Why I Trust Mike Bickle

James Crawford
Nov 20, 2025
13 min read

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Jeff Symans of Minor Prophets Podcast Repents For Excessive Judgment
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Jeff Symans of Minor Prophets Podcast Repents For Excessive Judgment Jeff recently left this podcast and told his viewers the Lord gently rebuked him and led him to repent. This is a great step in the right direction. He appears to be repenting for excessively judging and being unmerciful towards leaders in the church who are being accused and disqualified by podcasts like the one he is leaving. Here's the YouTube video if you prefer to watch it, and just below is the text transcript of this same video.
Jeff says, "Welcome to Minor Prophets. This is my last broadcast on Minor Prophets and I want to give a little bit of an explanation why and just the process that I have been through in the past month that has led me to this place. You may have noticed over the past month I have not been on any programs. I am not even on any social media right now. That was really, really healthy and really good.
I was starting to question if there were any healthy leaders in the body of Christ and things like that. A story was brought to us…and My heart response was, “Oh, I just need to, you know, I need to investigate this, let’s go get it.” While that may sound okay in the context of Minor Prophets podcast, we have had a lot of people coming and bringing us stories, but I noticed that I had no fear of the Lord.
When John Mark and I initially agreed that we were going to cover some of this content of exposure type things, there was a significant fear of the Lord. Most of those were stories where we had personal relationships and involvement, whether we are talking about Shawn Bolz and Todd White or MorningStar and so forth. The burden that initially the Lord gave us was that in the situations where we had firsthand knowledge and experience of what had happened, we were to appeal to the leadership of the body of Christ for change. I think that we have done that, but for me to approach a story without a fear of the Lord, when I realized it, I was like, I need to stop for a second. If you remember, there was even an episode where John Mark mentioned that if we ever had a conviction that we had gone too far in a particular story, then we would shut the entire channel down. I just felt like my heart in approaching it was not in a good place. So I decided I needed to take a break. There were a couple of other things that were weighing on my heart that I think applied to other podcasters but also to viewers as well to take into consideration.
One was that because we have been in this space, we had been hearing pretty much bad story after bad story. That can weigh on your soul. Obviously, we have kind of beat the drum ad nauseam for the need for accountability in leadership and bringing correction to leaders and elders and Matthew 18 and so forth. That is an element of Christianity that we need in the leadership of the body of Christ. However, if we overemphasize that and we live in a world now where social media algorithms will feed back to you the content that you consume, it can weigh on your soul.
It is similar to really any aspect of our spiritual walk. Overemphasis on one thing can become unhealthy. The other thing was I was feeling quite a bit of pressure. For those that are not aware, which most of you should be, we have Minor Prophets and I had the Kingdom Awakening channel. John Mark was a guest on that channel and from there we had conversations that birthed this channel and brought some content over from there. But having two channels was creating a lot of pressure.
I have a full-time job and a family and the amount of time that was required for managing both channels was more than what I could personally handle. There was pressure for content for two different channels. The stories and the types of stories that we were being brought were requiring a high amount of investigation. Again, it was a time requirement. I realized at one point with that first story that I mentioned, as I started to research it, I thought, I am not called to this at all.
I am not called to be an investigator. I am not called to be an investigative journalist. There are other people that are called to those things. As a charismatic in this space and as somebody that believes in the gifts of the Spirit, I do not even know if I call myself charismatic anymore, but as somebody that believes in the gifts and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we should be holding a biblical standard and applying that standard to the stories that we had personal firsthand experience on. We did that.
At some point there was pressure for us to comment on other stories, things that we did not have the firsthand experience on. While I think it is okay to ask the obvious questions, really sitting in the position of an audience person and saying, “Okay, what about this and what about that?” ultimately was causing me to comment on things that I did not have as much of a full breadth of knowledge on. The other thing that was kind of a concern was the pressure to feed the algorithm. If you do not create enough content, then YouTube is going to penalize or reward you.
A lot of that I saw in the Kingdom Awakening channel and thankfully we did not see as much of that in the Minor Prophets channel. But I realized at one point, I thought, I am not actually being led by the Spirit. I am responding to what my understanding of the algorithm is. So again, it was this pressure. When there is grace on something and the Lord has called us to it, that pressure is not there.
I am not saying you do not have difficulties, but there is grace to do things, which there was initial grace when I had the Kingdom Awakening channel going, but also the initial grace on Minor Prophets. So I took a month and got off of all social media and it was super healthy. The first thing that I noticed was how much my prayer life changed. My prayer life at some point had slipped from being about my relationship with Jesus to what things God wanted us to talk about. I do not think that is bad, I think it is healthy.
I would hope that anybody that has a podcast like this is actively praying about what the Lord wants them to cover. However, there was very little prayer on my part that was just a connection with Jesus. When I noticed that, I thought, “Oh, okay, this is something in my heart that needs to change.” Whether it be reacting to comments or other videos or comments on social media, I had to kind of filter all that stuff out. When I did, thankfully the Lord started speaking to me.
I also realized this channel is called Minor Prophets, but we really did not have a lot of prophetic words. Initially, the first conversation was with myself and a friend, Patrick Miller, and we were going to try to shine a light on our prophetic process and those types of things. Ultimately, that is not what Minor Prophets became. I do not think it is bad, I just think the Lord used it for what it was meant to be for that particular season. But I actually heard from the Lord and got a word.
Let me give a brief kind of synopsis of it. This was a month ago, but what the Lord showed me was this. In the way that Peter, you know, Jesus had given Peter this amazing prophetic word, “I am going to build the church on you, you are going to be my leader after I am gone,” Peter denies Christ three times and then Jesus dies. After the crucifixion, Peter does not know when the resurrection is going to come. During this period where he is holding these prophetic words and he has this expectation, but it seems like everything is dead and he does not know what to do with it, at some point he says, “I am just going to go back to fishing.”
He is going to go back to what was familiar. Because he does not know how to prepare himself for what is coming, he does not know how to prepare himself for Pentecost. He does not know that Jesus is resurrected. How can Jesus baptize us in the Spirit if he is not resurrected? That was the promise of John the Baptist.
There are these prophetic words of the baptism where Jesus is going to baptize in the Holy Spirit and fire that have not happened yet. The word that Peter is going to be the head of the church has not happened yet. He does not know what to do, so he goes back to fishing. I think that is what a lot of the church activities in the body of Christ have been. I say this about myself too.
I mentioned that I went back to a festival that had a lot of witchcraft just to do prophetic evangelism. Having done that, the grace that was on that in the past seasons was not there. In the same way that Peter, when they went back fishing, goes fishing all night and does not catch anything, it was dry. The encouraging part of that is that even though they did not catch anything, in the morning Jesus shows up. Jesus met them where they were.
That is when you get the whole “cast the net on the other side” and you get this repeat of the experience that they had earlier in the ministry of Jesus. Peter jumps out of the water and gets restored in his relationship with Christ. The encouragement is that even though a lot of the church activities have been going through the motions and doing things where there was grace on them in past seasons, the Lord can still meet you where you are at. I think that for me, continuing in the podcast space was something the Lord had given me grace to do initially, but that grace had lifted. It took me taking a step back from everything to get a more clear perspective.
I believe that this is also part of us preparing for something new that God is going to do, which I realize is a generic prophetic word that is always true, but I still believe it. Part of that process of preparation is repentance. If you paid attention to this channel at all, we beat that drum pretty well. Repentance is not a one and done. It is an ongoing thing.
One of the things that the Lord showed me in my prayer time over the past month was that he was convicting me of selfishness and things in my heart. He was showing me some of the motives and things that I had been dealing with. I was repenting. It was not a harsh rebuke. But what he said afterwards was much more firm.
After I was done repenting, the Lord said, “Do they need my mercy any less than you do?” I am paraphrasing, because it was not a word-for-word type of impression from the Lord, but it was more like this: if Mike Bickle were to repent, if Robert Morris were to repent, if all the different scandals and things that we have heard, if those leaders repented, they all need the mercy of God. The reason that we have covered those is because there was a lack of repentance. However, if they are still breathing, there is still opportunity for repentance. I realized that I need the Lord’s mercy. I have just sinned differently than they have.
We can overemphasize the need for leaders to repent in a way that is unhealthy. One of the things that really helped me get a more balanced perspective was Carl Lentz. I have never really listened to Carl prior to this. I knew about the scandals and I knew that he was Justin Bieber’s pastor. I knew he was at Hillsong.
I watched a podcast. I watched a couple of his, one with him and his wife and his kids. Hearing the transparency and the way that they as a family navigated his very public scandal and how it helped them to strengthen their relationships and how the Lord restored them really impacted me. I also heard an interview that he did with a fallen pastor from Frisco, I forget his name, where Carl was talking about how the Lord had said, “I am the lifter of your head.” He was feeling so beat up and so down from how he had let down the body of Christ and how he had let down his family.
He realized that there are people in the body that even when he had repented, even when the Lord was restoring his heart to being in right relationship with God and restoring him in his family, there are some people that would still want him to be punished. I do not think this is the same conversation as whether or not somebody should be back in ministry. I do not even think that Carl would say that he should be back pastoring people. However, it does not mean that God is done with him. For me, it was a very healthy perspective and conversation to hear.
There are some traps in this particular space in podcasts. One of them is fault finding. There is a very subtle difference between advocating for the correction of elders that are wounding their people and looking for problems in ministries that we are not involved in. Fault finding is a sin. Here is the other element of the need for mercy that I just want to hit on for a second.
We did a crusade in Mexico and we had one of the kidnappers from the cartels who was repenting and giving his life to the Lord. His whole family had done it. That was what they did. They kidnapped girls and sold them. He was confessing and giving his life to the Lord.
We can forget that. That is something that, with Charlie Kirk and Erica when she forgave her husband’s murderer, really stood out to me. That guy needs Jesus. We can forget that. We can put ourselves in a position of excessive judgment.
Here is the thing. You can be on the right side of a particular scandal and still end up wrong. Here is what I mean. Excessive judgment or excessive pronouncement of judgment is dangerous. The Lord actually rebukes and judges those that judge too harshly.
For example, when God was judging Israel and they went into captivity in Babylon, he then judges Babylon for extending beyond what God had called them to in keeping Israel captive. You can go too far in a particular story. Again, I am not saying that this means that Mike Bickle should be pastoring or anything like that. However, if Mike Bickle authentically repented, repented to the body of Christ, repented to those that he wounded, and took accountability for his own sin, could God redeem Mike Bickle? Ultimately, I think that we have to create room for restoration.
One of the challenges too is this: “Be careful when you think you stand lest you fall.” Putting ourselves in a position of saying, “Well, I have never done the sin that that particular leader did,” is a trap. By comparing ourselves to one another, it is a trap. You can be correct on navigating a situation and have pride enter your heart. I do not know that that has happened, I just know that it is possible.
We can think that we are so correct and in being in that place can extend beyond what God is saying to do and start pronouncing things that God is not saying. All of these different things are what the Lord had taken me through. For those that are fallen leaders, the scandals, whether you have a scandal or you are being quiet or trying to silence people, as Mike Winger, and I am so grateful for Mike, said, the “cover-up culture” is real. We have to recognize that repentance is not a one and done. Repentance is a regular part of the Christian walk.
Even if we are not sinning externally with actions, Jesus often rebukes the Pharisees not for the things that they said or did but for the things that they thought and the way they reasoned in their hearts. That was the kind of thing that the Lord was rebuking me for. He was showing me just how bad it is in his eyes. Whether or not you are a fallen leader or you are participating in a culture or creating a culture that covers up sin, not covers in the sense of redeeming individuals and leading them back into relationship, but in the sense of covering things up and acting as though there is not really a problem when members of the body of Christ are being hurt, please repent. We have to learn how to have repentance.
There is also a little bit of pressure, not on me personally, but because we have a successful podcast, and that is something that some people really are motivated by. I have never taken a dollar from Minor Prophets or Kingdom Awakening. All of the money from both of those podcasts has gone to ministry efforts. Most of it has gone to supporting a particular widow. There are a couple of other ministry-related things, but none of it has gone to my personal finances.
So I hold things loosely and being led by the Spirit means that just because something is successful does not mean we hold on to it. My appeal to those that are podcasters in this space is to hold things loosely. Do not feel like you have to cover exclusively one type of content just because that is what your audience initially came for. Do not be led by views. Again, be led by the Spirit, not by the algorithm, not by view count.
I am not saying to ignore those things, but ultimately we are accountable to the Lord, not to the YouTube world. To the viewers, my encouragement is to make sure to take time away from social media. We are in a unique time where it is very easy to get misled by the type of content that you consume, by the comments that you make, even by conversations that you have somewhere near your phone and then it starts feeding you back ads based on what your conversations are. Just take some time away from it all and listen to the Lord. I think that it is an important time for us to prepare for what God is about to do.
I think that there are several big things that God has that are going to be happening in the United States in the next two or three months. That means that we have a personal responsibility to be led by the Spirit. For those of you that have enjoyed my participation in Minor Prophets, thank you. If you want to continue to follow me personally, the Kingdom Awakening channel is still there, but I have no plans of making content right now. Again, I am staying focused on what God is calling me to and making sure that I am really being led by the Spirit.
John Mark is going to continue with the channel. They are going to have to have some kind of rebrand. My face is on the logo. I just wanted to say thank you all for your support. I ask that you would continue to pray for myself and my family.
I pray that God would continue to bless this channel and to lead it in the way that he would. That is authentically following the Spirit. So God bless you guys. Thanks.

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