can operate without intimacy. Miracles can happen without holiness. The supernatural is not always a reliable guide to the character of the person through whom it flows. Jesus knew this. He taught it. We have, far too often, forgotten it.
What Mature Charismatic Practice Actually Looks Like
None of this is an argument against the gifts. It is an argument for their proper stewardship.
A genuinely mature charismatic culture holds several things together that sensationalism tears apart:
Gift and character are inseparable. The New Testament consistently connects empowerment by the Spirit with the formation of Christlike character. The fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and the gifts of the Spirit are not two separate tracks. A sustained gap between what someone demonstrates in public ministry and how they live in private is not a spiritual mystery to be tolerated. It is a warning sign to be taken seriously.
Testing is an act of love, not suspicion. When Paul commands the weighing of prophecy, he is protecting the gift as much as guarding the community. False prophecy, unchecked, discredits genuine revelation. Abuse, unaddressed, destroys the trust that ministry requires. Communities that test, correct, and — when necessary — act are communities where the gifts can flourish safely.
Platform is not a substitute for accountability. One of the most dangerous features of the contemporary charismatic landscape is the way platform insulates individuals from the ordinary structures of community accountability. When a minister’s primary relationships are with audiences rather than with elders, mentors, and peers who can speak honestly into their lives, the conditions for unchecked behaviour are already in place. Jack Deere’s confession — “we would have fired anyone else” — is a confession about the corrupting effect of platform on judgement.
Protecting people is always primary. When credible allegations arise, the first question cannot be “what will this do to the ministry?” It must be “are people safe?” The Bethel situation is instructive not because Bethel is uniquely culpable, but because the pattern of delayed action in the face of credible evidence is recognisable across the charismatic world. The flock comes first. Always.
A Word About Grace
This post is not written to fuel cynicism about the charismatic church, nor to suggest that the gifts of the Spirit are too dangerous to pursue. The opposite is true. It is precisely because the gifts are so important, so genuinely needed, so central to the mission of the church, that their misuse and the culture that enables it must be addressed honestly.
Paul Cain was, by the testimony of those who knew him, genuinely gifted. That does not diminish what he did, nor excuse those who should have acted sooner. Shawn Bolz’s situation involves allegations, some of which remain contested; what is not contested is that Bethel held credible information for years and chose protection of ministry over protection of people.
Both men are, like all of us, people for whom Christ died. The call to accountability and the call to grace are not in competition. We can hold both. What we cannot do is allow grace to become a reason for inaction when people are being harmed.
The charismatic church has extraordinary gifts. It also has structural vulnerabilities that sensationalism creates and protects. Naming that honestly — without condemning the tradition, without abandoning the gifts — is not a failure of faith. It is an expression of it.
The Spirit who gives the gifts is also the Spirit of truth. He is not threatened by scrutiny. He is, in fact, the one who invites it.
“For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” — 2 Timothy 1:7
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Paul Benger 