Biography
John Wimber was born on February 25, 1934, in Kirksville, Missouri. He grew up in a family that did not attend church. His parents had a troubled marriage, and he was raised by his mother and his stepfather. At the age of nine, he moved with his family to Southern California. He was a musician from his youth, and he played the saxophone, piano and other instruments. He was a talented and ambitious young man. In the 1950s, he played in a jazz group, the Paupers, and he later became a manager and arranger for the Righteous Brothers, a popular singing duo.
He married Carol Williams in 1953. They had a family. His life in the music business was marked by drug and alcohol abuse. By 1962, his marriage was in trouble, and he was living in despair. His wife had become a Christian and had been praying for him. In 1962, he was converted in a Quaker home Bible study, and he gave up the drugs. He said that God spoke to him about the need to give his life to Christ. He became a Christian at the age of twenty-eight. He soon began to lead Bible studies and to witness to his friends. He was a natural leader, with a gift for communication.
He became a member of the Quaker church in Yorba Linda, California, and he served as a pastor. He studied at Azusa Pacific College. In 1970, he was hired by the Fuller Evangelistic Association as a consultant on church growth and he worked with C. Peter Wagner. He also took part in the early days of the Calvary Chapel movement. For some years, he was a pastor of a Calvary Chapel in Yorba Linda. He was a man of great warmth and humor, who spoke in a plain and relaxed style.
He was not an easy believer in the miraculous. As a pastor and as a professor at Fuller, he was skeptical about the idea of present-day healing and the gifts of the Spirit. He had been trained in the school of dispensationalism, which held that miracles had ceased. In 1977, he began to see people healed in his own congregation, and his views changed. By 1981, he had become convinced that God still heals and that the church is called to demonstrate the power of the kingdom. He led his congregation in a new direction. He began to pray for the sick and to teach about signs and wonders.
In 1982, he joined a small group of congregations called the Vineyard, and he soon became its leader. It grew into an international movement, with hundreds of churches. He emphasized a simple style of worship, with contemporary music, and a stress on the work of the Holy Spirit. He wrote Power Evangelism, published in 1986, and Power Healing, published in 1987, which described his understanding of the role of signs and wonders in the spread of the gospel. He taught a course at Fuller, called MC510, on signs and wonders and church growth, which created a stir. The course was suspended after a time because of controversy. His influence on the charismatic movement was large.
He was criticized by some who thought that he gave too much weight to experience, and by some who thought that the Vineyard was not Pentecostal enough. In 1994 and 1995, a revival broke out at the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church, which drew thousands. It was marked by unusual physical manifestations, such as laughing and shaking. He was concerned about some of the excesses, and in 1995, the Vineyard Association removed the Toronto church from its fellowship. It was a painful decision. He also faced his own health problems. He had a heart attack in 1993 and developed cancer. He was said to have been honest about his weakness and about his struggle with the question of why some are not healed.
He died on November 17, 1997, at the age of sixty-three, of a brain hemorrhage, in Anaheim, California. His wife, Carol, continued to serve the church. His life shows what can happen when a skeptic is changed by what he sees and when a musician becomes a pastor. He had a gift for turning the church to the power of the Spirit.