Detangling 08: Recovery and Healing with Michael Sullivant
I met Michael Sullivant a couple of years ago, after hearing amazing things from my parents. I was struck by his kindness. Michael is a long-time pastor who has spent years studying the link between neuroscience and theology. I wanted to interview him to get his perspective on recovery and healing for many of us who have left IHOPKC (or similar organizations) and are feeling shipwrecked and stuck.
My thoughts and additions to the conversation are in italics.
Q: Give a bit of background on who you are and how you connected with IHOPKC and Mike Bickle.
I converted to Jesus at 18 in a dramatic experience marked by supernatural elements. I saw visions and heard the Lord's voice. This immersed me in a culture, though undeveloped at the time, of believing in the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, which the Bible confirmed. Others began experiencing similar things, and God used me to help spur an awakening on our campus at Miami of Ohio, starting in 1973. Around 500 students became believers through our small group of young men and women who were praying, reading our Bibles, and experiencing God's presence. That’s my background.
My wife was one of those students. We fell in love, got married, and then moved away from campus. We entrusted our student church, which had grown significantly, to other leaders and sought further on-the-job training from a team of church planters based in Arkansas. We spent eight years there, had our first three children, planted a few churches, and worked as a team. I've always been a team player and believed in teamwork and team ministry, which is a safeguard we'll likely discuss.
Then, we moved to Michigan, where I grew up, and I pastored a church there after being recruited to join its staff. I reconnected with Mike Bickle in 1986 at a conference in Washington, DC. We knew each other slightly because his church in St. Louis and ours in Arkansas were part of the same stream, as we called them then (now sometimes referred to as movements). Leaders from these churches would meet for retreats. Mike had noticed me, and when we reconnected, his rapidly growing church in Kansas City, primarily composed of young people, led him to recruit me for a senior leadership role. Kansas City Fellowship had six congregations at that time. Mike was the founder and senior pastor over all of them, and I was installed as the lead pastor of the main campus in Grandview.
That's how I arrived in Kansas City in 1987. We had two more children after moving there. Both Mike and I were 32 at that point, eager and zealous young leaders. I had been exposed to Mike’s account of the prophetic history up to that point, and it was very compelling. I believed that story. Given my background with the validated work of the Holy Spirit in my life, I had no strong reasons to question it deeply—it appeared really good from the outside.
So, I was a senior leader at Kansas City Fellowship, which later became Metro Vineyard Fellowship in 1990, and then Metro Christian Fellowship after we left the Vineyard in 1997. I remained on staff at Metro Christian Fellowship as a senior leader until 2007, becoming the longest-serving pastor there, even longer than Mike. It’s an interesting fact, but I simply stayed at my post.