Vision is the Key

For John Wimber, Christian leadership begins with receiving God’s vision for ministry. Behind this is his own sense of call. Early in his Christian life, he decided that it was “all or nothing.” “I’m a fool for Christ, whose fool are you?” With this radical commitment, he gave up his career in music, followed the example of his friend Gunner Payne in evangelizing, and waited for God’s direction in his life. Carol Wimber writes, “What I find interesting is that he [John] didn’t lay down his career for something else. He laid it down because Jesus asked him to and there was no promise of ‘ministry in the future’ to soften the decision. It was a sacrifice born of obedience, and that is a key to understanding what motivated John Wimber his whole Christian life.”

God’s vision clearly came in stages, but it came. John was always a prophetic person, a person who had “hunches” from God. Never able to accommodate himself long term to the institutional church as it was, and never able to accommodate himself to the Enlightenment worldview which relegated “doin’ the stuff” [Wimber’s phrase for doing Jesus’ ministry] to the past, John helped build a significant Quaker church only to leave it. His wife Carol comments: “Though we loved that little church the way a drowning man would love the boat that he was hauled into, John and I would dream of a church that was designed just for us, the way we like it. No theatrics. Nothing staged. Our kind of music. Songs about Jesus. Casual and simple. Unpretentious and culturally current. Non-religious and transparent and honest. A ‘come-as-you-are’ gathering, where anyone would fit in, where one wouldn’t have to ‘dress up’ to go to church. Where the leader doesn’t look any different than the rest of the people.”

In the process of receiving God’s vision for ministry, John widened his understanding of the church through consulting with hundred’s of congregations through the Fuller Seminary’s “Institute for Church Growth.” This exposure not only made him an expert in the field, it also gave him a love for the whole church. His influence greatly extended over the church, nationally and internationally in coming years. John was welcomed by Anglican and New Church Leaders in England because he posed no threat to established congregations. He came not to criticize them, but to help and bless them. The result? Bishop David Pytchis said that he was the most influential leader in England since John Wesley..

God’s vision for John’s ministry came through a weeping prophet. In her tears John heard Jesus weeping over him and his ministry. It came through the word, “I’ve seen your ministry and now, I’m going to show you mine.” It came through the question, “God wants to know when you are going to use your authority?” It came in the prophetic word of Jesus, “Give me back my church.” It came in John’s desire to have a church which he would want to attend himself. It came through the call to go home and pastor a remnant from the Quakers in Yorba Linda.

John was a leader because he was led by a vision for what the church could become if it resubmitted and surrendered to Jesus as its head. This is important, because John’s vision for ministry did not come through involvement in church planning, consultation, or strategic growth principles. John did not get his vision from Fuller Seminary or his travels. He got his vision from the Lord. It was spoken into his life. A vision which John had of dripping honeycomb, the grace of God welcomed by some, rejected by others, prepared him for the years of success and suffering in restoring Kingdom ministry of healing and deliverance to the church.

Application

First, John’s ministry was prophetically driven. To follow John, therefore, our ministry is to be prophetically driven. We must hear from God. Second, God’s vision for John’s ministry came over the years, little by little. Biblical revelation is progressive. Personal revelation to John was progressive. This is important because John had an interactive friendship and companionship with Jesus. He had, in his words, a “secret history with God.” We too must expect God to speak to us over the years. As we listen, little by little, the pieces of what the Lord wants for us to be will fall into place. We should therefore live with a growing intimacy with Jesus and a high expectation that He will show us more when the time is right. But we must go with what we have. Disobedience here ends the discussion. Faithful over little; faithful over much.

A dramatic instance of moment by moment leading for the Vineyard was when John called all the pastors together in the latter ‘80’s to turn the Vineyard from a movement into a denomination, with clear polity and structure. All was proceeding as planned through the conference until, in a dramatic moment, John stopped the process, announcing that he had heard from the Lord not to continue. What could have resulted in the “routinization of charisma” (Weber), the ending of freedom for the move of the Spirit and the renewal of the church, didn’t. Once this was spoken to John, the Vineyard entered into the whole prophetic period instead, a remarkable shift in direction (for better or for worse, and probably both).

Wimber received God’s vision for ministry and he gave that vision to others. This was central to his leadership. He was to equip the saints for ministry. Carol Wimber offers this example, “Again and again, over the years, I’ve heard men testify to that same [vision] thing that John did to them. That holy assumption. Lance Pittluck tells of when he first went to the East Coast to plant a church and things weren’t going well. Not even a kinship group yet and he was feeling pretty discouraged when John came to see him. They were walking around the block and John was telling him how to help all the new churches that would be started, and how to give counsel to the young pastors who would need help, and how the function of a bishop facilitates growth, and he went on like that. He believed it would happen just that way, and it did. I don’t mean any ‘rah, rah’, pumping-you-up kind of talk; I mean the assumption that you will do what needs to be done and not give up, and the confidence in you, that you are able to accomplish the task, whatever it takes.

“He wasn’t very sensitive, in the way of an awareness of what others were feeling or thinking, and I think that was good. He didn’t struggle with fears about his own ability or the ability of others, and part of what made him a powerful leader was his ignorance of any other perspective. He wasn’t even aware of the fears most of us have about ourselves, and we were glad to give up our thoughts on the subject, in exchange for his, anyhow.”

Wimber became a significant leader, not only because he received God’s vision(s), but also because he tenaciously committed himself to obeying what he received. John worked tirelessly. He expended himself and his considerable gifts for the sake of his vision. His obedience was moral; he kept a short list of sins, regularly and publicly confessed. Carol Wimber writes, “When he sinned he would confess it to me or to Bob [Fulton, his brother-in-law] (sometimes to the whole congregation, much to my embarrassment!). He believed that if he immediately confessed even the temptation, he was ensuring he wouldn’t give into it. It seemed to work for him over the years.”

His obedience was risky; he preached on healing and prayed for the sick until something happened (much to the dismay of others). His obedience was biblical. When the Spirit fell in Anaheim, John stayed up all night searching the Scriptures and church history to get a fix on what happened. The next week he spoke to his critical staff. Carol reports, “…he removed his glasses and leaned forward and spoke very softly, but very clearly, ‘I understand how you feel. What happened last night may result in people leaving, but there is something you need to understand about me if we are to continue to work together. If ever there is a choice between the smart thing to do and the move of the Holy Spirit, I will always land on the side of the Spirit. You need to know that.’ It was a defining moment in the Vineyard and it’s etched indelibly in my memory.”

His obedience was corporate. John submitted to a circle of friends and family, starting with his wife Carol. She writes, “Whatever it is in a person that makes it possible to rationalize the voice of God to make God say what you want to hear – he didn’t have that mechanism in him. He always obeyed God. I wish I could shout that from the rooftops, ‘He always obeyed God.’”

While John’s obedience was risky, it was not impulsive. Again Carol writes, “He didn’t jump into things without thinking it over for a long time. I would often get impatient with the process and wonder why he was being so slow to act. The difference was, he could see way ahead and was counting the cost. He wasn’t a spontaneous or impulsive decision-maker, knowing we would all have to live with the results, but once the decision was made, he would stand by it no matter what the hassle, as long as he believed it was God’s direction. When he became convinced that he had been mistaken – which he did on a few occasions – he would take full responsibility and apologize all over the world.”

I want to identify one aspect of Wimber’s leadership with respect to the poor. During his consulting years, John was a part of a large multi-regional meeting of the Church of God in the south. An old evangelist spoke to the gathering in a voice used up with age. He called the people to remember where they had come from; to not forget the poor. They were called to clothe the naked, visit the sick and bring them food. But they had left their call, their first love, and now they were driving fancy cars and dressing up like the world, building fine monuments to themselves while all the time the poor, whom they had been called to, were left destitute. As John listened, he felt the power of the Spirit. Carol relates, “John described how the people would bend with that power and moan with the weight of conviction of sin, and as the evangelist continued on, unrelenting, they would sway in the opposite direction, all together as one person – like wind over a field of wheat. John said it was the most powerful thing he had ever been a part of, and as he was telling me about it, he was weeping. ‘Carol, if God ever has me pastor a church again, I pray we will devote ourselves to the poor.’ As he wept and described the meeting to me, I felt as though I had been there with him. He had been up all night reading Isaiah 58, the true fast, and he was under a heavy conviction in respect to the poor. As he was telling me about it, he just started praying right then on the phone, committing himself to God’s heart for the poor and weeping the whole time.”

In terms of application, obedience must become our natural reaction to the vision, voice, and direction of God. This obedience may mean standing with the messiness of the Holy Spirit falling in our church. This obedience may mean forgoing things for ourselves and our church so that we do not lose our focus and credibility in ministry to the poor, the addicted, the outcasts, the undesirable, the illegal, the lost. Without obedience, Wimber would never have been a real leader. His method of ministry was “tell and show.” But he had to show it through his life first, and he did so. Carol says that John described himself as just change in the Lord’s pocket to be spent as He wills. As others have said, he played before an audience of One.

Three weeks before John died, he told Blaine Cook, “I’ve done everything the Lord wants me to do and I’m through.” Lets pray for each other, our churches and ourselves that we will depart in the same way. As Dallas Willard says, “Eternity is in flight and we with it.”