By Rev. Dr. Ed & Janice Hird
John Wimber
came to Christ in 1963 at age 29 as a self-proclaimed chain-smoking,
beer-guzzling, drug abuser. Because his father abandoned him the day he was
born, John didn’t know how to be a good father.
His marriage was nearly over. He
described himself as a fourth-generation pagan/unbeliever who had never heard
the gospel. As a gifted entrepreneur, he
owned and operated sixty-one businesses during his sixty-three years on earth. As manager and pianist for the Righteous
Brothers band who toured with the Beatles, he was at the top of his musical
career, playing twenty different instruments.
He heard the Lord tell him to give up his musical career. So, he went
from a $100,000 per year to a $7,000 per year as a carpenter’s helper, cleaning
out oil tanks. John humorously called this time his purgatory: “I was
humbled. I used to be pretty mouthy and
sure of myself…I was used to pretty much calling my own shots…God was teaching
me obedience.” As rebellion was very
deep in John’s baby-boomer heart, God never stopped working on that lesson in
John’s life:
Again and again and again, He taught us
obedience, obedience, obedience, obedience, that he valued obedience above all
things, and he wanted relationship with us, and he wanted our dependence upon
Him.”
With his
gift of the gab, John became a salesman for a collection agency in Los Angeles,
California. Everywhere he went, he shared the gospel. People affectionately described him as a cross
between Kenny Rogers and Santa Claus. Others
saw him as a warm teddy bear. He was relaxed and playful with a winning
smile. John, who personally led
thousands to Jesus, said that during the Jesus movement, you could sneeze and
lead someone to Christ. While trying to
fix a leaking water faucet, John had a life-changing vision:
I looked up at the sky and it was like fire
falling, so real to me that I rolled thinking that I don’t want it to hit my
face. Then suddenly I was in some sort
of state where I could see it exploding in the air all across Southern
California, and then a fireball going across the ocean, hitting London and
exploding over Europe, and then gathering again and going into Asia and
Africa…I went to London four times in the 1970s and didn’t see any revival.
Becoming an
evangelical Quaker pastor at Yorba Linda Friends Church, he soon had the
largest Quaker congregation in North America.
By 1974, he was approaching burnout, and resigned from pastoral ministry.
After his enrolling in the Doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary, Dr.
Peter Wagner recruited him to be the Founding Director of the Fuller Department
of Church Growth. While visiting 2,000
different churches of various denominations, he heard returning missionaries’ amazing
stories of church growth, miracles and casting out demons. He taught classes for many years at Fuller
Seminary, most notably a course in the early 80s called “Signs, Wonders, and
Church Growth” which had over 800 registrants, the largest in Fuller’s history.
After John
Wimber had a Holy Spirit encounter, he was graciously released from the
Quakers, and planted Yorba Linda Calvary Chapel in 1977. He had a passion to not just read in the
bible about the healing ministry but also to participate in it. For almost a year, Wimber and his
congregation prayed for the sick with no one being healed. Many left his congregation. Finally, healings began to take place. John taught that everyone gets to play, that
the work of the Kingdom breaking in is for all Christians, not just for the
ordained. He loved to say, ‘If I can do it, you can do it. Look at me, I’m just
a fat man trying to get to heaven.’ John gave people permission to fail. He never hyped people up, but rather just
obeyed the Lord. John spelt Faith as R.I.S.K.: “Becoming a disciple is
committing yourself to risk-taking the rest of your life, just always having to
take chances.”
On Mother’s
Day 1980, he invited Lonnie Frisbee to preach at his church. Lonnie was a key Jesus movement founder with
Calvary Chapel. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit that day brought tremendous
church growth, and resulted in John becoming the leader of the Vineyard movement
in 1982. The Vineyards were originally started in the homes of Christian
musicians Larry Norman and Chuck Girard, which attracted fellow musicians Bob
Dylan, Debbie Boon, Priscilla Presley, and Keith Green. It was no wonder that Vineyard music focusing
on intimacy with God swept around the world.
Because
John believed that church planting is the best form of evangelism, he pioneered
the planting of twenty-five hundred Vineyards in North America and in over
ninety nations. In the first ten years,
the Vineyard grew at about 1100%. Wimber’s
stated desire as a gifted organizer was to leave a movement behind him like John
Wesley did, not just leave converts like George Whitefield. He began leading healing
and renewal conferences throughout the world to hundreds of thousands of
delegates. Just like with DL Moody and Billy Graham, his greatest breakthrough
happened in England:
When I was invited by (the Rev Canon) David
Watson to go to London in 1981, I said okay but didn’t expect much of it. I had completely forgotten about the (earlier)
vision. …When I arrived in London at
Gatwick Airport, it was like I had a hand hit my head and knock me flat on my
face. As I went down, I heard in my mind
‘this is that which I have spoken to you about.’ The next two weeks were incredible.
Bishop
David Pytches and Rev Sandy Millar of Holy Trinity Brompton, both commented
that John Wimber had a greater impact on the Church of England (Anglican)
than anyone since John Wesley. While John led the Vineyard, he loved the entire
Body of Christ.
I (Ed) was
privileged to attend with 2,500 other people a life-changing five-day
Conference with John Wimber, co-sponsored with Regent College, that was held at
Burnaby Christian Fellowship. Sadly
John’s health began to suffer. "All
my life," Wimber admitted, "I have been a compulsive person, always
working and eating more than I should." His travel schedule of more than
forty weeks a year gave him a heart attack in 1986. This was followed by sinus
cancer in 1993, and a stroke in 1995. Many of us missed John Wimber when he
died from a brain hemorrhage in 1997.
Though John
is gone, the power of the Holy Spirit to heal and renew is still available for
all today who are willing to obediently risk.
John taught that a power encounter is only as far away as this prayer:
“Holy Spirit, I open my heart, my innermost-being to you. I turn from my sin
and self-sufficiency and ask that you fill me with your love, power, and gifts.
Come, Holy Spirit”.
Rev. Dr. Ed
and Janice Hird, Co-authors of the new Blue Sky novel
-previously published in the Light Magazine
