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A week after the joint statement was issued, Gruen abruptly resigned as pastor of his church, saying, "My sin causing this resignation is not committing adultery but committing divorce," according to a July 1993 article in Charisma. Gruen -- who still lives in the Kansas City area and whose answering machine indicates he's still with his wife, Dee -- did not return phone messages from the Pitch.
Today, Bickle says he made mistakes in the past. "We mismanaged the prophetic ministry without being accountable," Bickle says. "With any group, the more self-knowledge they have, the more self-judging they are, the safer they are. One of my big values is to look at precious things in our ministry and criticize. We are in the high-end of self-judging."
(Bickle did not disclose to the Pitch the names of all board members of his many nonprofit organizations, saying they are currently in the process of being reorganized. Bickle, along with his wife, Diane, IHOP Division Head Ed Hackett and a local businessman, Nick Syrett, make up Friends of the Bridegroom's four-member board of directors, according to the organization's 2002 annual registration report with the Missouri Secretary of State.)
Bickle says he never called his prophetic team the Kansas City Prophets. "I hated that name," he says of the moniker that is firmly bonded to his own name on anti-cult Web sites and other Internet pages. "It really hurt us because there was no such group. It clustered a whole bunch of personalities into one group and one stereotype."
The Kansas City Prophets disbanded soon after the Gruen controversy. When Bickle listed the Kansas City Fellowship with the Association of Vineyard Churches from 1990 to 1996, the denomination's leader, John Wimber, immediately put restraints on Jones' prophetic displays. Jones later left Vineyard. Today, Jones runs his own "prophetic ministry" in Waynesboro, Mississippi. He travels and speaks at charismatic-Christian conferences around the country.
John Paul Jackson founded Streams Ministries International in 1993. Now based in New Hampshire, the organization offers classes on interpreting dreams and visions. His Web site mentions an anecdote from Jones, who told him of a vision in which Jones battled a demon that resembled a "well-known Christian leader" until "Bob was finally able to grab a nearby monkey wrench and hit the demon in the head."
Cain has returned to Kansas City, where he is president of Shiloh Estates, another ministry associated with IHOP and Friends of the Bridegroom.
Bickle declined to discuss details of Gruen's "fabrications," saying that he wished only that all involved in the controversy would "be blessed."
In 1999, Bickle left the Kansas City Fellowship (by then known as the Metro Christian Fellowship) to found Friends of the Bridegroom and IHOP. Bickle based his bridegroom paradigm on verses in the Bible's book of Revelation that describe Christ as a bridegroom and on another verse in Matthew in which Jesus describes the apostles as friends of the bridegroom.
Bickle based his vision for IHOP on the prophecies of Jones and Cain, who had foretold that prayer and intercession would lead to a new, deeper understanding of Christianity. He envisioned a Church that would prepare itself as a bride for Jesus' second coming in the "great end-time shaking," a "lovesick bride," hungry for the love of God.
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