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The Vineyard denomination was a Pentecostal group of churches originally founded by Ken Gullickson in 1974 as a group of small churches and bible study groups affiliated with Calvary Chapel. These groups existed in practical anonymity until 1982, when a charismatic seminary professor, Calvary Chapel Pastor, and former professional musician named John Wimber, came to experience the gifts of the Spirit (prophecy, speaking in tongues, word of knowledge, etc) through Lonnie Frisbee the disgraced preacher who walked away from Christianity to became a homosexual.
This emphasis on what Wimber called “the stuff” preached a day to day practice of signs and wonders whether real or not in the Christian life which was unacceptable to Chuck Smith, the leader of Calvary Chapel. In Chuck Smith’s words, the disagreement was an amicable one and the two “agreed to disagree” and, in 1982, Wimber removed himself and his Yorba Linda congregation from the Calvary Chapel fold. What began as a few small groups under Gullickson quickly became a nationwide movement and denomination under Wimber.
The Vineyard denomination has since come under great scrutiny from Biblical Christianity mainly as a result of its affiliation with controversial movements and figures such the Kansas City Prophets and the embarrassing “Laughter in The Spirit” fad of the early ’90s which took place at the Toronto Airport Vineyard. Both of which claimed to be the “great revivals” but in truth, fizzled out with little to no impact whatsoever on their communities, thus negating any possible comparison to true Christian revivals like the first or second “Great Awakenings”.
Because of Vineyard’s association with these events, many Vineyard churches openly declared their disassociation with the “Laughter” craze and the Toronto Airport Vineyard in particular but it was too little too late. The denomination would forever be branded as an extreme charismatic denomination which would be further borne out by its affiliation with other false ‘revivals’ of the 90s and 2000’s
Jonathan Wimber had an obsession for what he called “the stuff” which referred to the signs and wonders which he read about in the Bible. His desire for these things did not resemble that of someone looking for power in preaching the gospel of the Apostles but rather for the excitement of doing “the stuff”.
In Wimber’s own words he said, “I gave up drugs for this, you better show me something better than this!”. Wimber was profoundly impacted by the preaching of the hippy mystic Lonnie Frisbee of the Jesus Movement. Wimber would try to present this new found Frisbee miraculous to his church and bizarre manifestations began to break out: tongues, slain people, shaking, convulsing, etc. Wimber reported being afraid and asked “God is this You?”. Rather than receiving clarification from the Word of God he received a phone call in the middle of the night from someone who said they had a vision whereby God told them to tell him (Wimber) that it was from God. Thereafter Wimber spoke of “power evangelism” whereby there is a manifestation of “God’s power” (signs and wonders) as a tool for reaching the lost – ultimate abandoning the genuine gospel of Scripture opting instead for preaching a “touch” from God. He spoke at a liberal seminary called Fuller Theological Seminary and had a profound impact on a professor there named C. Peter Wagner who would go on to be founder of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
Wimber was obsessed with “the stuff”. Like most Pentecostals and Charismatics, he spurned Biblical preaching and growing the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ in favor of the “miraculous signs and wonders” despite the warnings of Jesus that a wicked and perverse generation seeks a “sign” and also despite the clear comparison to Simon the Sorcerer in Acts who cared very little for the grace and knowledge of Jesus because he was obsessed with having the Apostles “power” for his own gain. John Wimber would pass away in 1997 and today the Vineyard denomination has over 1500 congregations worlwide and over 550 in the US alone.
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