IHOPKC founder made video about sex abuse claims, sent script to accuser to review
A week before Tammy Woods came forward with allegations that the International House of Prayer-Kansas City founder sexually abused her starting when she was 14, Mike Bickle sent her the script for a video he’d made about his “failures” and asked her to review it, she said.
In the script, Bickle said he wanted to express “the continual grief that I feel” related to “my failures that occurred years ago.” He also denied ever telling any women that God told him his wife would die at a young age and that he would then marry them. That story has surfaced as a common thread among women who have accused him of sexual abuse and inappropriate behavior.
Bickle said in the script that he was making the video on Jan. 30, “but the timing in which I release this will be according to what honors the request of the leadership team and those giving me counsel.”
The video has not yet been released.
The script was posted Sunday on Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, by former IHOPKC staff member Ben Anderson.
Woods, who lives in Michigan, told The Star on Tuesday that Bickle sent her the script on Jan. 31, asking her to take a look at it.
“I responded honestly in a text,” she said. Her message to him: “I do not think this will serve your end goal or improve your public opinion poll. It feels like you are missing the forest for the trees. It’s charged out there and I don’t think this is what anyone wants to hear from anyone with the last name Bickle.”
Woods said Bickle “thanked me and said he trusted my judgment.”
“He said I saved him from making a mistake.”
Neither Bickle nor his wife, Diane, responded to requests from The Star for comment Tuesday. Last month, an independent investigator commissioned by IHOPKC found that Bickle “more likely than not” engaged in inappropriate behavior that included sexual contact and clergy misconduct.
According to a report of the investigator’s findings, both Bickles said that Diane was the one who told Mike on several occasions that she believed she would die young. Mike Bickle did not speak to the investigator directly, the report said, but responded to written questions. Former IHOPKC leaders and the women alleging that Mike Bickle abused them have criticized the investigation, saying it was not truly independent.
Woods, using her maiden name, told her story exclusively to The Star in an article published Feb. 7. She said the abuse occurred in the early 1980s in St. Louis, where Bickle pastored a church before moving to Kansas City and later founding the 24/7 global prayer ministry IHOPKC in 1999. Woods said she was a babysitter for Bickle’s two children when the abuse began.
She said the abuse took place in Bickle’s car, at her home, in the church and in his office, and that it involved sexual contact but not intercourse. And, she said, Bickle had told her multiple times that he believed his wife would die young and that they could then be together.
Now 57 and a mother and grandmother, Woods said she didn’t tell anyone for 43 years. But after watching the details unfold about a woman identified as Jane Doe, whose sexual abuse allegations were made public in October and led to Bickle’s removal and upheaval in the international prayer movement, Woods said she couldn’t keep silent any longer.
She told her husband, some family members and her pastors in the past few weeks. And on Feb. 3, she said, she called St. Louis police and filed a report.
Woods said she hoped that by speaking out, “somehow it helps the others to find their voice and say, ‘You know what? We don’t want to have a life sentence of shadows and lies. We don’t want to be given a script, like we can be manipulated as some pawns.”
Woods’ story contained several similarities to that of Jane Doe, who has said in interviews, including with The Star, that Bickle sexually abused her from 1996 to 1999. She said it started when she was 19 and he was 42.
She said Bickle told her repeatedly that God had spoken to him, saying his wife was going to die and that they would then be married. During that time, she said, Bickle had sexual interactions with her that included everything except intercourse.
Bickle, 68, issued his only public statement on Dec. 12, admitting that he had “sinned” and “my moral failures were real.” But he was vague on details. In a lengthy note posted on X, Bickle said his “inappropriate behavior” occurred more than 20 years ago, but he did not admit to engaging in any sexual misconduct.
On Dec. 22, IHOPKC announced that it was “immediately, formally and permanently” separating from Bickle, saying it had confirmed “a level of inappropriate behavior” on his part.
In his recent video script, Bickle said he didn’t intend to fight the allegations.
“It has been my commitment for 40 years to not defend myself against accusations,” he said. “I have set my heart to walk out this commitment in this crisis.”
He said the only statement he would make in the video “is one that relates to our prophetic history and how it affects the lives of those who value it.”
“I am only speaking to this group,” his script said. “I am not speaking to nor trying to persuade my accusers of anything.”
Denies saying God told him his wife would die young
The script then addressed the allegation that Bickle told multiple women that God said Diane was going to die and Bickle would then marry them.
“Diane is the one who told me that she believed that she would die young,” Bickle’s script said. “In the earlier years of our marriage she had a foreboding sense that she would die young. We spoke about this several times.”
After that came a speaking part for Diane Bickle — one of five sentences in the script for her.
“Yes, it is true,” she was to say. “In the earlier years of our marriage, I had reoccurring thoughts about this. Several women in our ministry died young and it triggered me. Mike and I spoke about this often.”
Bickle was then to say: “I assured her if such a terrible tragedy occurred that I would live a monastic lifestyle the rest of my days. For decades, I have read about the lives of people with unusual devotion to Jesus such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Teresa of Avila, David Brainerd, and many more. I do not agree with all their theology (but) I am inspired by their love for Jesus and lifestyle.”
Then Diane: “For many years he has read about the lives of the people he mentioned — I remember how (Mike) fasted over the years.”
Bickle was to respond, according to the script: “If I had the hardness of heart to totally fabricate such a horrible and evil statement as this and repeat it often then it would lead some to believe that I made up the testimonies in our prophetic history. That would be horrible prophetic manipulation.”
In the video script, Bickle said he was making the statement “because of the pain and burden that my family endures in continually having to answer the question to their friends — did Mike really say that ‘God told him…’”
That “false narrative,” Bickle’s script said, calls into question the truthfulness of IHOPKC’s entire prophetic history and also has caused “much pain and turmoil in our staff” as well as “pain in their relationships and significant loss of income to some…”
Bickle said, according to the script, that IHOPKC’s prophetic history “is a true God story” that is “for the benefit of our children and grandchildren.”
Diane’s response: “Yes, this is a powerful generational story.”
In the script, Bickle also addressed the question of why he talks about the premature deaths of loved ones, saying he had processed the pain of four premature deaths in his immediate family.
“The biblical narrative of the end times makes it clear that many will die by natural disasters, famine, pestilence, violence, persecution,” the script said. “Thus unnatural death of loved ones will be one of the primary conversations in the human family in the years leading to Jesus returns.”
Bickle’s script also said that “one of Satan’s main agendas in this is to cause people to be offended at God’s leadership.”
“I have spoken in many setting over many years to many different people about the coming death of loved ones and the need to not be offended at Jesus’ leadership if it occurs,” it said.
Woods told The Star that Bickle sent her the script the day after she had written what she described as a cathartic letter to Mike and Diane Bickle. In the letter, which Woods never sent, she said that she was writing it “not as a threat, power play or in a spirit of vindictiveness as a woman scorned; rather as an appeal to you to meet me in the arena and responsibly own bygone chapters of the story.”
“I understand that you asked my forgiveness decades ago and even as recently as this past fall, and I indeed forgave you with all of my heart; even helping you in the present crisis in the spirit of Proverbs 17:17,” she wrote. “I made a vow in my young heart to cover you all the days of my life, because I believed you when you took initiative to right the ship and cut things off for the sake of righteousness and those we love.
“Though I felt utterly abandoned by you at 16 years old, I believed you and I resolved to take those chapters of the story to the grave. For 43 years I have done just that and I have covered you in love.”
She wrote that when she was a young mother in 1996, Bickle gave her what he said was a final goodbye and said they should never speak again. But when he returned to St. Louis five years later, she wrote, their lines of communication opened again, this time surrounding the House of Prayer. Though seeing him reopened old wounds, she wrote, she was “anchored firmly in the Lord’s love and strength” and from then on, “we were able to engage as distant friends and co-laborers in the prayer movement.”
“I had great respect for and admiration of who you emerged to be and all that the Lord was accomplishing in and through you,” Woods wrote. “I was deeply grateful for your tangible help in my own personal storms of life and ministry, as well as the Lord’s overarching redemptive work and protective covering. I loved that my children affectionately called you ‘Uncle Mike.’. We made it!…or so I thought.”
‘A friend loveth at all times’
When the sex abuse allegations surfaced against Bickle last fall, she wrote, she refused to believe them: “I knew personally your moral failure and wrestle and repentance when I was just 14 years old. I knew your gratitude to the Lord first and foremost and to me for a clean slate and second chance. This is where I thought we left off.”
She said she was confident that he would never squander the gift she had given him — that of keeping what he had done to her a secret. Until she read Jane Doe’s detailed victim statement.
“The parallels took my breath away as I realized I had the screen play to her feature film.”
Even so, Woods wrote, “I resolved to cover you though no longer as much for your own heart as for my own family and personal heart. I ardently wished to stay off of the radar and out of the drama.”
But eventually, she said, she couldn’t live her life as a liar. And to continue to keep the secret would make her complicit “in an anguishing, pride and denial driven cover-up…”
Woods asked Bickle to come forward “in vulnerability, humility and repentance.”
“… This is not meant for law craft fodder or social media fuel,” she wrote. “It’s a wounded heart offered in honest confession to my spiritual leaders and family and extended across the miles, decades, plot twists and contexts in earnest appeal to you, the son of a boxer — this is a technical knockout; please throw in the towel; please do what is true and honorable before the Lord.”
On Feb. 1, Woods showed the letter to her pastors and shared what she had been through. She said Bickle continued to contact her up until the day before The Star published her story.
On Feb. 6, he sent Woods what would be his final text message to her — an emoji of a hand in the shape of a phone, which meant he wanted to know if she was available for a call.
“Just giving an update,” it said. “No big urgency. Things are quiet right now. So greatful for 17.”
That was a reference to Proverbs 17:17, Woods said.
“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
