The Vineyard occupies an unusual place in modern Christianity because it combines several traditions that haven’t always been comfortable with one another. It is thoroughly evangelical in its emphasis on Scripture, conversion and the gospel, but it is also thoroughly charismatic in its expectation that the supernatural gifts described in the New Testament remain available to Christians today. At the same time, Vineyard churches generally don’t resemble classical Pentecostal churches, and the movement has never taught that speaking in tongues is the necessary evidence that someone has been baptized or empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The movement became closely identified with John Wimber, a former musician and church-growth consultant who became convinced that Christians shouldn’t merely read about healing, prophecy and supernatural ministry in the New Testament as though they belonged to another age. If Jesus trained his disciples to proclaim the Kingdom, pray for the sick, confront demonic oppression and depend upon the power of the Holy Spirit, Wimber couldn’t understand why the modern church should expect to do something fundamentally different. He eventually summarized that conviction in language considerably less sophisticated than most theologians would have chosen. He wanted Christians to “do the stuff.”

That simple idea became one of the foundations of the Vineyard.

John Wimber

Wimber was born in 1934 and didn’t grow up as a particularly religious person. He became a professional musician and was involved with the group that became The Righteous Brothers during its early years, although he left the music business before the group achieved its greatest fame. His conversion to Christianity in the 1960s radically changed the direction of his life, and he eventually became associated with the Quakers and entered pastoral ministry.

He later worked with the Fuller Evangelistic Association and the Fuller Institute of Church Growth, which exposed him to churches and Christian movements from around the world. He became interested in evangelism, church growth and the practical question of why some churches seemed effective at reaching people while others didn’t. But another question gradually became more important. The Christianity Wimber encountered in the book of Acts seemed filled with an expectation that God would actually intervene in people’s lives, while much of the evangelical Christianity around him seemed content to explain why Christians shouldn’t expect those things anymore.

Wimber wasn’t satisfied with that explanation. He believed Scripture should determine the church’s expectations rather than the church’s experience determining how it interpreted Scripture. If the New Testament presented healing, prophecy and other spiritual gifts as part of Christian ministry, he believed Christians should at least be willing to ask whether those things were still available.

Where’s the Stuff?

One of the stories associated with Wimber’s early Christian life captures his personality and theology particularly well. After reading the Gospels and Acts, with their repeated accounts of healing, deliverance and supernatural ministry, he reportedly asked another Christian when they were going to “do the stuff.” By “the stuff,” Wimber meant the things Jesus and his disciples actually did.

The question sounds almost childish, but there was a serious theological issue behind it. Wimber had been told that Christians should model their lives on the New Testament, yet some of the most obvious features of New Testament ministry had effectively disappeared from the Christianity he encountered. Evangelicals preached the same gospel, studied the same apostles and affirmed the same Scriptures, but many believed the supernatural gifts associated with the apostles no longer operated in the church.

Wimber eventually concluded that Christians should expect the Holy Spirit to work supernaturally while refusing to pretend that they could control what God did. That distinction became extremely important. Vineyard theology wouldn’t promise that every sick person would be healed or every prayer would produce a visible miracle, but neither would it use unanswered prayer as a reason to stop praying.

From Calvary Chapel to Vineyard

Wimber’s congregation in Southern California became associated with Calvary Chapel during the late 1970s, which made sense because Calvary Chapel already occupied a middle ground between traditional evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. Chuck Smith believed the gifts of the Holy Spirit continued, but he was cautious about emotional excess and wanted public worship to remain orderly and centered on biblical teaching.

Wimber shared Smith’s commitment to Scripture but increasingly gave healing, prophecy and other charismatic manifestations a more prominent place in ministry. Their disagreement wasn’t fundamentally over whether God could heal or whether spiritual gifts existed. It was more about how those gifts should function in the life of the church and how much room should be given to supernatural manifestations during gatherings.

Eventually their approaches diverged enough that Wimber’s congregation separated from Calvary Chapel and joined a small network of churches using the name Vineyard, which had developed under the leadership of Kenn Gulliksen. That’s worth remembering because Wimber didn’t actually invent the Vineyard name or establish the first Vineyard congregation. Gulliksen had already begun the movement, but Wimber’s leadership transformed it into something much larger and gave it the theological identity for which it became known.

Lonnie Frisbee

Anyone who has read our Calvary Chapel article has already encountered Lonnie Frisbee, the long-haired hippie evangelist who became an important figure in the Jesus Movement. Frisbee later became connected with Wimber’s congregation and once again found himself near the beginning of an influential charismatic movement. His ministry was associated with dramatic experiences of the Holy Spirit, particularly among young people, and his presence helped reinforce the supernatural direction in which Wimber was already moving.

Frisbee’s later life was complicated, and his relationship with the movements he helped influence became strained. He struggled personally, and portions of his story didn’t fit comfortably into the inspirational version of evangelical history that developed around the Jesus Movement. That has sometimes resulted in his contribution being minimized, but history doesn’t become more accurate by removing people whose lives became difficult to explain. Lonnie Frisbee played significant roles in both Calvary Chapel and Vineyard, and the early history of either movement is incomplete without him.

It’s a remarkable legacy for someone who looked like he had walked into church directly from a 1968 rock festival.

The Kingdom of God

The theological idea that probably explains Vineyard better than anything else is its understanding of the Kingdom of God. Wimber was strongly influenced by New Testament scholar George Eldon Ladd, who emphasized that God’s Kingdom has already entered history through Jesus but won’t be completely realized until Christ returns. Vineyard Christians commonly describe this as the tension between the “already” and the “not yet.”

That theology provides the framework for Vineyard’s approach to healing and spiritual gifts. Christians pray for sick people because God’s Kingdom is already present and the power of the age to come has broken into the present world. Healing therefore isn’t merely something that happened during the ministry of Jesus or something Christians must wait until the resurrection to experience. God can heal now.

At the same time, the Kingdom hasn’t yet arrived in its fullness. Christians still become sick, prayers aren’t always answered the way we want, and everybody eventually dies unless Christ returns first. Vineyard theology therefore avoids the conclusion that failure to receive healing necessarily demonstrates inadequate faith. The Christian lives between two realities: God’s Kingdom is genuinely present, but the world hasn’t yet been completely restored.

That tension became one of the strongest features of Vineyard theology because it allowed Christians to expect God to act without requiring them to pretend that he always acts exactly as they hoped.

Healing

Healing prayer became one of the defining practices of Vineyard ministry. Wimber encouraged ordinary Christians to pray for sick people rather than treating healing as a specialized ministry belonging to celebrity evangelists with television programs and unusually expensive suits. Vineyard conferences taught Christians how to listen, pray, observe what happened and continue ministering to people whether or not a dramatic healing occurred.

Wimber’s approach could actually be surprisingly undramatic. He didn’t believe shouting made prayer more powerful, and he was suspicious of manipulating people emotionally or announcing healings that couldn’t be demonstrated. A person praying for someone might simply ask where the pain was, pray briefly, ask whether anything had changed and pray again if appropriate. The supernatural didn’t need theatrical assistance.

Wimber’s own health eventually made the theology painfully personal. He suffered serious heart problems and cancer despite having spent years teaching Christians to pray for healing. God didn’t heal him of every disease, and Wimber died in 1997 at only 63 years old. Rather than destroying his theology of healing, his suffering demonstrated the importance of the “not yet” side of the Kingdom he had spent years teaching. Christians could genuinely believe God heals while acknowledging that even people with enormous faith still become sick and die.

Signs and Wonders

During the 1980s, Wimber became widely associated with “signs and wonders” ministry. He worked with Fuller Theological Seminary professor C. Peter Wagner, and their teaching about healing, spiritual warfare and supernatural ministry attracted pastors and Christian leaders from numerous denominations. One Fuller Seminary course associated with Wimber’s ministry became particularly famous because students weren’t merely discussing miracles as theological concepts; they were being encouraged to pray for them.

That made Wimber controversial, but it also gave him influence far beyond Vineyard churches. Many evangelicals were curious about charismatic gifts but uncomfortable with some expressions of Pentecostalism. Wimber spoke their language. He took Scripture seriously, didn’t require speaking in tongues as evidence of spiritual empowerment, and presented healing as something ordinary Christians could participate in without becoming professional faith healers.

That last point mattered enormously. Wimber wasn’t trying to produce a church filled with superstar miracle workers. He wanted ordinary Christians to believe that the Holy Spirit could work through ordinary people.

Everybody Gets to Play

One of Wimber’s favorite expressions was “Everybody gets to play.” The phrase summarized his conviction that Christian ministry isn’t supposed to be performed by a small group of professionals while everybody else watches from the audience. Pastors certainly have responsibilities, but ordinary believers can pray for the sick, share the gospel, serve the poor and exercise spiritual gifts.

That idea fit naturally with Vineyard’s informal church culture. Ministry time often involved members of the congregation praying for one another rather than everything flowing through the senior pastor. The goal was to create a church in which spiritual gifts became part of ordinary Christian life rather than a performance taking place on a platform.

There is an obvious danger in that approach. If everyone is encouraged to share impressions they believe may come from God, somebody will eventually be wrong. Vineyard therefore had to develop a theology of prophecy that made room for genuine spiritual gifts while acknowledging human fallibility. That may be less exciting than announcing that every prophetic impression came directly from heaven, but it’s considerably healthier.

Prophecy

Vineyard believes the gift of prophecy continues in the church, but contemporary prophecy isn’t treated as having the same authority as Scripture. A Christian may believe the Holy Spirit has brought a thought, picture, Scripture passage or impression to mind for another person, but that impression must be tested rather than automatically accepted as the voice of God.

This distinction matters because charismatic Christians can create serious problems when they use the words “God told me” to shut down discernment. If God actually said something, disagreement becomes disobedience to God rather than disagreement with another Christian’s interpretation. Vineyard’s better approach has generally been to hold such impressions with humility and allow the recipient and the church to discern whether they are meaningful.

That means someone might say, “I think the Lord may be showing me something,” rather than announcing a revelation with unquestionable authority. The difference may sound small, but it creates room for accountability and for the uncomfortable possibility that the person simply got it wrong.

Any theology of continuing prophecy needs somewhere to put mistaken prophecies. Vineyard at least recognized that problem.

Vineyard Worship

Vineyard’s influence on contemporary worship music may ultimately be even greater than its influence on healing ministry. Early Vineyard worship developed a simple, intimate style emphasizing direct expressions of devotion to God. Instead of primarily singing songs about God, worshipers increasingly sang songs to God, expressing love, surrender and longing for his presence.

The musical arrangements were generally accessible and worked naturally with guitars and small worship teams rather than requiring organs, choirs or elaborate instrumentation. Vineyard Music eventually distributed songs internationally, and Vineyard worship leaders produced music that traveled far beyond the movement itself. Churches that knew very little about John Wimber’s theology could find themselves singing Vineyard songs on Sunday morning.

That influence is easy to overlook now because intimate contemporary worship has become so common. What once seemed like a distinctive Vineyard sound gradually became part of the vocabulary of evangelical and charismatic worship around the world. Worship music crosses denominational borders much more easily than theologians do.

Come, Holy Spirit

A prayer closely associated with Vineyard worship and ministry is “Come, Holy Spirit.” Vineyard Christians aren’t suggesting that the Holy Spirit is absent until someone invites him into the room. They believe the Spirit already indwells believers. The prayer is an invitation for God to manifest his presence and activity in a particular situation.

That may involve conviction, healing, spiritual gifts, worship or simply an increased awareness of God’s presence. The phrase captures Vineyard’s desire to remain expectant without pretending Christians can manufacture supernatural experiences on demand.

That balance isn’t always easy to maintain. Once people gather expecting something supernatural to happen, psychological expectation and genuine spiritual experience can become difficult to distinguish. Vineyard’s history contains examples of both thoughtful discernment and occasions when enthusiasm ran ahead of discernment.

That’s not necessarily an argument against expecting God to act. It’s more of an argument for testing what happens when we believe he has.

Naturally Supernatural

Wimber also spoke about becoming “naturally supernatural.” He disliked the assumption that charismatic ministry required Christians to become theatrical or adopt a special religious personality. If the Holy Spirit genuinely works through ordinary believers, then people shouldn’t have to sound strange in order to pray for healing or exercise a spiritual gift.

A Christian could pray for someone in a normal voice. A person sharing a spiritual impression didn’t need to imitate the King James Bible. Worship didn’t need to become emotionally chaotic before God could do something supernatural. Wimber wanted Christians to become comfortable enough with spiritual gifts that using them didn’t require putting on a performance.

That approach attracted evangelicals who believed the New Testament gifts might still operate but had been frightened away by some of the more extravagant expressions of charismatic Christianity. Vineyard offered them a way to believe in supernatural ministry without feeling that they had to check their common sense at the church door.

Evangelical and Charismatic

Like Calvary Chapel, Vineyard occupies the territory between traditional evangelicalism and classical Pentecostalism. Vineyard churches affirm historic Christian teachings concerning the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ, his death and bodily resurrection, salvation through Christ and the authority of Scripture. They emphasize conversion, evangelism and discipleship and generally practice believers’ baptism.

At the same time, Vineyard expects the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit to remain active. Healing, prophecy, tongues and spiritual warfare can all have a place in church life. What Vineyard doesn’t teach is the classical Pentecostal doctrine that speaking in tongues is the necessary initial physical evidence that someone has received baptism in the Holy Spirit.

That makes Vineyard charismatic without being classically Pentecostal. It also makes it an interesting bridge between Christian traditions that have sometimes regarded one another with suspicion. Evangelicals brought a strong emphasis on Scripture and worried that charismatic Christians could become overly dependent on experience, while charismatics wondered whether some evangelicals had developed an impressive theology explaining why Christians shouldn’t expect God to do anything supernatural.

Wimber’s answer was essentially that Christians shouldn’t have to choose between the Bible and the Holy Spirit.

Compassion and the Poor

Discussions of healing and prophecy can overshadow another important part of Vineyard spirituality: compassion for the poor and marginalized. Wimber’s Kingdom theology wasn’t supposed to produce Christians who spent all their time chasing supernatural experiences. If Jesus announced God’s Kingdom while feeding hungry people and caring for those society ignored, then Kingdom ministry should include practical compassion as well.

Vineyard churches have consequently been involved in food distribution, assistance for struggling families, homeless ministry and other forms of community service. These ministries aren’t understood as distractions from evangelism or supernatural ministry. They are another expression of the same Kingdom.

That provides an important corrective to a weakness that sometimes appears in charismatic Christianity. A church can become so fascinated by prophecy, healing and dramatic experiences that ordinary acts of Christian mercy begin to look unexciting. Vineyard theology at its best refuses that distinction. Praying for a sick person and feeding a hungry person can both be ways of demonstrating what God’s Kingdom looks like.

Church Government

Vineyard churches generally maintain substantial local autonomy while remaining connected through regional, national and international relationships. Local congregations are led by pastors and leadership teams, while broader Vineyard organizations provide training, church planting, conferences and a shared theological identity.

Like many movements that began through informal relationships, Vineyard eventually had to develop more formal organization as it grew. That’s almost unavoidable. A movement can begin by saying it doesn’t want bureaucracy and only wants relationships, but eventually somebody has to decide who credentials pastors, how churches affiliate and who owns the website.

Sooner or later, somebody forms a committee. That’s how movements become institutions.

The Toronto Blessing

One of the most controversial episodes in Vineyard history began in Toronto in 1994, when a Vineyard congregation near the airport became the center of an intense charismatic revival. Meetings included reports of healing, prophecy and powerful experiences of God’s presence, and visitors began arriving from around the world.

The meetings also became famous for unusual physical manifestations. People fell to the floor, shook, laughed uncontrollably and sometimes made sounds that observers compared with animals. Supporters believed the Holy Spirit was producing genuine renewal, while critics believed emotional suggestion, crowd psychology and questionable theology were being mistaken for supernatural activity.

Wimber initially welcomed much of what was happening but became increasingly concerned about some of the manifestations and the explanations being given for them. In 1995, Vineyard leadership removed the Toronto congregation from the movement.

That episode reveals something important about Wimber’s charismatic theology. He believed unusual things could happen when the Holy Spirit moved, but he didn’t believe everything unusual should automatically be attributed to the Holy Spirit. Vineyard’s challenge was maintaining openness without abandoning discernment.

That’s a difficult balance, and the Toronto controversy demonstrated just how difficult it could become.

The Kansas City Prophets

Vineyard also became associated for a time with a group of charismatic ministers commonly called the Kansas City Prophets. Wimber believed prophecy remained a genuine gift and was willing to provide room for prophetic ministry, but the association eventually generated controversies involving prophetic claims, accountability and the conduct of individual leaders.

Once again, the issue exposed a permanent problem for charismatic Christianity. If God still gives prophetic impressions, Christians need to make room for them. But if the people receiving those impressions remain fallible human beings, churches also need strong mechanisms for testing claims and holding ministers accountable.

Cessationism resolves the problem rather neatly by denying that this kind of prophecy continues. Vineyard couldn’t take that route because its theology wouldn’t allow it. The movement therefore had to live with the considerably messier responsibility of discerning what was genuine, what was mistaken and what occasionally should have been stopped much earlier.

That’s one of the costs of believing everybody gets to play.

John Wimber’s Death

Wimber’s health declined considerably during the 1990s. He suffered heart problems and cancer and died in 1997 at the age of 63. His death left Vineyard facing the challenge every movement eventually encounters when the person most responsible for shaping its identity is no longer there.

Wimber had influenced Vineyard’s theology, vocabulary, worship, ministry practices and personality so thoroughly that simply finding another charismatic leader to replace him wouldn’t have worked. The movement instead continued through broader leadership structures and national Vineyard associations, gradually becoming less dependent upon a single personality.

That transition changed Vineyard, but it also demonstrated whether the movement contained enough substance to survive its founder. More than a generation later, Vineyard churches continue to exist around the world, and many of their pastors never met John Wimber.

At some point every movement has to become more than the person who started it, and Vineyard was no exception.

Vineyard Around the World

Vineyard expanded far beyond Southern California and eventually developed churches and national associations in numerous countries. As the movement spread, local expressions naturally took on characteristics of their own. A Vineyard congregation in Britain, Africa or Latin America doesn’t necessarily look exactly like one in California.

What generally connects them is a recognizable theological and spiritual inheritance: evangelical commitment to Scripture and the gospel, Kingdom theology, contemporary worship, compassion ministry and openness to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. Different churches may emphasize those elements differently, but the family resemblance remains.

That international development also means Vineyard can no longer be understood simply as an American charismatic movement from the 1980s. Like many successful Christian movements, it eventually became larger than the circumstances that produced it.

Vineyard After Wimber

The Vineyard has continued to change since Wimber’s death, and different congregations emphasize different parts of the tradition. Some remain strongly identified with healing, prophecy and charismatic ministry, while others can look much like ordinary contemporary evangelical churches that simply maintain an openness to spiritual gifts.

The movement has also had to navigate questions involving leadership, sexuality, women in ministry and cultural engagement, just as other evangelical denominations and networks have. Those debates remind us that movements born during revival eventually inherit the ordinary responsibilities of churches. They have to train pastors, resolve disagreements, discipline leaders, define doctrine and figure out how much diversity they can tolerate before diversity becomes contradiction.

The Vineyard Legacy

Vineyard never became one of the largest church movements in America, but its influence extends considerably beyond its numerical size. Its worship music helped reshape evangelical worship, while its Kingdom theology gave many charismatic Christians a way to expect healing without promising that every person would be healed. Its emphasis on “everybody gets to play” encouraged ordinary believers to participate in ministry rather than leaving spiritual activity to pastors and professional evangelists.

Wimber also helped build a bridge between evangelical and charismatic Christianity at a time when the two communities often distrusted one another. He believed evangelicals were right to insist that Scripture must govern Christian belief and practice, but he also believed charismatics were right to expect the Holy Spirit to continue doing things Christians read about in Scripture.

His solution wasn’t to choose one side and criticize the other. He tried to hold the two together.

That experiment became the Vineyard.

Doing the Stuff

John Wimber wasn’t known for describing his theology in complicated language. He could have talked about inaugurated eschatology, charismatic pneumatology and the practical implications of Kingdom theology, and there were certainly theologians around him who could explain all of those things.

Wimber preferred asking when Christians were going to do the stuff. Behind that phrase was a serious conviction about the Christian life. Jesus didn’t merely teach his disciples what to believe. He announced the Kingdom of God, healed the sick, confronted evil, cared for people and then sent his followers out to participate in the same mission.

Vineyard Christianity grew from the belief that the church should still expect that kind of ministry while remembering that God’s Kingdom hasn’t yet arrived in its fullness. Sometimes people are healed and sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes a spiritual impression seems remarkably accurate and sometimes the person simply got it wrong. Christians experience genuine signs of the age to come while still living in a world where suffering, sickness and death remain.

For Vineyard, that tension isn’t an embarrassing theological problem that needs to be explained away. It’s the world Christians inhabit between the resurrection of Jesus and his return. The Kingdom has already come, but it hasn’t completely come yet. And while Christians are living between those two realities, Wimber thought they might as well keep doing the stuff.