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Evangelist's Lakeland Revival Goes Extra Innings At Stadium

Tribune photo by BILLY TOWNSEND

Televangelist and self-styled healer Todd Bentley warms up the crowd of several thousand people who attended the revival at the Lakeland Center on April 30.

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By BILLY TOWNSEND | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 7, 2008

LAKELAND - Evangelist Todd Bentley's revival is rolling on, with organizers planning to keep it going at least two more weeks.

The event, which Bentley and others have dubbed the Florida Outpouring, is back in the Lakeland Center arena after spending the weekend at Joker Marchant Stadium, where the Detroit Tigers play spring training baseball.

In addition to the evening services, which began in early April, a regular 10 a.m. service at Ignited Church in Lakeland quickly is outgrowing its venue, said Lynne Breidenbach, who is serving as a spokeswoman for the event.

That follows the pattern of the original revival, which organizers say started as a typical five-day Bentley visit to Ignited Church. Driven by religious television and Internet coverage, word of healings and an especially intense religious energy spread quickly. Within days, organizers were planning for an extended stay and accommodating crowds in the thousands.

Attendance may have peaked Friday night, when a crowd of 8,000 to 9,000 people filled Marchant Stadium, said Bob Donahay, assistant director of Lakeland's parks departments. Slightly smaller crowds attended on Saturday and Sunday night.

"It was like a spring training game," Donahay said.

Bentley's stage was set up at second base, and worshippers looking for healing lined up along the stadium's warning track, where Bentley ministered to them. Parks officials were concerned that services might damage the baseball stadium's manicured grass, but Donahay said organizers and revivalgoers alike treated the facility with great respect and stayed off the grass.

"We didn't know what to expect," Donahay said. "But they were model tenants."

Donahay noted that Friday night's big crowd left a large amount of trash, as is typical for a big event. Parks officials provided trash bags to the organizers for Saturday and Sunday, and the revival attendees cleaned up the vast amount of their trash each night, Donahay said.

"They're a really, really nice group of people," he said.

Revival organizers are paid $10,000 per day for use of the baseball stadium.

Tonight's event at the Lakeland Center arena is scheduled for 7. Admission is free, but an offering will be taken.

Bentley, 32, is a tattooed, body-pierced religious barnstormer who travels the world organizing revival meetings. He says the power of God rescued him at 18 from a life of drugs, crime and sexual misconduct.

His services emphasize the power of God to transform lives and ease personal burdens. Though he preaches to a mostly Pentecostal audience, Bentley said he eschews religious categories in his message.

And many visitors attend in the hope that Bentley's touch or the atmosphere of the meeting can heal injuries or otherwise ease burdens.

Bentley said he never has been involved in a revival or prayer meeting that generated the level of interest of what's happening in Lakeland.

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at (863) 284-1409 or wtownsend@tampatrib.com.

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