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The story of Toronto through the lives of John and Carol Arnott

A confusing moment?

THE STORY OF TORONTO THROUGH THE LIVES OF JOHN AND CAROL ARNOTT
By John Peters
Authentic Media. 146 pages. £8.99
ISBN 1 85078 647 X

Through this gentle and sympathetic portrayal of the character and ministry of its leaders, John Peters invites us to re-appraise the ‘Toronto Blessing’ of the mid-1990s. The book may be of most value to those too young to have encountered the phenomenon, either personally or in print, over ten years ago.

There is a good deal of biographical information, somewhat repetitive, about John and Carol Arnott and other leaders of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, through whom the Toronto phenomenon spread to all continents.

Peters has had a lot of access to the Arnotts, and portrays them as an ordinary, godly couple, surprised but delighted in the ministry God has given them. He even takes time to explain how the experience each had of divorce before they met has strengthened their pastoral understanding and ministry!

Those of us who visited the church at the end of the runway in Toronto during the summer of 1994 can easily recognise the descriptions of its setting, meetings, and ‘feel’.

Peters reminds us that the meetings are still being held, thousands of lives being changed through conversion or fresh experience of intimacy with God, and that the Toronto movement could have been the harbinger of worldwide revival, but admittedly has not been. The controversial barking and laughing phenomena are treated as incidental to the main activity of the Spirit, and the links of the Arnotts to friends or influencers like Benny Hinn and Kathryn Kuhlman are admitted and then somewhat minimised.

Less than revival

Critics as well as friends are quoted, and there is a brief attempt at analysis of the strengths and failings of the movement, especially the grief over the removal of the Airport church from the Vineyard movement. Peters assesses the movement as more than mere revivalism, but less than revival. That won’t do; the characteristics are such that if it isn’t revival then it really is revivalism.

However, this is an easy and informative read for a few leisure hours; I can’t see any previously informed person’s views being changed by it. I suspect that for the majority of people caught up briefly in the movement in the mid-90s, Toronto is still a confusing and enigmatic story of what might have been.

Roger Welch,
Minister, Merland Rise Church, Tadworth (FIEC)