Chapter 29
Vineyard Christian Fellowship
After John Wimber (1934-1997) stopped working as a music arranger for the Righteous Brothers rock group and became a pastor, he started leading a small prayer group, preaching from the gospel of Luke about healing the sick and casting out demons.
But for ten months in 1977 the fledgling church repeatedly prayed over the sick without seeing one person healed or a single demon expelled. Many people left in disgust. Wimber himself was about to give up when he was asked to pray at the bedside of a young woman with a high fever. When the woman jumped up, apparently cured, Wimber was slow to realize what had happened. In fact, he was halfway to his car before it dawned on him.
Then, at the top of his voice, he yelled, "We got one!"1
That experience galvanized Wimber's convictions that the spiritual gifts of healing, speaking in tongues, and "words of knowledge and prophecy" were still relevant and that he could defeat Satan, sin, and sickness with the ultimate power of God.
A trickle of reported healings became a flood, and in Southern California's fertile religious soil — already famous for innovative and
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entrepreneurial church leadership — John Wimber's Vineyard Christian Fellowship took root as the latest "boom church."
The Vineyard's origins hark back to the hippie-era "Jesus People" movement. Chuck Smith helped launch the Jesus People in the late 1960s and 1970s through his chain of Calvary Chapels, starting in Costa Mesa. But Wimber's emphasis seems to reach a different stratum: younger believers who want to wed an orthodox, Bible-believing faith with immediate and palpable spiritual power and emotional experience.
The Vineyard in Anaheim has grown to 6,000. A network of Vineyard churches with about 100,000 followers — most of them baby boomers — stretches across the nation and overseas. And thousands attend Wimber's conferences on worship, healing, and prophecy held around the world.
The Vineyard story underscores the findings of church growth experts: More and more Americans are reaching outside the traditional, established denominations to find spiritual identification.
"I was into organized religion most of my life — Presbyterian and Evangelical Free churches," said Sandy Younger, who has been attending the Anaheim Vineyard since 1986. "But something was always lacking until I heard John preach. It was so different, so down to earth."
A high percentage of the nation's fastest-growing congregations are either independent or affiliated with new and loosely formed movements. These include Vineyard Ministries International and Calvary Chapels. By 1991 more than 500 Vineyards had sprouted, and churches affiliated with Calvary Chapels numbered 418.2
Movements like these will be the new denominations of the new millennium.
Undisputed Ministry Mogul
With the reddish-white beard and rugged features of a Kenny Rogers and the physique and twinkling eyes of a Santa Claus, Wimber is the undisputed mogul of what has come to be known as the "signs and wonders" ministry. To him, it's all very simple: A new wave of supernatural power is rolling in, and it is based on the Bible message
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that Jesus' followers would see "signs and wonders" from the Holy Spirit certifying Christ's ministry and resurrection.
The cutting edge of the Vineyard, says Todd Hunter, executive pastor of the Anaheim congregation, is that "ordinary Christians can be used by God to do extraordinary things."
So extraordinary, it seems, that Wimber has been accused of fostering excessive emotionalism and anti-intellectualism and of misinterpreting Scripture. But he waves aside skepticism, saying his critics rarely consult him about their accusations.
"I don't have time to refute all that anyway," he told me during a break at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica, where he periodically goes to shed pounds and shuck stress.3
Wimber's friend, C. Peter Wagner, a diminutive dynamo who teaches church growth at Fuller Seminary, says the controversial signs-and-wonders phenomenon is the "third wave" of evangelical Christian renewal to occur this century. The first wave was the rise of Pentecostalism, the movement that sprang up in the early 1900s among churchgoers who were below average in wealth and education. It emphasized the baptism of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues.
The second wave was the growth of the charismatic renewal movement that burgeoned among Protestant mainliners and Catholics in the 1960s and 1970s as they adopted spiritual healing and other Pentecostal practices into their churches.4
The third wave, according to Wagner and others, emphasizes the kind of supernatural manifestations that appeal to fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals. Until recently, these Christians tended to deny modern-day faith healings and regarded prophetic "gifts" as theologically suspect.
Wimber's classical theology, informal and praise-centered worship style, and aggressive evangelism strategies "represent an interesting and effective synthesis of the evangelical and the charismatic," according to a study done by Robin D. Perrin of Seattle Pacific University and Armand L. Mauss of Washington State University.
The two sociologists reported in 1989 that the great majority of Vineyard recruits who listed a denominational background had been reared in mainline Protestant or Catholic homes. More recent Vineyard recruits, however, had left their liberal religious upbringing
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and had been "circulating" among the conservative denominations. Only 13 percent indicated that the Vineyard was the first church they attended after becoming a Christian.5 Thus, there are more "switchers" than converts.
"John began to draw into the Vineyard the boomers of the late '70s," Wagner said. "Many were in their teens . . . The median age was 19." Ten years later, the average age was 10 years older. And Wimber, in 1991, was 57. Vineyard congregations are composed mainly of middle- and working-class people.
"John is one of the very few pastors to say publicly that the Vineyard is a one-generation church," Wagner told me, adding: "The even-younger generation . . . may need a new church yet" because Vineyard is "too established" for them.
(On the other hand, perhaps they'll want something more structured and formal, even liturgical.)
A perplexing question for the churches of the coming century: Will future congregations tend to center on the particular life issues of a single generation?6 Will churches be stratified by age? If so, how does this relate to the biblical concept of the larger family of God?
Presbyterian minister Dick Spencer, an outside observer of the Vineyard movement, worries that its one-generation appeal may lead to peer-group isolation. "When clues to identification and behavior are closely followed from one another, the movement may turn out in the end to become conformist in dress, worship, and theology," Spencer said.7
I see signs that's beginning to happen. Sacrificing the richness of an intergenerational mix would be a disturbing trend.
Praising God — Earnestly and Casually
Wimber and his Vineyards hardly reflect traditional church patterns. At the Anaheim Vineyard, nearly 4,000 worshipers jam into a boxy, flat building — formerly a Pacific Stereo warehouse — for two Sunday services, morning and evening. The crowd, casually dressed and most carrying Bibles, sits on folding chairs under long rows of florescent lights. Heat ducts and fire sprinklers hang beneath the low, brown ceiling.
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"If you see a man wearing a tie or a woman a dress, they're probably visitors," quipped Kevin Springer, Wimber's publication director.
The focus of attention is a stage on one side of the square room, where youthful musicians play guitars, drums, and a keyboard to lead a nonstop forty-five-minute medley of congregational singing. There are no songbooks; the lyrics are projected on the front walls. Like Bill Hybels's Willow Creek Community Church, there is no altar, organ, cross, or other religious trappings. This setting is typical at the other Vineyards as well.
Many of the worshipers raise their arms, praising God earnestly as they sing the easy, repetitious melodies. Most songs have been composed by Vineyard members and extol spiritual empowerment and an intimate relationship with Jesus. A few worshipers kneel along the back wall with their heads in their hands, or touch their foreheads to the floor. A young woman, barefoot, gracefully dances to the music.
Although there are seventy Vineyard congregations in Southern California alone, this congregation is special because Wimber preaches here. In fact, he draws folks from other denominations, too: the evening I was there a van-load arrived from Bethany Chinese Presbyterian Church.
Wimber is on stage now; security personnel with earphones and walkie-talkies have cleared the aisles. The band sits back, and Wimber, standing behind a small wooden lectern, takes the mike.
If you expect a Pentecostal fireball delivery, you'll be disappointed. Wimber, dressed in cream-colored slacks and a print sport shirt, is talking about tonight's special offering for the poor and homeless. No emotion. No big pitch. Wimber weaves together a tapestry of Bible verses to make his case. Later it's announced that the day's contributions for this project total $180,000. That's on top of the $70,000 that comes in each week to run the church.
Wimber doesn't preach the "health and wealth" gospel — some have dubbed it "name it and claim it" or "blab it and grab it" theology — that makes God a convenient money genie: give a dollar to the Lord and he'll give you two.
Nor do the Wimbers live ostentatiously; their neatly kept ranch house in Yorba Linda and moderately priced cars bespeak middle
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class. Wimber's $80,000 combined salary and housing allowance are drawn from about $260,000 in annual royalties generated from sales of his many books and tapes. The balance goes to the Vineyard.
"I want a reward in heaven, not here," exclaims Wimber, drawing applause during his fifty-minute sermon.
A Vineyard regular who knew I was a newspaper reporter nudged me in the ribs during the offering and said, "He doesn't wear a Rolex either."
Working in the Vineyard
Although the Vineyard staples are ecstatic worship, prophecies, supernatural healing, and "deliverance from demon activity," Wimber and his twelve-pastor staff also take social action seriously. But the emphasis is far different from that of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena!
The Anaheim Vineyard has been the meeting place and staging ground for Operation Rescue rallies and demonstrations against abortion. And staffer Monte Whitaker spearheads the Vineyard's benevolence arm, which distributes food and clothing to the area's needy and puts on a Saturday lunch and Bible service for about 300 transients and their children from the predominantly Latino neighborhood.
In the second quarter of 1990, Whitaker said, the Anaheim Vineyard provided 235,562 meals, handed out 17,163 pieces of clothing, and supplied 15,214 other items such as furniture and blankets.
Next door to the Anaheim Vineyard's bustling book, tape, and music store and a burgeoning mail-order department are the offices of Vineyard Ministries International. This division, among other things, coordinates prison ministries at twenty-five facilities throughout the state.
"We conduct worship services and do concerts and counseling," said Crystal Lee, who heads the prison ministry staff. "And Vineyard couples volunteer to be temporary foster parents to infants born to mothers while they are incarcerated."
Still another Vineyard-related work is Desert Stream, a Santa Monica
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ministry to AIDS patients and homosexuals to help them overcome "expressions of sexual sin and brokenness."
Wimber claims he is often able to discern sexual sin through supernatural means. Once, for example, he saw the word "adultery" written across the face of a passenger opposite him on an airplane. "The letters, of course, were only perceptible to spiritual eyes," Wimber recalled, adding that a woman's name "came clearly to my mind."
Wimber confronted the man and told him God said he would "take him if he did not cease." According to Wimber, the man "melted on the spot and asked what he should do." Wimber led the man in a prayer of repentance, and he "received Christ" in front of a shocked stewardess and several passengers, who began to cry.
While Wimber is quick to admit that "only a few" of the people he prays for are healed of physical ailments and that "I am alive today because of the medical profession," he and Wagner launched a course at Fuller Seminary in 1982 that included an optional "laboratory" in divine healing. MC510, the class known as "Signs and Wonders," was the most popular course ever at Fuller — until a theological ruckus among faculty and trustees shut it down for a year in 1986.
How to explain why not all people are healed was foremost in the minds of many of the Fuller faculty, Presbyterian pastor Ben Patterson wrote in Christianity Today magazine. "Did Satan win one?" Patterson asked. "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 Sings and Wonders mentality to see miracles where there are none."8
After an evaluation, the class was reinstated, with Wimber taking a less prominent role. And Fuller officials released a 100-page report that urged caution in claiming miracle cures and attempting exorcisms of "evil spirits." In order to avoid "pious deception . . . the minister who engages in healing should publicize his or her failures as loudly as the successes," the report said, adding that "chronicles of healings should include failed attempts to heal, prayers for healing that were answered in death, apparent healings of people who soon relapsed into the disease from which they were healed — all of this alongside of the grateful reports of success."9
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Roots of the Vineyard
Wimber was dramatically converted to Christianity at the age of twenty-nine from a show-biz, rock 'n' roll background. After completing three years of biblical study at Azusa Pacific University in 1970, he served as co-pastor of a Quaker church in Yorba Linda.
In 1977 he began shepherding the little home group that his wife, Carol, who had become a charismatic, had started. Soon he was preaching from Luke on signs and wonders. Then, after the feverish woman jumped from her sickbed, the Vineyard movement shot straight up as well.
The Vineyard movement got its start as part of Calvary Chapels. Kenn Gulliksen, a well-known Jesus movement pastor who had worked with Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith, established a home church in West Los Angeles in 1974.
"We called it the Vineyard," said Gulliksen, who now works with Wimber.10 "Then we met for a year at Lifeguard Station No. 15 on the beach in Santa Monica. The third-graders gathered [for Sunday school] at trash can No. 3. We had the tannest church in the country! We were part of the Calvary Chapel movement then and were starting new churches out of Bible study groups so fast it was like unplanned parenthood."
Gulliksen and Wimber met in 1979 and became close friends. Three years later the two were pursuing the signs and wonders movement and the "gifts of the Spirit" — but more vigorously than Chuck Smith liked. After a meeting of Calvary Chapel leaders, Wimber's group was asked to join forces with Gulliksen's Vineyards and drop the Calvary Chapel connection. Some Calvary churches also switched over and later the Vineyard Christian Fellowship was formed.
Vineyard congregations typically multiply in one of two ways: An established Vineyard pastor and a cadre of his leaders select a new area and begin Bible studies and evangelistic meetings. Or an existing congregation petitions to be "adopted." One congregation that recently linked officially with Vineyard — after a year's probation under Wimber's supervision — was the 3,000-member Kansas City Fellowship.
Church adoptions are in fact a major way these new movements
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of the 1990s are growing. In this sense, the new denominations will become the future "adoption agencies" for independent evangelical and charismatic churches that seek broader institutional identity.11 They'll also become "foster parents" for congregational runaways who "can't take it anymore" when they feel the denominational family that nurtured them has drifted too far to the left.
By the early 1990s, the Vineyard movement was showing signs of becoming a denomination. It had trademarked its name, ordained about 500 men, licensed two or three women to preach (Wimber doesn't approve of women's ordination), and appointed regional and area pastoral coordinators. About 200 new pastors were to plant churches between 1991 and 1993.
In early 1991 Wimber purchased fifteen acres of prime Orange County real estate for a new headquarters, a "renewal center," and the county's largest sanctuary, which he said will have more seats than Robert Schuller's cavernous Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. The property, valued at $45 million 1987, was obtained for about $20 million, Kevin Springer said.12
All of this growth has not come without some pain.
"We have fast growth, young pastors, and it's hard to develop structures to care for new members," assessed Springer, who edits Equipping the Saints, the Vineyard's slick quarterly magazine that has a circulation of 6,500. "People get lost in the crowd," he added, sounding very much like an executive of a budding denomination.13
Short Fuse or Tall Flame?
One burning question the new denominations must resolve is that of uniform training for pastors. No central school or Vineyard seminary exists, so which congregations and which ministers are accepted is pretty much up to Wimber's whims.
"I wield a lot of authority in the movement," Wimber acknowledges. "But I take instruction and counsel well."
So far, the Vineyard has avoided being trampled with major scandal, and Wimber, who seems to have gained wide respect, is clearly in control, keeping tabs on his staff and what they teach.
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"I trust Wimber and the movement," said Charles Kraft, a professor at Fuller's School of World Mission who helps lead the "Signs and Wonders" class. "But there are a lot of very young people involved . . . It's in its adolescence."
As movements like the Vineyard and Calvary Chapels enter the 21st century, the inevitable challenge will be: What happens when their charismatic and visionary founders pass on?
Les Parrott and Robin Perrin offer the following analysis of these new denominations: "On the one hand, their followers have been drawn by the anti-institutional, back-to-the-Bible fervor of their charismatic founders. On the other hand, the absence of institutionalization and structure leaves them with little to hold these movements together when the charismatic founders are gone."
Parrot and Perrin think the catch will be that the need for organization in the next decade will bring a decline in the emotional and spiritual fervor that fueled these movements: "The longer they burn, the smaller their flame."14
"What if Wimber should die?" I asked Jack Deere, Vineyard's international minister.
"Most of us think the movement would disintegrate," replied Deere, who was fired from the faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary in 1987 when he refused to renounce his identification with Wimber's beliefs. "There would be no force to hold it together; he's the cohesiveness, the central figure."
I tend to think that while the flame may sputter, it won't go out. Enough solid cohorts will keep it burning. But we'll have to wait at least till 2001 to know if John Wimber is a John Wesley.15
