| Peter and Doris Wagner
Years
and years of fellowship, ministry, hard knocks, and victories keep replaying in
my mind. What a man he was, and what a stalwart servant of God! John is solidly
on the list of the five individuals who have influenced me the most over 67 years!
John was one of those extremely rare people who will be remembered
as a molder of an entire generation. Doris and I will forever thank our Lord for
knowing and loving John as a colleague in the kingdom. We are fully aware that
it is a privilege granted to a very few, and it is one of the enduring highlights
of our lives. Rich Buhler
I have never known a
man who talked more about heaven than John Wimber. If you ran into him on the
street and asked how he was doing, more often than not he would say, "I'm
going to heaven!" One of the most common greetings he would initiate if he
saw you first was, "Are you going to heaven?" He said it with a twinkle
in his eye, but he meant it. He was looking forward to heaven and considered it
the crowning achievement of his life to get there. The morning I heard that John
had died, I said to myself, "Well, he's arrived." Jack
Hayford
I grieve the double loss of a dear brother in Christ and a great
partner in the gospel. In the tough-to-navigate tides of revival blessings, John
was always solid in his stance; contending without compromise for a balanced mix
of the free-flowing of the power of the Spirit, joined to the good sense of Bible-centered
teaching. Whatever may be the abiding legacy of his life and
ministry, one thing is certain: he embraced for himself and modeled for us all
that the Book of Acts is still being lived in life and power. J.
Christy Wilson, Jr., Missionary to Muslims
"He killed many more when
he died than when he lived" (Judges 16:30b) In July of 1991, John Wimber
ministered at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. In the last service he asked
all to pray silently and to ask the Lord to glorify Himself through us. I prayed
that God would use my wife and me to reach Muslims with signs and wonders. As
the meeting ended, I thanked John for coming. He told me the Holy Spirit had shown
him my request. "You were asking God to use you with signs and wonders to
reach Muslims, weren't you?" "Yes, exactly," I replied. The Lord
had heard, he said, and was going to answer my prayer. Donald
E. Miller, University of Southern California
John Wimber is one of the
major religious innovators of this century. I clearly remember my last interview
with him, a five hour discussion of the history of the Vineyard. The conversation
was punctuated by John's humility, his acknowledgment that the sacred and profane
often exist side-by-side, and his insightful reflections on the need to continually
reinvent the envelope in which the message of Christianity is placed. I feel very
privileged to have been trusted to spend three years researching the Vineyard
Christian Fellowship. Kenn Gulliksen
I've had a
photo of John for years taken during a trip to Israel, and when I heard of his
death the image immediately came to mind. John was standing next to the Wailing
Wall in Jerusalem. He was significantly overweight, and all of his clothes were
too tight, accentuating the fact. He was wearing a brown sweater buttoned only
in the middle, and as part of the tour group, a ridiculous orange hat that looked
exactly like a dunce cap. Looking at the man, one would see an odd, weak man -
a fool. But in the photo and forever in my memory John is weeping. His hand on
the Wall, his heart on the mercy of God, his eyes on the brokenness of the people;
John was sobbing. As he often said, "I'm a fool for Christ; whose fool are
you?" J. I. Packer
John Wimber was one of
the outstanding Christian leaders of our time. He fused in a unique way the rational
substance of historic Reformed theology with the Pentecostal biblicism that looks
for wonders of New Testament church life to reappear today, and his great gift
to the Christian world, wider spread already than he could know, was and remains
a mindset of heightened expectancy. John Wimber's modeling of eager, joyous, almost
happy-go-lucky expectations in ministry must be rated a true pointer to true renewal,
and something ever to be grateful for. John was honest, humble and warmhearted,
and he may never have known that he had a first-class brain. His openness to God
may have led to some slips along the way, but it was undoubtedly the supreme strength
of his ministry. Constantly articulate and magnetic in public, sometimes anxious
and depressed in private (Spurgeon was the same), he was totally committed to
advancing the kingdom of God and totally unshaken by the criticism he encountered.
He was a hands-on leader who kept learning, and the five hundred Vineyard churches
that have sprung up embodying his ethos have matured steadily in matters of accountability,
outreach, and Bible-centeredness. They stand as his memorial, now he is gone.
With many more, I thank God for John, and rejoice in the thought of the trumpets
sounding for him (jazz licks, perhaps?) on the other side. Jack
Deere
Who would have ever thought that a fatherless boy from Missouri
would father hundreds of spiritual sons all over the world? I was privileged to
be one of those sons. So many young men in my generation found in John a father
who delighted in us, believed in us, and brought out the best in us. I
learned watching John how to be kind to my enemies, care for the poor, be willing
to risk, and suffer humiliation in trying to follow the Lord. But most of all,
I learned what it feels like to be a son loved by a proud father. I never had
that before I met John. Now I'll never lose it. But still, I would give anything
to have him back. Winn Griffin
I remember John
calling me into his office and saying with a certain twinkle in his eye, "Winn,
I want a monthly magazine. Make sure that I have one article in it. By the way,
I would like to have the first issue next month." "John," I replied,
I've never edited a magazine before." He said, "I know, but you'll learn
how quickly." The first Vineyard magazine, First Fruits, was born the next
month. Rick Warren
I
will remember John Wimber as a man who truly loved Jesus more than anything else.
I always enjoyed our conversations because that love for Christ produced an uncommon
passion in his life that was contagious. I will miss that. A hundred years from
today, people will still be singing "Spirit Song" because it verbalizes
that deep love for Jesus.
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