# Lou Engle Lou Engle is the **premier mass-fasting-and-prayer organizer of the NAR** — the movement's most prolific convener of stadium-scale prayer rallies and the bridge figure between the Kansas City Prophet lineage of [[Mike Bickle]] and the apostolic-political activation of the Trump era. He is best known as the co-founder of **The Call** — a series of 12-hour fasting-and-prayer rallies held in U.S. cities from 2000 through the 2010s — and later **The Send**, a stadium-scale missionary-commissioning rally series he co-founded with Andy Byrd. Engle's distinctive public style — rocking rhythmically back and forth as he prays, shouting declarations, weeping on stage — made him one of the most visually distinctive figures in American charismatic Christianity. His role at the December 2020 [[Appeal to Heaven]] cemented his place in the NAR's election-denial infrastructure. ## Background - Born 1952 - Long association with [[IHOP-KC]] and Mike Bickle's Kansas City ministry - Founded The Call with Che Ahn and Dutch Sheets in 2000; the inaugural TheCall DC rally filled the National Mall - Co-founded The Send in 2019 with Andy Byrd and YWAM - Based in Pasadena, CA, in association with [[Che Ahn]]'s HRock Church - Author of *Digging the Wells of Revival*, *Nazirite DNA*, and others ## The Call and Mass Prayer Rallies Engle's signature institution, **The Call**, held 12-hour fasting-and-prayer rallies in U.S. cities between 2000 and roughly 2016. The rallies mixed worship, prophetic declarations, and political agenda-setting — particularly around abortion, marriage, and Israel. Attendance at TheCall DC 2000 was estimated at 400,000. Subsequent events filled Nashville's LP Field, Detroit's Ford Field, and other major venues. The Call effectively *invented* the modern stadium-scale charismatic prayer rally — the model [[Sean Feucht]], [[Dutch Sheets]], and the [[ReAwaken America Tour]] would later adapt for overtly political ends. ## Abortion Politics Engle's most consistent political focus has been abortion. He is credited with popularizing the red-tape-over-the-mouth silent protest (worn with the word "LIFE" or the name of an aborted child), and with framing the American abortion-rights regime as a "blood covenant" requiring spiritual reversal through prayer and fasting. The 2022 *Dobbs* decision was celebrated by Engle as the answer to decades of his movement's intercession. ## The Jericho March and January 6 Engle was one of the key prophetic voices at the December 12, 2020 [[Appeal to Heaven]] in Washington D.C. — the NAR-organized rally at which participants circled the Supreme Court and national monuments seven times to "declare" the 2020 election would be reversed. Engle delivered a prophetic word framing the moment as a showdown between the church and demonic forces aligned with the Biden victory. Several attendees of the Jericho March later participated in the January 6 Capitol attack. The iconography and prayer forms Engle helped popularize — shofars, declarations, Appeal-to-Heaven flags — saturated the January 6 crowd. ## Distance from Bickle Post-Scandal Following the 2023 revelations of sexual abuse by [[Mike Bickle]], Engle publicly acknowledged that he had been informed of some concerns earlier and had not acted decisively. He stepped back from some roles and issued public apologies, while continuing The Send and related ministries. The episode is part of the broader reckoning within the charismatic ecosystem over spiritual-authority structures that protected abusers. ## Why He Matters for the KB Engle's primary contribution to the movement is *organizational form*: the stadium-scale prayer rally as both a spiritual and political event. This form is now the dominant mode of NAR political mass mobilization — deployed by Feucht, by Clay Clark's ReAwaken tour, by the Jericho March — and it originated with The Call. He also exemplifies the **moral-authority laundering** that the NAR apostolic network provides for its members: Engle's decades of fasting, his ascetic personal style, and his focus on abortion give him a saintly public image that has absorbed substantial political content (election denial, Trump advocacy) without friction. The prayer rally and the political rally have become indistinguishable — and Engle is one of the figures most responsible for that merger. ## See Also - [[New Apostolic Reformation]] - [[Appeal to Heaven]] - [[New Apostolic Reformation Ecosystem]] - [[Mike Bickle]] - [[Che Ahn]] - [[Dutch Sheets]] - [[Sean Feucht]]