Hagin's Bible school trained preachers; satellite and cable television gave those preachers a national audience without requiring them to build a congregation from scratch. Networks such as Trinity Broadcasting Network, founded in 1973, gave Word of Faith teaching a permanent, dedicated broadcast home, carrying its preachers into households far beyond the reach of any single church, in exactly the pattern earlier religious broadcasters, from Aimee Semple McPherson's radio station to Oral Roberts's televised healing crusades, had already established for the wider prosperity gospel of which the movement is now the most systematized theological expression.
The movement's reach brought sustained outside scrutiny alongside its growth. Evangelical apologetics organizations have published extended critiques of its teaching for decades, and beginning in 2007 the United States Senate Finance Committee opened an inquiry into the tax exempt finances of several prosperity preaching ministries with roots in Word of Faith teaching, closing in 2011 without a finding of unlawful conduct but with published findings unfavorable to several of the ministries it examined.
The movement remains institutionally decentralized: rather than a single denomination with shared governance, Word of Faith exists as a network of independent ministries, Bible schools and broadcast programs united by shared teaching and, in many cases, by direct lineage back to Hagin's own training center rather than by any formal denominational structure.