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An era is ending at the Vineyard—the Anaheim, California, church and the worldwide movement. John Wimber, charismatic founder and leader of the movement, is retiring from pastoring the church (though he will continue as international director).

Wimber's influence spreads far beyond the Vineyard's 500 churches. His ministry has combined lively charismatic practice with Reformed-flavored theology, making a bridge between traditional evangelical Christianity and the independent charismatic and Pentecostal movements. That bridging of unfamiliar elements continues to create controversy on both sides of the bridge.

Christianity Today sent senior writer Tim Stafford and Ontario Theological Seminary professor Jim Beverley to talk with Wimber about his perspective after 30 years of ministry.

You've had your share of critics over the years. What have you learned about the way a minister of the gospel should respond?
I try to take personal criticism without response. I never write back. But I try to take criticism of doctrine seriously. I've spent days answering questions that I thought were fair-minded.

At the same time, I've known from the outset that what I was going to do would not be popular. It's never wise to wake up sleeping people. However tenacious I've tried to be in showing my appreciation, at the end of the day Christian leaders come back with, "Well, do you think my Christian experience is inadequate, incomplete, not right?"

Walt Kaiser asked me that. He said, "Do you think that because I don't heal the sick and speak in tongues that I'm somehow inadequate?" I said, "Walter, under your leadership we have one of the finest educational institutions in America [then at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School]. You've contributed enormously to the culture of evangelical thought. I believe that at the end of the day you'll stand before the Lord and you'll get a 'Well done, thou faithful servant.'

"Having said that, I want you to know I don't think that's all of it. I believe everything you believe. I just believe a little bit more in terms of pneumatology [the doctrine of the Holy Spirit]. I've got some ideas that, yes, are foreign; but they're not unprecedented in church history; nor are they nonbiblical."

You're not a pastor who quotes a lot of learned sources when you preach. Yet it's obvious books have been tremendously important to you. Which ones have shaped your thinking?
My first theology was Hodge. I read it for years. I still have it. It's all worn out, falling apart; but I loved it.

When Carl Henry did the series of four [CHRISTIANITY TODAY] articles back in the fifties addressing the fundamentalist controversy in evangelicalism, I just loved that. I didn't run into the series until the seventies when I was at the Fuller Seminary library one day. I've gone back to him again and again because it just earmarks my understanding of what we're after—the best of evangelical thought and the power that's involved in Pentecostal expression.

I'm so sad that F. F. Bruce is gone to be with the Lord. I'm happy for him, but I loved what he did. J. I. Packer was one of my biggest helps. I carried his books around for years. I love Puritan thought, and I'm grateful for Martin Lloyd-Jones and for J. I. Packer for championing that cause. I've read them over and over again.

But I can cry over Booth or Wesley. We were on a tour, and I walked into Wesley's little chapel in London and saw a statue of Wesley. At the bottom was a plaque that referred to 60 years of preaching. I went back and sat in the bus and just cried and cried. "O God, give me a chance to preach the gospel. Give me a chance to work the work of God in this world." And that was a fire born in my heart that's never left.

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July 14 1997, Vol. 41, No. 8