Onward, Forward, Toward…

I received a link to this webpage from a friend of mine and as I read the title, I realized something

It Has Been Ten Years Since John Wimber Died

I remember when I received the e-mail stating that he had died of the massive brain hemorrhage. As I looked back now, I remember Wimber as being like the ’spiritual scientist’ whose experiments had great intentions that started out well but unfortunately turned in to ‘monsters and explosions’ (IT’S ALIVE!!!) in the end that have plagued the movement as a whole (Kansas City Prophets, Toronto Blessing, and others).

What started out as a home group in California grew into a church that took off in leaps and bounds in the late 1980s. Then we saw the famous books of Power Evangelism, Power Healing, etc. Next came Vineyard Music Group and also the famous “Signs and Wonders” conferences.

Then the monsters and explosions came and today, we see the result of those monsters bring forth movements in the form of IHOP, Elijah List, Partners In Harvest, and others.

But looking back, it appears that the day Wimber died was also the day that The Vineyard Movement as a whole went into a deep state of ‘roaming in the wilderness’ that friends in Vineyard Churches tell me seems to be still present to this day. After dealing with the Kansas City Prophets (and their leaving) and The Toronto Blessing (and their explusion from the Vineyard), the Vineyard got ‘lost’ without a sense of direction and the death of Wimber (that many TB diehards claim was God’s wrath due to Wimber expelling them out of the Vineyard) made the movement more ‘lost’ and feeling like a long roam in the wilderness. Some churches eventually left the Vineyard while others went more conservative and some went ‘out there’ and some (like the one I used to attend) tried to recreate the ‘new Jesus Freak’ movement while some went deep into the Saddleback mentality.

This eccletic mix led to a truthful observation of:

‘You never know what to expect at a Vineyard church because Vineyard churches are so different from the one in the next town.’

Is the Vineyard still roaming today???

Wimber’s legacy will be eternally debated by Christians and religious scholars alike. Some see him as the ‘revolutionary new-era reformer’. Some (like me) see him as the man of noble and pure intent whose ‘evangelical experiements’ went haywire. Some see him has the man like Eli in the Old Testament who could lead but could not bring back into correction the children (’splinter factions’) birthed from the Vineyard seed. Some see him as the forerunner of ‘rebellion’ that took the ‘rebellion’ of the Jesus Freak movement into a new era. While some see him as ‘heretic’ and some see him as ‘traitor’ because of what happened in Toronto.

I no longer attend a Vineyard Church instead going onward, forward, and toward via me attending a Evangelical Presbyterian church that tries to balance out the Reformed doctrine with the move of the Holy Spirit. But no matter where you go, the influence of Wimber is still slightly present whether it’s the ‘different way’ of ‘doin the stuff’ or singing praise choruses that the copyright text at the bottom of the projected screen says Vineyard / Wimber.