John Wimber's Understanding of Revival: It's Not About Revival (part 1 of 2)

What is revival? Should we work toward revival? Is revival a sovereign move of the Spirit or do we work hard to produce it? John Wimber has some helpful thoughts via his wife, Carol...

In 2006 I met weekly at the University of Eau Claire, Wisconsin to pray and study the Bible with a number of students, both young and old. At one particular meeting, a man showed up to share his heart for revival. The gentleman had spent five years in Pensacola, FL at the “Brownsville Revival.” During my high school years, I had attended that revival on three separate occasions and had seen first hand both some super weird things and some powerful and authentic supernatural evidences of God’s work.

This man spent about twenty minutes sharing about the power and presence of God and shared stories of healings and demonic deliverances that he had personally seen and then he said something I found very interesting. He said,

“Then one day it was gone. And we were all left standing there wondering what had happened and what we could do to get the revival back.”

Yesterday I wrote about “Alan Scott, Spiritual Abuse, & the Downstream Impact of Bad Theology,” reflections on an exclusive article released by The Roys Report, which you can read here. As I’ve spent some time discussing this with a variety of people who have reached out, a recurring theme seems to have risen out of the ashes of concern — revival appears to be a central concern for Alan Scott and many other church leaders these days.

As I was reading the original article by The Roys Report, it became clear that Alan Scott sees himself as a "revivalist” and the church members at Anaheim believed he would “bring revival.” That’s all well and good, but then we read a statement from Claire Edmondson, a former youth pastor at Anaheim:

“[Alan Scott] wanted [the Anaheim Vineyard] to be a house and a symbol of revival, and it wasn’t happening… He turned up the heat. He wanted the American dream.”

What does it mean to “turn up the heat” when it comes to producing revival? That’s probably a great topic to tackle someday, so stay tuned. Under Alan Scott’s leadership, the way to do “turn up the heat” for revival was to “enact strict purity guidelines,” which included Alan having staff members quiz each other about masturbation, sexual activity, and then being the sole arbiter on whether or not someone’s repentance was sufficient enough. Never mind the fact that such an ability to discern a person’s soul is usually best left to God, I think there’s a fundamental difference in how Scott, and those aligned with his theological framework, understand “revival.”

This got me thinking… what is revival? Maybe John Wimber can help us here. Today I want to talk about what revival is and in a later post, talk about whether or not and how we can experience revival.

John Wimber on what revival is.

I don’t intend for this short(!) article to summarize everything I have to say about revival and readers would be wise to do a bit more reading themselves. But one person who I think should have a lot more influence in the modern Charismatic church’s thinking on revival is none other than John Wimber.

Carol Wimber-Wong, John’s wife and one of the Vineyard’s early leaders, noted this about John Wimber’s thinking about revival:

“John, who was a sort of expert on outpourings of the Holy Spirit, explained to me that a revival has about a 20-year lifespan. 10 years up, gathering and increasing….. and then 10 years demising and declining with the end result of becoming just another Denomination. The Spirit moves on to a different place, usually a different people…” (Carol Wimber, John Wimber: The Way It Was)

So much to parse out here. Revival is described as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that these outpourings have historically come and gone, sovereignly. Wimber helpfully reminds us that the point of revival is not to focus on revival but that revival has fruit, outward facing fruit that serves the needs of people and their relationship with God.

Wimber had a lot to say about revival and though I’ve read as much of his work as I can get my hands on and listened to probably hundreds of sermons of his, it’s hard to improve upon this understanding of revival that Wimber had:

“Being devoted to one another involves deepening your prayer life and fellowship. It means deepening your commitment and interdependence on one another. If revival doesn’t result in these behaviors—giving to the poor and sharing our faith—is it truly revival?” (John Wimber, Everyone Gets to Play)

Revival serves a purpose and that purpose is not self-centered; rather, revival is God-centered and serves people. And while there’s arguably a difference between “revival” and “renewal,” it’s interesting that Wimber ultimately thought that all outpourings of God should produce more worship and more ministry for the Kingdom. It wasn’t about getting people a larger platform or more influence… revival and renewal are about making much about Jesus and telling everyone about him!

Those of us who have been in the Vineyard for a long time will naturally think back to Toronto and, as is often done, wrestle with the split that happened. And while I know there is much more to every story, Carol once again helps us understand a bit of John’s framework toward the concerns that he had:

“There was never anything but gratitude to the Lord for the time of refreshing [at Toronto]. The problem was with the focus. John felt strongly that the focus of a revival couldn’t be the revival itself (or the physical manifestations that occur sometimes in the presence of the Holy Spirit). He believed that the times of outpouring are for the purpose of preaching the gospel, feeding the poor, healing the sick, casting out demons, clothing the naked and planting churches that will do the same.” (Carol Wimber, John Wimber: The Way It Was)

If your commitment to revival doesn’t lead to more of “doing the stuff,” as Wimber famously said, is it even revival?

I don’t think so.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments! And if you’d be interested in more thinking about John Wimber and revival, check out this video I did with my good friend, Dr. Steve Burnhope, a Vineyard theologian.

In Christ,

Luke Geraty

About the Author

Luke Geraty is a pastor-theologian in northern California. With a few theology degrees and nearly twenty years of pastoral leadership, Luke loves the Bible, theology, fly fishing, coffee, and books. All opinions are his own and not the views of any other organizations he’s affiliated with. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe to his YouTube.