Mass Deliverance Meetings: Do They Work?

Are mass deliverance sessions effective in casting out demons? If you’re a Charismatic/Pentecostal church attender you’ve probably been part of a meeting where the man or woman of God starts calling demons out of people. Sometimes they have people come to the front but often each audience member just receives “by faith”. Is this an effective approach?

I have no doubt that God has moved to bring deliverance to some in such an environment. He honors a pure heart and a person’s faith but my experience is that the effectiveness can be greatly increased by preparing the audience for deliverance. How does one do that? Below is our answer to that question.

Our deliverance ministry approach comprises teaching sessions prior to deliverance. During those, the prayee prepares homework that identifies open doors of unforgiveness, occult activity, sexual sin and more. They are then shown how to close the doors in preparation for ministry. In our private sessions, we also conduct an initial interview to better understand each person’s background. We minister one on one (best) but also conduct group deliverance seminars where we have a ministry team that ministers to individuals individually. A group seminar might comprise twenty five people and our prayer team might be fifteen or more folks so this model is workable.

Driving Demons Out Of A Large Group

This model works well for small groups and a trained ministry team. What happens when you have an audience of 800 or more? We were part of a team that ministered to such a gathering in a Caribbean island a few years back. Two nights of teaching (I did the second night) followed by deliverance ministry on Saturday night. Our team was only twenty people! One-on-one ministry was not practical but the people were so hungry!

To the best of our ability, we tried to confirm that they had attended the two nights teaching and done the preparatory homework (vital!) and then the leader upfront began to “perform” the deliverance by having the audience stand and repeat every declaration forcefully and boldly. Part of that involved commanding the spirits to leave! When the team saw certain manifestations, we would draw that person aside and minster to them privately for a few minutes and they would then return to their seat!

It was “organized chaos” and the Lord honored everyone’s efforts. We knew the people were hungry for freedom; obeah/witchcraft and freemasonry were pervasive in the island. I personally had a man come up to me a few days later at another church and tell me of the freedom he had received. Personal ministry is best, privately or in a group setting, but this type of ministry was effective because those being ministered to had prepared themselves by closing open doors. We are under no illusion that every person there got set free from every spirit but it was a good start and the deliverance ministry we birthed there took hold and grew.

Ideally, there needs to be follow up after deliverance to assess fruit and teach on how to stay free and discern when the spirits seek to return to the house that they were kicked out of. One-on-one, personal deliverance ministry (and also physical healing) is vitally needed in every church and we hope to see the realization of that in the years ahead!