Testing the Wine from John Wimber’s Vineyard

California s latest “boom church” has power encounters with sin and sickness.

TIM STAFFORD

If the word church brings you images of steepled buildings nestled in quiet neighborhoods, you are not up to speed with the megachurches of Southern California, where freeway access and acres of parking are imperative.

In 15 minutes on the freeway, churchgoers can move between Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, Chuck Swindoll’s First Evangelical Free Church of Fullerton, Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel (the original Jesus People church), and John Wimber’s Vineyard. These startlingly different churches draw from a potential audience of millions. Southern California has become a laboratory for entrepreneurial church innovation. It is the electronic church on terra firma.

The Vineyard, the latest “boom church” in Orange County, worships in a gigantic warehouse in an Anaheim industrial area, the kind peculiar to the Sun Belt, with wide, eerily quiet tree-lined streets, and large, flat buildings floating in a sea of parking lots. From the Vineyard’s parking lot, you can clearly see the peak of Disneyland’s Matterhorn. And inside, the Vineyard looks like the setup for a trade exposition—a network of girders over a vast, featureless, carpeted rectangle, with a stage at one end.

A casual, white, middle-class, youthful crowd fills this room twice every Sunday. They come excited, expecting to see healings, to experience the supernatural at work. They also come to worship: A typical service devotes 45 minutes to nonstop singing. (Wimber, a jazz and rock-and-roll musician before his conversion, plays keyboard. He has written many of the praise songs.)

Vineyard fever has spread beyond Anaheim. People come from all over Southern California, indeed from all over the world, to hear John Wimber teach and to experience Sunday worship services. He is leading a new movement, the Signs and Wonders movement. And well over 100 other “Vineyards” have sprung up across the country.

Excitement

The excitement is largely that generated by all Pentecostalism: ecstatic worship, healings, exorcisms, speaking in tongues, prophecies, and “words of knowledge.” Yet the Signs and Wonders movement is distinctive, with its own theology, its own terminology, its own music, its own style. It is breaking into churches that have never felt the full force of the charismatic movement.

Wimber is best known for his emphasis on healing, but his concerns neither start nor stop there. He does not offer toned-down stuff: he sees adultery printed on faces, relishes Third World stories of people returning Lazarus-like from the dead, and says he has prayed for thousands to speak in tongues with only one who failed to do so.

On occasion, he makes harsh assessments of the noncharismatic church. But the label “fiery Pentecostal” would never do him justice. The rotund Wimber speaks in an offhand, unrehearsed manner—a lovable teddy bear. He is also a thoughtful, original Bible expositor. He communicates to educated evangelicals. His style—cool, humorous, fatherly—is exactly pitched to baby boomers. It is a style redolent of Ronald Reagan: an awfully nice neighbor leaning over the back fence, presenting what used to be considered extreme without sounding mean or pushy.

Is this a deceptive façade? John Wimber, like most pastors of large churches, knows show biz. But is he power hungry? Money hungry? Manipulative? On the contrary, even his critics credit him with sincerity and genuine compassion. He is also, they find, a great deal more careful than some of his young followers. Criticisms center not on Wimber but on his message, which many consider divisive and off-center.

Power

The key word in John Wimber’s vocabulary is not healing, but power. He relies heavily on the late Fuller professor George Ladd’s theology of the New Testament, which emphasizes the kingdom of God as an invasive force, not only proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, but demonstrating its superior power over Satan’s kingdom through healings and exorcisms. Wimber’s essential message is “We can do what Jesus did.” In fact, he reads it as a command: We must do what Jesus did.

Traditionally, the church has emphasized the power of God in the proclamation of the gospel and in the moral improvement of Christian lives. Wimber says this is deficient; he scorns the practice of claiming the Spirit’s presence purely by faith. When the Holy Spirit moves in power, he says, you know without a doubt something supernatural has occurred.

Don Williams, a Presbyterian pastor who is an active leader in the Signs and Wonders movement, describes his ministry to drug addicts and prostitutes during the Jesus movement, before he had experienced the Spirit’s power: “I was taking people off the street and trying to heal them by having them read the Bible and pray. They were not getting free. They needed the power of the Spirit so they could live what their flesh didn’t want them to live.” Those in the Signs and Wonders movement believe that a purely cognitive approach falsely separates Jesus’ word from his work. Jesus’ work, as they read it, is a work of supernatural power against demons and sickness.

Wimber developed these ideas in association with Peter Wagner and other professors at Fuller’s School of World Mission. Neither Wimber nor Wagner was charismatic when they first met. Though Wimber had spoken in tongues as a young Christian, he taught that the charismatic gifts are “not for our time.” Frustrated as a pastor of a fast-growing evangelical Friends church, Wimber left to join Wagner in doing church-growth consultations for the Fuller Evangelistic Association.

Wagner, a small, goateed dynamo, cannot match Wimber’s platform charisma; but his seminary position, his wide reputation for American church-growth expertise, and his irenic point of view give him—and John Wimber with him—entree. Unlike Wimber, Wagner makes negative assessments about nobody. He has made a career out of finding what is good in growing churches, and affirming it—without asking many critical questions. This enables him to hold up as models of church life not only Wimber’s Vineyard, but Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral, the entire Southern Baptist denomination, and just about any other church that is growing.

As a missionary in Bolivia, Wagner actively opposed Pentecostalism. But his research as a professor of missions forced him to recognize Pentecostalism as a driving force in much of church growth in the Third World. Largely through anthropologist Alan Tippett, he became aware of the “power encounter”—a contest between gods. (Elijah’s confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel is the classic example.) Missions history is replete with examples of missionaries who converted animistic tribes by, for instance, chopping down their ancestral grove and erecting a Christian shrine on the spot.

Wimber has broadened the concept of “power encounter” to any event where the kingdom of God confronts the kingdom of this world. The battle, he says, is marked by signs and wonders, particularly healings and exorcisms as in Jesus’ ministry.

A Revolutionary Promise

Power Evangelism, by John Wimber with Kevin Springer (Harper & Row, 1986, 224 pp.; $13.95, cloth). Reviewed by Clark H. Pinnock, McMaster Divinity College.

John Wimber has a vision for a restored church, a church in which people will again encounter a gospel of power accompanied by signs and wonders, as they did in the first century. He believes that God is ready to perform his mighty works again in our time, and that unbelievers will be bowled over as they were before.

His is a simple book full of personal illustrations, which make the meaning vivid and clear. Like Saint Paul, Wimber wants to see people’s faith resting not in the wisdom of words, but in the power and demonstration of the Spirit of God. He believes we should all be operating in the realm of the supernatural, and that we should expect daily to see God’s hand outstretched to save and to heal.

The idea is not new. We find it in Acts, and in the great ongoing Pentecostal movements of the twentieth century. But Wimber believes (and Peter Wagner agrees with him in the foreword) that a new wave of power is rolling in that could stimulate a quantum leap in world missionary outreach in the closing years of our century. Thus the book comes to us with a revolutionary promise attached.

The book is not written to develop a profound argument, and does not do so. It presents the simple message of the New Testament every Christian knows: In the beginning, God certified the truth of the gospel of the risen Lord with signs and wonders from the Holy Spirit. More than a simple truth claim calling for reflection, the message of salvation was a power encounter of the living God and the forces of darkness. Miracles of healing and guidance, therefore, served to accredit the gospel, and to overwhelm the evil powers.

Wimber does not believe God has ceased to be willing to validate his truth by supernatural means, and he has a wealth of experiences to back up his conviction. He hopes the book will open Christians up to the explosive power of their faith, and lure them into supernatural Christianity.

A large part of me responds enthusiastically to what Wimber describes and presents. I myself was filled with the Spirit through the charismatic renewal in New Orleans, and regard the Pentecostal revival as a mighty work of God. Furthermore, I received healing from a serious macular degeneracy in my only functioning eye in 1982 (having lost the other eye from retinal detachment much earlier). I know from personal experience that one such incident can be worth a bookshelf of academic apologetics for Christianity (including my own books).

So I am on board with what Wimber is saying. Jesus sent us out to preach and to heal, and we have refused to do more than just preach. No wonder we are relatively ineffective. We refuse to believe God in a whole area where he is pledged to answer the prayer of faith.

At the same time, however, there are dangers lurking close to the surface that have been visible in Pentecostal movements from the beginning and that are encountered in the New Testament itself: Fakery and manipulation are easy when one is operating in the realm of the supernatural. False claims are difficult to test, and evildoers can mask their actions by an appeal to the Spirit of God.

Furthermore, the masses are easily excited by charismania, by an overemphasis on the spectacular, to the detriment of the ongoing works of charity. A generation whipped up to a frenzy by high-tech show biz may well demand charismatic Christianity and be bored with anything else. But we must be careful not to tailor our presentation entirely to market requirements.

But having said that, we must return to the basic issue John Wimber asks us to consider. Should not Christians who claim to be following the New Testament be operating more in the power of God than we are now? Do we not serve a God who performs miracles, and displays his power among the nations?

Disillusionment

Working with Wagner as a church-growth consultant, Wimber had plenty of time to develop his ideas. For three years they flew all over America, consulting with hundreds of churches that said they wanted to grow—none of them Pentecostal or charismatic. Wagner claims he was totally unaware of Wimber’s growing disillusionment with the church. According to Wimber, “There was a lot of action that was called the work of the Holy Spirit, but it was nothing more than human effort in which the Holy Spirit was asked to tag along. I felt that it turned the stomach of God. It certainly did mine, and it wore me out.”

Wimber’s wife, who had become charismatic, started a prayer group that grew to 50 members. In 1977, at what he believed was very direct guidance from God, Wimber began to pastor it. He soon resigned his position as a church-growth consultant.

The church met in a high school gymnasium. Wimber began to preach from the Gospel of Luke, and was struck by the many healings and exorcisms Jesus did. Wimber offered repeated altar calls for healing, but the church prayed for months without seeing a single healing occur. It was a humiliating, gut-wrenching time when many people left the church in disgust. Yet Wimber would not give up. He believed that God would not let him. He was determined to see God heal people, and eventually—after ten months—he did. One young woman was healed in her home of a fever, and Wimber’s exultation knew no bounds. “We got one!” he yelled at the top of his lungs on the way to his car.

From there, the brief history of the Vineyard is a straight path. The church grew dramatically, and multiplied into what many would call a small denomination. Wimber began to receive invitations to speak all over the country, and then overseas, particularly in England.

Under Wagner’s auspices at Fuller Seminary, Wimber launched a course—MC510, known popularly as “Signs and Wonders.” It included an optional “laboratory” in divine healing, and was the most popular course at Fuller until it was canceled this year, due to theological and academic questions raised by faculty members. (See box: Cause for Concern.)

Healing

Praying for healing is undoubtedly the easiest part of John Wimber’s message for traditional believers to accept. All have a theoretical commitment to James’s instructions that the elders pray for those who are sick. But Wimber wants more than that. He wants supernatural power to be seen in the church. He expects that the power of the Spirit will be visible not only in compassionate prayer, but in miraculous healing. That is why, when Wimber prayed for healings over ten months and saw none, he was so devastated. The power of God was not being demonstrated.

Wimber respects and appreciates modern medicine—he points out that he would have lost some of his grandchildren if it were not for medicine. He also freely acknowledges that many he prays for are not healed, including British pastor David Watson, Wimber’s close friend, who died of cancer in 1984. Yet he focuses not on accepting God’s will, but on seeing God’s power.

Does the Vineyard see such power? The thousands who throng to it clearly believe they are reliving the days of the apostles. In his messages, Wimber relates spectacular healings he has witnessed in various locales. His book, Power Evangelism, summarizes the situation at his church: “The blind see; the lame walk; the deaf hear. Cancer is disappearing.”

Psychiatrist and Christian author John White has interviewed many at the Vineyard; and though he carefully points out that his evidence is strictly anecdotal, he believes there is plenty to convince a skeptic. For example, he has interviewed seven former homosexuals who saw a complete change of sexual orientation because of the healing prayers of the Vineyard.

One might get the impression, hearing Wimber publicly, that miraculous healing is as common as snow in Minnesota. But, in fact, Wimber says, because the Vineyard’s reputation draws sick people from all over, it might be sicker than an ordinary church. How many healings has he seen of the spectacular type in which a young Britisher’s withered hand began to grow slowly back to its normal size? “Very, very few,” he says.

It is not the number healed that matters to Wimber, though of course he loves bursts of miracles. His primary concern is the evident power of God. If one individual is healed, that confronts all who witness it with God’s miraculous presence in their midst.

Cause for ConcernBy Ben Patterson, pastor of the Irvine Presbyterian Church (Calif.) and a Christianity Today contributing editor.

“We haven’t had anything this disruptive on campus since I have been here—11 years.”

So says Fuller Theological Seminary faculty member Roberta Hestenes. She is referring to the now-defunct course MC510, taught by John Wimber and Peter Wagner, and better known as “Signs and Wonders” (CT, Feb. 21, 1986, p. 48).

While most of the theological faculty was critical of the course, the missions faculty was much more supportive. The course is likely to be revived in another form, but probably without John Wimber as the dominant figure.

Fuller has made a point of welcoming charismatics and Pentecostals. The seminary has courses that consider charismatic issues and faculty members who are ordained Pentecostals, and it also has a large minority of students who are charismatic.

Here are some of the faculty’s reasons for discontinuing the course and some of their concerns for the wider movement:

New secularism. Wimber’s strong emphasis on the miraculous, stressing that God is peculiarly present in this, as distinct from natural healings, borders dangerously on an unbiblical dualism. Another version of the old “God of the gaps” dichotomy is set up in which God is at work in the extraordinary and the supernatural—but not in the ordinary and the everyday.

Exclusivity. The so-called power encounter of signs and wonders was being claimed as the norm for truly biblical evangelism. The implicit, and sometimes explicit, judgment is that others have been and are doing the work of God in their own strength. Thus the great lights of the church—Augustine of Hippo, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley—seem pretty dim, for the Wimber brand of unction was absent from their ministries.

Christian magic. Faculty were concerned that the approach to the miraculous tended to be formulaic, especially in the “deliverance” ministries, in which persons supposedly oppressed by demonic powers are set free. Some of Wimber’s students stressed saying the right words or going through a list of demons’ names so as to find the specific one involved in the oppression. You go down the list until one name strikes home. This approach assumes an ipso facto God who can be coerced to do our bidding; if we do this, then he must do that.

Privatism. When the charismatic is pushed to the front of Christian experience, the ethical tends to take a back seat. It seems those most preoccupied with physical health and demonic realities tend to be the least interested in confronting these issues. But the ultimate goal of the Christian life is the fruit, not the gifts, of the Spirit. It is not that the Signs and Wonders people deny this; it is just that their emphasis on the gifts of the Spirit impedes the ripening of the fruit. Thus, while shattering moral questions face the church—racism, injustice, exploitation, world hunger, nuclear arms—its faith becomes private and narcissistic.

Failures. What do you do with the people who are not healed? This question was foremost in the minds of many of the faculty. Did Satan win one? If so, then Satan holds a commanding lead in the game, because the majority of people who are prayed for do not, in fact, get well physically. A subtle, but powerful, pressure therefore builds in the Signs and Wonders mentality to see miracles where there are none. Some faculty members were outraged at what they felt were wild, unsubstantiated reports of healings coming out of the meetings of MC510.

The controversies growing out of MC510 follow the same contours that have been there from the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in this country. What is new is the attempt of a relatively mainstream Christian institution like Fuller Seminary to incorporate a bit of primitive Pentecostalism. So far, the good folks at Fuller have fared about as well as could be expected.

Dispute

Few of Wimber’s critics deny the validity of healing, or doubt that it occurs through him. They simply assert that Wimber makes too much of it, putting it on a par with the proclamation of the Word of God. They also think Wimber is mistaken in believing that his gifts are available to any Christian; many see him as uniquely empowered for a healing ministry, but suggest that troubles begin when a raft of young followers insist on duplicating his success.

One Fuller professor suggests that the power of Wimber’s church is the excitement fueled by healing, not the renewal of hope for God’s coming kingdom: “It has established as its criteria evidences. It identifies Christ’s kingdom as that which overcomes sickness, overcomes evil. Where there is no overcoming of sickness, there is no kingdom. People are not coming to the Vineyard to be renewed in their hope for the future; they are coming for healing in the present.” The same professor speaks of “lottery Christianity” in which there must be a few big winners—spectacular healings—and many $10 winners—cured headaches—in order to attract a crowd. This is far from a theology of the Cross, he says.

Proponents of the Signs and Wonders movement vigorously dispute that assessment. Yet some see the danger. Signs and Wonders leader Don Williams talks about the possibility of making healing an end in itself: “Health is a preoccupation of our country. Does that mean health should be a preoccupation of our churches? Or is this a work of God? Luther said, what is the gospel today may be the law tomorrow.”

Knowledge

Typically, Wimber or one of his associates will say to a crowd, “God is telling me that someone here has a sore back. If you have that sore back, would you stand up and identify yourself so that we can pray for your healing?” This insight they call the “word of knowledge,” and it is just as significant to them as healing.

In Power Evangelism, Wimber describes the “divine appointment” as a key to effective evangelism: God gives a believer a message to be delivered to a particular person, and the astonishing, supernatural nature of the message often penetrates that person’s defenses. For instance, Wimber tells of seeing the word adultery printed on the face of a man he met on an airplane; then God gave him the name of the woman involved. The man was so shaken he was converted on the spot.

Hearing Wimber you may conclude that these messages are utterly outside normal human experience. But Wimber is talking about something close to the “inner impressions” that have long prompted people to say, “The Lord is leading me …” Wimber writes, “There is something very simple, almost childlike, about power evangelism. God gives impressions, and we act on them.” He believes that our post-Enlightenment Western world view makes us uniformly skeptical about God speaking to us through mental or visual impressions.

Some question whether Wimber is as expert in distinguishing the voice of the Spirit as he claims. Roberta Hestenes, a professor at Fuller, says she has heard Wimber claim virtual infallibility, but she knows of particular cases where his “word of the Lord” has been wrong.

Others are troubled by the authority the “word of the Lord” lends to a leader in front of a large group. Mel Roebeck, an Assemblies of God pastor who is the assistant dean of Fuller’s School of Theology, cites a comment made by Kenneth Hagin, a well-known charismatic leader: “Hagin says that in every city he travels to, a number of people will be waiting for him with a word of the Lord. But in all those years, Hagin says, only a few of those words have come true. That’s a devastating comment on the word of the Lord.”

Roebeck’s concern is for testing the message in the context of the whole church. Some worry that Wimber has no peers to hold him accountable; his church elders are all much younger than he.

Exorcism

After healing and words of knowledge, exorcism is an essential ingredient of the Signs and Wonders movement.

Don Williams says many pastors are blind to the chaos that has invaded our culture—“to the occult, to witchcraft, to the infiltration of Eastern religions, to what drugs are doing to a whole generation. They are living in a world that isn’t even our world. Since the sixties there has been a decisive shift not only in world view but in the experience of people. People on the street are in contact with personal evil every day.” To deal with such chaos on a strictly cognitive level is, he says, “just stupid.”

Controversy comes particularly with Wimber’s belief that Christians must sometimes be delivered from demons. There is no scriptural warrant for such a practice, some critics contend.

Wimber and his supporters respond that there is some evidence demonic powers can influence Christians—as Satan influenced Peter when he tried to convince Jesus to avoid the cross.

Says Williams, “The New Testament evidence is indefinite. On an experiential level, I have seen Christians delivered from demonic power, and the deliverance has absolutely changed their lives. I have seen alcoholics and cocaine addicts have the evil power expelled, and their compulsive addiction disappeared instantaneously.”

Normative?

Regent College theologian J. I. Packer asks, “In saying that ‘power evangelism’ is normative, do they realize they are saying that the evangelism of John Wesley, D. L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham is sub-biblical?”

Leaders of the Signs and Wonders movement understand this concern. Wimber, responding to his dispensationalist background, has catalogued miracles in the history of the church, to make clear that the so-called supernatural gifts have never disappeared. Indeed, the historical evidence is strong. But there is still a problem: While the Gospels and Acts are studded with the supernatural, accounts of the church since the second century are at best sporadically miraculous. Miracles could hardly be called the everyday experience of the Spirit.

Could it be, as some Pentecostals hold, that the remarkable spread of the Pentecostal movement throughout the world is a sign of the approaching end—a “latter rain” of the Spirit? Reformed theology, which has influenced John Wimber, would tend rather to stress the continuity of the kingdom through the ages. And so both John White and Don Williams, instead of emphasizing the newness of Signs and Wonders, emphasize the movement’s links to historical revivals—primarily Whitefield’s and Wesley’s, but also Luther’s, Francis of Assisi’s, and others.

This historical link opens up a broad range of the supernatural. Asked whether miraculous healings are normative, Williams responds, “The direct intervention of God in our lives is normative. There are different historical periods in which the work of the Holy Spirit differs. Most normative to the New Testament faith are the periods of great revival. In all these you find the outpourings of God’s Spirit, the regeneration of evangelism, and manifestations of demonic power.” Perhaps, speculates Williams, God is doing physical healings in our time as an accommodation to our health-oriented culture.

Seen this way, the underlying message of the Signs and Wonders movement to the evangelical church is “Get on your knees.” The Signs and Wonders movement would not merely add Pentecostal modes of ministry, but would attack a view of the church that has no expectation of God’s power above and beyond our technique. It would ask us to stop trying to manage God. It would ask us to take risks in order to experience an outpouring of the Spirit. Says John White, “The danger is not that you will be hooked up with something phony. The danger is that you will miss being with the movement of the Spirit.”

Dualism

More traditional evangelicals like J. I. Packer would urge the same dynamism but put the stress in a different place—partly because they see God’s supernatural power working mainly within natural processes rather than over and against them. Packer suggests that Wimber and his followers “are nearer to dualism than an old Calvinist like me. They think in terms of a practical dualism. ‘Satan is on the loose. Nevertheless it is the privilege of Christians to bind him.’ This is the way they believe we bring most honor to God and secure his benefit for our lives.

“I would honor God,” Packer continues, “by articulating the victory in another way. Christ enables us to be more than conquerors under pressure. We seek the strength to cope with divinely permitted circumstances. There are many of us for whom the role model is Joni Eareckson rather than John Wimber. We see the powers of the kingdom operating, but mainly in regeneration, sanctification, the Spirit as a comforter, the transformation of the inner life, rather than in physical miracles which just by happening prevent much of that other kingdom activity whereby people learn to live with their difficulties and glorify God.”

Signs and Wonders offers what the Pentecostal movement has offered generally, a challenge to experience, and not just talk about, God’s unmanageable presence. Its temptations are also those that have dogged Pentecostals—schism and spiritual elitism and supernatural showmanship eclipsing the gospel.

Bob Meye, dean of Fuller’s School of Theology, says the most disturbing aspect of the controversy at Fuller has been the tendency to identify the Holy Spirit with one person. He described his own upbringing in a Pentecostal family, where he agonized over his inability to speak in tongues. “It took me many years to realize that it doesn’t really matter. I have great respect and appreciation for the Christian heritage I received in the Pentecostal church. But overall, I would have to say that the Pentecostal church is no better, and no worse, than many other churches I have known. I would like to acknowledge that through all the centuries the church has been very flawed, and yet, at its best, it has been faithful to the Lord.”

Will the Signs and Wonders movement turn out to be, ultimately, just the latest trend from L.A.? Will it excite people for a few years, force incremental changes, and then fade into obscurity? Or will it turn out to be, as some expect, the source of a revolutionary revival? At this point, nobody can be sure.

However, one thing is sure: Signs and Wonders is part of a bigger Pentecostal movement that is changing the church worldwide. Noncharismatic evangelicals are trying to come to terms with this movement, and in a less dramatic way, the Pentecostal movement is trying to come to terms with the wider church.

Signs and Wonders, like its parent movement, carries a surge of evangelism, of praise, of expectation of the Spirit’s power. It reopens forgotten modes of ministry. John Wimber challenges the evangelical church not to live by its techniques and its programs, but by the Spirit—not to harden in its expectations of the way God ought to act, but to become open to the surprising works of God.

John Wimber challenges us not to box God in. His critics would bring the same challenge to him.

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