Contents
Biography
Jim Cymbala grew up in Brooklyn, New York, a city district that would later become the centre of his pastoral work. As a young man he was more familiar with basketball than with the path of a minister. He played the sport through school and at the University of Rhode Island, where he became captain of his college team. After graduation he entered business and married Carol Joy Hutchins, whom he had known since childhood. The years that followed did not immediately resemble the career of an internationally recognised pastor. They began with an ordinary marriage, work and an unexpected opportunity to serve a small congregation.
Jim and Carol became involved in ministry without the formal seminary education that many denominations required of their pastors. They initially served a congregation in New Jersey and then were asked to help a struggling church in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Tabernacle had a much longer institutional history, going back to the nineteenth century, but by the early 1970s its membership was very small. Accounts from the church describe fewer than twenty people gathering in a deteriorating building in a difficult part of the city. The distinction matters: Cymbala did not found the original church, but he and Carol became responsible for its life at a point when it could hardly maintain itself.
The early work brought discouragement. Attendance was poor, money was limited and the practical demands of a congregation did not stop because its leaders were inexperienced. Jim was also expected to carry responsibilities in two churches for a period before concentrating on Brooklyn. The couple later described the difficulty of meeting household needs while giving time to the ministry. Their recollections should be treated as testimony rather than an account of every financial detail. Yet the general difficulties are acknowledged consistently in the church's history and in Cymbala's books. There was little reason at that time to assume the congregation would become famous.
Cymbala came to believe that prayer had to occupy the centre of the church's life. He later told how a time of personal discouragement led him to give the midweek prayer meeting greater priority. In his account he believed God was directing him to build the congregation around dependence upon prayer rather than an elaborate programme. The understanding was religious, and it belongs to his own testimony. Its practical consequence can be followed. The church developed a strong culture of corporate intercession in which people gathered to pray for relatives, neighbours, the sick and those struggling with addiction or other crises.
The prayer meeting eventually became one of the most distinctive features of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. It was not simply an event before the main Sunday service. Church members regarded it as central to the work and a place where stories of personal change were shared. The congregation also became increasingly diverse, drawing people from different racial, cultural and economic backgrounds in the city. Brooklyn itself was changing, and the church's response to its neighbourhood formed part of its identity. An account of these years must not attribute the experiences of every member to the pastor. The individuals who invited neighbours, organised meetings and supported people in need helped shape the church's life.
Carol Cymbala's work became known internationally through the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. She directed the music ministry, which developed a recognisable style of gospel worship and produced albums and concerts that reached audiences beyond the local congregation. The choir later received multiple Grammy Awards. Its success reflected the voices and musical labour of many singers and instrumentalists as well as Carol's leadership. The couple's ministry is sometimes described only through Jim's books and preaching, but the history of the church includes Carol's contribution and the work of the choir as a distinct source of connection with people who had never visited Brooklyn.
Jim also began writing about prayer and the life of the church. Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire became his most widely known book, telling the story of the congregation's struggles and the priority he believed God had given to prayer. Later books included Fresh Faith, Fresh Power, Breakthrough Prayer and works about the Holy Spirit and the practice of Christian life. These publications made the church's experience available to pastors elsewhere who were discouraged about their own congregations. They were also interpretive: a pastor's book about his church shows how he understood events and the meaning he drew from them. An editor should not present every remembered answer to prayer as though it came from an independently investigated report.
As the congregation grew, it moved into larger spaces and developed the structures necessary to support thousands of worshippers. The official church history now describes a multiethnic congregation meeting in downtown Brooklyn, with several thousand attending weekly services. Such numbers vary from year to year, and the definitions of membership and attendance are not interchangeable. The numbers are also only one measure of an institution's life. Growth brought new responsibilities in counselling, administration, teaching, children and families, and the care of people facing difficulties. A church of that size cannot be guided by one person acting alone.
Cymbala continued to preach on repentance, grace, Christian unity and the work of the Holy Spirit. His public messages often connected passages of Scripture with the circumstances of ordinary families and people living in the city. He was especially concerned that churches might substitute entertainment, strategy or personal reputation for spiritual dependence. At the same time, it would be unfair to interpret that emphasis as a rejection of organisation. The Brooklyn Tabernacle employed staff, developed a large music ministry, managed substantial meeting facilities and offered pastoral services. Its history is an example of prayer being emphasised within an established institutional life, not in place of every ordinary responsibility.
The wider reputation brought visitors and requests for speaking engagements. Pastors from other regions studied the church's approach and often repeated its stories in sermons about revival. Such retellings can become simplified, as though one prayer meeting turned a failing congregation into a successful one overnight. In reality the process unfolded over years of preaching, community-building, music and practical work. The testimony of members would add depth to the public descriptions written by the church or its pastor. A mature biography should recognise the achievement without reducing the people who lived it to illustrations of a lesson.
Cymbala's own family life remained part of his public witness. His marriage to Carol, their children and later generations belong to the life they shared outside the pulpit and choir platform. Only information they have chosen to make public should enter the biography. His writing sometimes describes family difficulties, but those accounts are personal testimony and should not be expanded into speculation about relatives. That restraint matters when writing about a living minister whose family members have their own lives apart from the ministry's public story.
Jim Cymbala remains senior pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle according to the church's current public roster. His life is therefore an unfinished history, not a completed legacy to be summarised at a grave. He did not begin with a large congregation or a celebrated preaching career. He and Carol inherited a struggling church, and through years of service helped make it a place known for prayer, music and Christian fellowship across different backgrounds. The church's continuing work belongs to all who have sustained it. Cymbala's distinctive contribution is the repeated insistence that the public life of a congregation must be nourished by people gathering to pray.