Theological Reflections

Volume 5, Issue 1 – October 2025

From Fire to Fallout: The New Wine Church คริสตจักรนํ้าองุ่นใหม่ and the Toronto–Tampa Revival’s Final Crisis in Thailand

Date: 11 October 2025

In October 2025, Thai Protestantism confronted one of its most significant public crises. On October 7, ข่าวออนไลน์ 7HD reported that the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand (EFT) had suspended the membership of the New Wine International Church Bangkok and ordered a doctrinal investigation following public controversy surrounding its practices. The church was given thirty days to respond or face expulsion, a decision that would remove its legal status under the Department of Religious Affairs and designate it a “คริสตจักรเถื่อน”—an unregistered church.

Yet behind this administrative event lies a deeper theological question: the long-term influence of the Toronto Blessing and Rodney Howard-Browne’s “fire revival” theology, now fully manifested in Thailand through New Wine Bangkok.

🔹 The Tampa–Thailand Connection and the Formation of the “Fire of the Holy Spirit” Movement

The roots of Thailand’s “Fire of the Holy Spirit” movement trace directly to Rodney Howard-Browne and his ministry, Revival Ministries International (RMI), headquartered in Tampa, Florida. This connection emerged through the experiences and ministry of Dr. Varun Laohaprasit, who played a pivotal role in introducing and contextualizing Howard-Browne’s revival theology within Thai charismatic Christianity.

Dr. Laohaprasit has publicly testified that he and his wife attended Howard-Browne’s revival meetings at The River at Tampa Bay Church and were “touched by the tangible presence of God.” His description of witnessing people collapse under divine power mirrors the “slain in the Spirit” phenomenon that defines Howard-Browne’s meetings. From this encounter, he embraced the concept of the “Fire of the Holy Spirit”—the hallmark of Howard-Browne’s pneumatology—and developed a ministry centered on the laying on of hands and the impartation of “fire.” These practices later became the defining features of his revival services in Thailand.

When Howard-Browne held his Great Awakening Meeting (called by New Wine Bangkok as “Holy Ghost and Fire” Meeting) in Bangkok on September 20, 2019, Dr. Laohaprasit served as his official Thai translator, a role requiring theological alignment and deep familiarity with the message. Yet Laohaprasit’s ministry predates this event. As early as 2013, a Facebook post shows him, then representing New Hope International Church, Seattle, USA, promoting a “Fire of the Holy Spirit Revival” (ไฟแห่งพระวิญญาณบริสุทธิ์) in Songkhla Province. The poster’s imagery of flames and its emphasis on physical manifestations indicate that this theology had already taken root in Thailand well before the later revival wave (Laohaprasit & Laohaprasit, 2013). By 2014, he was conducting a “Fire Revival” (ไฟแห่งการฟื้นฟู) tour in Songkhla and Bangkok while representing New Hope International Church, Seattle, USA, linking his revival activities directly to American charismatic networks (Kasama, 2014).

This transnational collaboration has continued into the present. On October 11–13, 2025, New Wine Church Bangkok—now the central hub of the “fire revival” movement—hosted “ค่ายแหวกทะเลแดง Camp” led by Joshua Humphrey, an evangelist affiliated with Revival Ministries International and The River at Tampa Bay Church. Photographs from New Wine’s official Facebook page show congregants lying prostrate and exhibiting manifestations identical to those seen in Howard-Browne’s services. The event demonstrates that New Wine’s partnership with RMI remains active and institutionally tied to the Tampa-based global revival network (New Wine International Church Bangkok [Facebook post], 2025).

🔹 Theological and Ecclesial Fallout

The crisis that erupted in October 2025 is not an isolated episode but the culmination of a decade-long relationship between Howard-Browne’s revivalism and its Thai expression. The practices of “fire impartation” and “slain in the Spirit”—now central to New Wine Bangkok’s ministry—have drawn widespread concern from Thai Protestant leaders. The Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand has argued that these manifestations constitute serious deviations from biblical pneumatology, resulting in a cult and spiritual, psychological, and mental manipulations and abuses.

From a Protestant evangelical perspective, the movement is viewed as:

• A Counterfeit Revival: an imported, emotionally charged model that substitutes psychological manipulation for biblical truth.
• Theologically Dangerous: a system that elevates ecstatic experience above Scripture, inviting spiritual confusion and syncretism.
• An Unhealthy Network: a deliberate expansion of Howard-Browne’s revivalism into Thailand, mediated by Dr. Varun Laohaprasit and now embodied by New Wine International Church Bangkok.

In essence, this controversy marks the Thai church’s confrontation with the full flowering of a movement Dr. Laohaprasit initiated more than a decade ago. New Wine International Church Bangkok stands as the most visible and unapologetic embodiment of the “Fire of the Holy Spirit” ideology—an imported theology whose roots lie in Tampa but whose impact is now being reckoned with in the heart of Thailand’s Protestant community.

This reflection builds upon the author’s earlier studies published in the Journal of Thai Protestant Theology—“Slain in the Spirit and Strange Fire: A Biblical and Theological Critique of Neo-Charismatic Manifestations” (Saiyasak, April 2025) and “Slain in the Spirit” and the “Fire Movement”: An Evangelical Protestant Evaluation (Saiyasak, October 2025). Those works established the doctrinal foundation for evaluating “fire” and “anointing” phenomena. The present article extends that analysis by examining the tangible outcome of those teachings as embodied in New Wine Church Bangkok, where imported revivalist ideologies from Toronto and Tampa have produced visible theological and ecclesial consequences within the Thai church.

The New Wine International Church stands in direct continuity with the revivalist movement that began with Drs. Rodney and Adonica Howard-Browne. During the early 1990s, Howard-Browne’s “Holy Ghost meetings” popularized manifestations such as laughter, falling, and shaking—what he called “drinking in the Spirit.” His meetings inspired Randy Clark, whose ministry ignited the 1994 Toronto Blessing at the Toronto Airport Vineyard. The resulting revival spread globally through Catch the Fire, Bethel Redding, and Howard-Browne’s own River Church under RMI, shaping modern charismatic subculture with its vocabulary of fire, anointing, joy, impartation, and manifest presence. Through conferences, livestreams, and itinerant evangelists, this theology entered Asia, finding resonance in Thailand’s religious environment that values visible spiritual power.

The connection between New Wine Bangkok and Tampa Bay is therefore not speculative but demonstrable. In recent years, New Wine has partnered with Joshua and Kristen Humphrey, full-time evangelists under RMI’s Ministerial Association. Their ministry, Good News Global, declares its purpose to “set hearts ablaze and empower the church outside its four walls.” On September 28, 2025, New Wine’s official Facebook page announced: “🔥 เตรียมใจให้พร้อม! Firestorm 🌪️ กำลังจะมาถึง! พร้อมกับ Ps. Joshua และ Ps. Kristen ที่จะจุดไฟพระวิญญาณในชีวิตคุณ!” (“Prepare your heart! Firestorm is coming with Ps. Joshua and Ps. Kristen, who will ignite the fire of the Spirit in your life!”). This Firestorm event borrows the exact terminology of RMI’s revival campaigns, confirming that New Wine functions as a theological and strategic extension of the Tampa-based network.

The Christian Research Institute, USA describes the global significance of such phenomena:

• “Christianity is undergoing a paradigm shift of major proportions—from faith to feelings, from fact to fantasy, and from reason to esoteric revelation. Leaders of this Counterfeit Revival, such as Rodney Howard-Browne and John Arnott, have peppered their preaching and practice with fabrications, fantasies, and frauds... Many of the followers who at first flooded into Counterfeit Revival ‘power centers’ have become disillusioned and have now slipped through the cracks into the kingdom of the cults” (Christian Research Institute, 1999, p. 3).

This sober assessment highlights that the theological distortions now surfacing in Thailand are part of a broader global pattern.

Moreover, Howard-Browne himself conducted “Holy Ghost and Fire” one-day gathering in Bangkok on September 20, 2019, as part of his Great Awakening Tour (Revival Ministries International, 2019a, 2019b). These events laid the groundwork for RMI’s continued influence in Thailand and prepared the way for later collaborations such as New Wine’s Firestorm conference.

Just ten days later, on October 8, 2025, New Wine’s Facebook page shared a prophetic message from American preacher Rick Renner, who reportedly recounted meeting Rodney Howard-Browne in London and declaring that “the season of war and the season of miracles is coming… the Holy Spirit will merge every past movement—from Acts to the Reformation—into one in our generation.” By endorsing this prophecy, New Wine affirmed its commitment to “latter-rain” end-time revival theology and its belief that Thailand is a frontline in a global spiritual war.

The theological content of New Wine’s own sermons confirms this alignment. Messages posted by Pastor Kom-ek Kawinakkharathit—including “God Can Speak Through the Supernatural,” “Battlefield of the Mind,” “Why Christians Get Sick,” and “Lawyers of Darkness”—reveal consistent charismatic–Word-of-Faith themes. They teach that God continues to reveal rhema truth beyond Scripture; that human reason is the enemy of faith; that healing and prosperity are rights of believers; and that nearly all problems are forms of spiritual warfare. The result is a theology that is mystical yet pragmatic, emotive yet authoritarian—a fusion of Toronto-style revivalism and Word-of-Faith prosperity doctrine. Scripture is quoted often but functions mainly to legitimize experience.

In Thailand’s cultural context—where visible spiritual power is often equated with divine authenticity—such revivalism resonates deeply but departs sharply from Protestant orthodoxy. The result is an emotionally intense but theologically fragile faith: fire without foundation.

The Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand’s decision to suspend New Wine marks a decisive boundary between charismatic enthusiasm and Protestant accountability. Legally, expulsion would remove state recognition; theologically, it signifies that “fire revivalism” has moved outside evangelical Protestant orthodoxy. What began as a pursuit of renewal has evolved into a global movement often detached from Scripture and ecclesial order. In Thailand, this trajectory has now culminated in public discipline and theological fallout. The fire that once promised power has become a flame of controversy “testing the church’s commitment to biblical truth.”

On October 8, 2025, Thailand’s national broadcaster Channel 7HD reported that the New Wine International Church Bangkok had become the subject of public and legal complaint. The report described the group as a “strange cult” (ลัทธิแปลก) promoting beliefs about “ghosts” and “evil spirits” (ผีร้าย) intertwined with its revival theology. Former students and parents accused the church of deception in its educational programs and of engaging in psychologically harmful practices (Channel 7HD News, 2025). While the investigation remains ongoing, the report reveals that what began as a theological deviation has now escalated into social scandal. The church’s “fire” and “spirit” rhetoric—originally borrowed from Western charismatic revivalism—has been publicly reinterpreted in Thai culture as spiritism rather than Christianity. This underscores how syncretistic theology, once tolerated as renewal, has now produced the very outcomes of confusion and moral injury that Protestant theology has long warned against.

The reach of this “fire” theology now extends beyond New Wine. Dr. Varun Laohaprasit’s disciple and son in the faith, Mr. Champ, founder of Bright Romance แสงสว่างแห่งรักที่แท้จริง, continues to promote similar “Fire… Fire” practices and the laying-on-of-hands accompanied by glossolalia. Although his ministry expresses a milder—yet still excessive—form of the same revivalism and lacks the overt extremes seen in New Wine Bangkok, it nonetheless reflects the enduring influence of Laohaprasit’s theology within a younger generation of Thai neo-charismatics. This emerging phase—less confrontational yet still patterned after the Tampa model—suggests that the Fire of the Holy Spirit movement has begun to reproduce itself indigenously within Thailand’s evangelical landscape, a development warranting separate theological reflection in the future.

Yet fire in Scripture is not only destructive but purifying. The Lord is a refiner’s fire, and the Spirit produces the fruit of love, peace, and self-control rather than chaos and spectacle. If this controversy brings Thai churches back to discernment and biblical depth, it may prove a refining moment for the nation’s evangelical community. Zeal must not be quenched—but it must be anchored in truth. As the apostle John warned, “Test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” Only the fire that endures that testing will illumine rather than consume.

About the Author

Dr. Chansamone Saiyasak (Professor of Religious Studies and Missiology) is a Thai theologian and missiologist based in Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, where he pastors Mekong Church Nonprasert. He serves on the Theological Commission and Religious Liberty Commission of the Asia Evangelical Alliance and the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand, contributing to theological development and religious freedom initiatives in Southeast Asia. He also serves as an Asian theologian for the World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly 2025's Theological Project. With over 40 years of ministry and leadership experience, he has led Christian educational and theological institutions, community development projects, and church planting movements across Thailand and Laos. He holds a Ph.D. in Theology and Religious Studies from Evangelische Theologische Faculteit (Belgium) and Doctor of Ministry and Master of Divinity from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary (USA), and has completed advanced leadership programs at Harvard University, Yale School of Management, and Oxford University. He completed Bachelor of Science in Religion from Liberty University (USA) Through his work with organizations such as the SEANET Missiological Forum and the Lausanne Movement, and World Evangelical Alliance, Dr. Saiyasak is committed to advancing Gospel-centered leadership, contextual theology, and mission engagement in Buddhist-majority societies.

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Cite this Reflection in APA format:

Saiyasak, Chansamone. (2025, October 11). From Fire to Fallout: The New Wine Church and the Toronto–Tampa Revival’s Final Crisis in Thailand. Thai Protestant Theology - Theological Reflections 5(1). Retrieved from http://www.thaiprotestanttheology.mf.or.th/reflections/reflection-21.html