Activations

What are activations?

The above graphic is a collage of images posted by Protestant and Catholic groups. What do they have in common? They all advertise “activations,” exercises designed to awaken latent spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. Best-selling NAR author Jennifer LeClaire explains,

You have the legal right to see in the spirit, but you may need to stir up the gift. Activations challenge you to exercise a gift you already have.

LeClaire is passing on the teaching of NAR pioneer Bill Hamon, who wrote,

The word activate means to make active or operative. It takes something from an inactive state and causes it to become functional. The majority of Christians allow the gift of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are within them to be inactive.

Organizations like the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry and the Encounter School of Ministry, when teaching about activations, use words like “training,” “workout,” “drill,” “triggers to move us from the natural into the supernatural,” or even “Holy Spirit phys. ed.” One may be led through activations as a student in one of these schools or a “school of prophecy,” by participating in a workshop at a church, by attending a conference, watching a video or attending a zoom session, by reading a book, or by attending a high school youth group meeting (as happened in one parish in my diocese, where the DRE led the kids in activations, without the pastor’s knowledge).

Origins

NAR pioneer Bill Hamon (1934 - ), whom we have met in previous posts, devised the term: “In 1979 I chose the word ‘activation’ to explain what we do in getting Saints to minister their spiritual gifts.” He was referring to Ephesians 4:12, “to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Hamon also began teaching others about activations:

…I started teaching people how to use their gift of the Holy Spirit and gifts of the Spirit… I trained others to use this activation and now our 3,000 Christian International ministers and equipped saints have activated more than 250,000 believers into prophetic ministry. When I speak of prophetic-apostolic ministry I am speaking of all the manifestations of the Holy Spirit. This prophetic ministry is for all saints, just as the gift of eternal life is for all sinners and the gift of the Holy Spirit is for all Christians who will believe and receive.

As we have seen previously, Hamon believes that the discovery of activations was part of a process of restoration.

Revelation for how these gifts are received, activated and manifested was restored during three different restoration movements: the gift of eternal life during the Protestant Movement in the 1500's; the gift of the Holy Spirit during the Pentecostal Movement around 1900; and the revelation and anointing for activating the Saints in the gifts of the Holy Spirit with the Prophetic Movement in the 1980s.

The Toronto Blessing is seen as another inflection point in this process of restoration. At the end of The Spiritual Gifts Handbook, co-written by Randy Clark and Mary Healy (and available via the Bethel bookstore), we find this:

John Wimber heard God speak audibly the first two times he met Randy, telling John that Randy would one day go around the world laying his hands on pastors and leaders for the impartation and activation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In January 1994, in the early days of the outpouring of the Spirit in Toronto, John called Randy and told him that what God had shown him about Randy a decade earlier was beginning now. It has continued ever since.

Examples of Activations

Activations take many forms. Here are just a few examples of the activations used by the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, Global Awakening, the Encounter School of Ministry, and others.

The scripture passage activation. For example, the passage, “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing” (Ps 23:1, NIV) is understood to mean that I am lacking in no spiritual gift, as stated in 1 Cor 1:4-7. Meditating on passages like this can activate the believer. One may also use this scripture passage to prophesy into the life of another person. Ryan Mahle, Encounter Ministries’ Director of Satellite Campuses and President of Encounter Ministries of Southwest Ohio, speaking at an Encounter Ministries “School of Prophetic Ministry” in Brighton, Michigan, in 2020, said that the scripture passage activation is on the lowest level of risk of all activations, since “all scripture is God-breathed.” He suggests we think of the scripture activation as something like lectio divina, but for the sake of another person.

The Facebook activation is recommended by Steve and Ruth Moore of Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry Online. The leader shows the group a picture of a friend from Facebook who is known to the leader but not to the students.

…ask them to describe your friend. Point out that what they may have thought was good intuition is actually the prophetic. Give feedback and ask increasingly specific questions. Help them learn when they are guessing and when they are hearing God.

The receipt acronym activation. When you go to a restaurant, you can receive a revelation about the waiter.

The tattoo activation uses a stranger’s tattoo as “a prophetic trigger to speak God’s heart over a person.” The believer wishing to evangelize the tattooed person should first pray, Jesus, what does this tattoo mean for their life? Then he might say something like, “I really like your tattoo; what does it mean to you? I felt like God was speaking to me about your life through your tattoos. Would you like to know what I heard?”

Words of knowledge. Close your eyes while another person stands behind you and try to answer questions about that person: When is her birthday? What does her bedroom look like? What is his mother’s name? Etc. Then speak to the person behind you to ascertain how many things you got right. By thinking about how you got the answers, you can learn the difference between hearing God’s voice and just guessing.

Catholics and activations

Aaron Richards, Executive Director of Operations and Finance at Damascus, defines “baptism in the Holy Spirit” as an “activation or a coming alive” of gifts already received through sacramental baptism. This is not so different from Bill Hamon’s thought.

The Encounter School of Ministry, founded and operated by Catholics, has made activations an integral part of their program to “equip” people in “the prophetic.” Like Hamon and LeClaire, ESM holds that we are currently living in a “season” when there is a general reawakening to the power of the Holy Spirit. In this they are endorsing the restorationist assumptions of Bill Hamon. Hamon founded a school called Christian International to train believers. Its vision statement aligns closely with that of ESM: “To establish apostles and prophets to equip the saints to transform the world so that Christ may return…” ESM students are introduced to activations early in their training.

link to source

Ryan Mahle of ESM teaches (in the conference referenced above) that hearing God’s voice is part of a normal Christian lifestyle; it’s only necessary to activate that latent ability, including the ability to prophesy. Prophesying, Mahle teaches, has three parts: revelation, interpretation, and application. This is the same teaching about the three parts of prophecy given by prophet Kris Vallotton, Senior Associate Leader of Bethel Church in Redding, California and co-founder of Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM).

In addition to the Psalm 23 activation, receipt activation, and tattoo activation, here are some other activations used by ESM:

World changers and activations

Practitioners of activation believe that the activated Christian will be a “world changer.” “World changers” is a classic NAR concept, going back to the 1980s, often used in reference to modern-day apostles. Creflo Dollar, one of the 8 richest pastors in America, called the megachurch he founded in 1986 “World Changers.”

Two books claim to use activations to help you become a world changer. One was written by a Protestant, the other by a Catholic. The Protestant author is Banning Liebscher, the founding pastor of Jesus Culture¹ and former staff member of Bethel Redding.

Like Mahle, Liebscher appeals to 1 Cor 2:16, “We have the mind of Christ.” This passage is turned into an activation for the reader to repeat as a “positive confession:”

I have the mind of Christ. I receive world-changing ideas from God.

“As world changers, if we ask God questions, we can be sure He answers. As His children, we can tap into our Father’s thoughts for family, friends, workplace, and the world!” Liebscher emphasizes the authority of every believer:

You are a world changer and have been strategically placed! Whenever God wants to reveal Himself in a region to save the lost and transform society through His presence and power, He anoints and commissions individuals we call world changers. World changers are fearless and powerful. They know they are citizens of heaven whose passion is to make a difference on earth (p. 24).

Liebscher includes an activation for each day of the forty days outlined in the book. Sometimes this is a simple prayer of thanksgiving or petition. Sometimes it is a request for a revelation:

Catholic Dan DeMatte, Executive Director of Missions and Advancement at Damascus, has written a similar book, which shaves nineteen days off the journey toward becoming a world changer:

One of the endorsements for the book hints at how its content has been influenced by the NAR:

It’s easy to forget our inheritance of how our heavenly Father has continually shaped history through His beloved children. Dan DeMatte’s book, Dream Bigger, activates you to dream again with God and fulfill your destiny as a world changer.

DeMatte himself is clear: “This is a book for world changers…” (Kindle edition, p. 17). He says that when Jesus told his followers to ask the Lord to send out laborers into his harvest (Matt 9:37-38), he was telling them that leaders are needed in the Church, and we need to form them. “Will you be too busy chasing the dream to spend the time necessary to develop them, build them, and make them world changers?” (p. 144). He explains that this is how he sees his role in relation to the people under his own leadership at Damascus. “This is what it means to lead like a father — to see those under your care as sons and daughters and to raise them up as the world changers they are called to be” (ibid).

The book is organized into 21 days, each ending with an activation (just like Liebscher’s book). “These activations are meant to activate what the Holy Spirit desires to do in your prayer that day” (p. 15, emph. in original). Several of the activations consist in the reader asking God for a message or answer to a question; this is logical since, the author says, “we have a God who speaks…”

DeMatte also teaches the NAR concept of declarations, words spoken in faith that change reality, affirming that declarations can also be activations:

When you make your dream public, you make a proclamation of faith. Through your words, you are prophetically declaring what God the Father wants to bring about. You are boldly speaking into existence a particular way God wants to bring about His kingdom here and now. …Whenever you make a proclamation of faith, you release God’s power into the world. Every time you proclaim the things God wants to do, you activate grace in your own life to accomplish this (p. 153)

non-Christian activations

It’s worth noting that there are “activations” that involve little or no explicitly Christian content. Some Christian leaders, in speaking of activations, seem to empty the concept of any reference to Christian faith or morals, while retaining the language of “God,” “dreams,” and “prophetic activation.” Such is the case with Dr. Apostle Kishma George, based in the state of Delaware, USA. While she does connect activations with “prophetic ministry,” her main message seems to be about personal success and self-improvement, not the need to be faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She even advises her followers to “dream bigger;” perhaps she has read DeMatte’s book.

One can also find people selling “activations” that make no reference to God at all, but are entirely about feeling better about yourself, following your dream, etc.

Finally, Christians should be aware of the Hindu concept of Kundalini. Kundalini is an energy latent in the body that can be awakened or “activated” through certain practices. One wonders whether Bill Hamon knew about this in 1979 when he chose the word “activation” to describe ways to awaken latent spiritual gifts within Christian believers.

A few conclusions

When you hear a Catholic or Catholic group talking about “training in the prophetic,” “activations,” and “world changers,” know that you are dealing with Catholics who have absorbed the teaching of the NAR, which may be traced back to the Latter Rain revival (see previous post). The present-day prophetic movement has gone beyond the Latter Rain. When we find Catholics endorsing and spreading NAR doctrines and practices, we must not make the mistake of labeling them “Catholic Charismatics.” This is something new. We need to take Bill Hamon seriously when he says, “The Charismatic Movement brought everybody to Kadesh Barnea at the edge of the promised land. The Prophetic Movement is the new Joshua Generation crossing over Jordan…” (Prophets and the Prophetic). “The 1948 Latter Rain Movement brought the seed of revelation that there are prophets in the Church today, but the 1988 Prophetic Movement is bringing the activation and reproducing of these prophets (ibid).”

Those who call themselves Charismatic Catholics need to exercise due diligence and educate themselves about ideas related to prophets and prophecy that entered the charismatic world in the 1970s and 80s, thanks to leaders in what would become the NAR. Pastoral leaders of the Catholic Church likewise should be aware that the charismatic corner of the religious landscape has changed greatly in the last forty years. There are not your father’s charismatics.

Faithful Reader, I thank you for your kind attention and your patience. I was hoping to publish this post sooner but life intervened. God’s time is best. I wish you a faithful, faith-filled, and transformative Lenten journey.

1. Here he is preaching a revival at “Activate Church” — not unrelated to our theme.