John Wimber's Teaching on the Gift and Gifts of the Holy Spirit

John Wimber’s contribution to fresh theological thinking was more diverse than many are aware of. As a result of his best-known publications, he is usually associated with power healing and power evangelism. But there was more to Wimber than that, including his innovative thinking on the Gift and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. This book is not a replication of his views. Rather the authors take Wimber’s innovative thinking and develop it further, hopefully in a manner that reflects his instincts.Wimber chose to base his views on the Gift or reception of the Spirit on Pauline theology and the theology of Luke-Acts. He was one of the first to argue that what Paul meant by the phrase “baptism in the Spirit” and what Luke meant by that phrase were not the same. Therefore, while conservative evangelicals have tended to impose Paul’s meaning onto Luke, and Pentecostals have tended to impose Luke’s meaning onto Paul, Wimber held to a more nuanced view that affirmed both. This enabled him to come to a flexible understanding of the reception or empowering of the Spirit. In this sense Wimber’s teaching breaks out from the century old disagreement between conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals. Derek Morphew explores this aspect of Wimber’s contribution in Part One.The experience of being empowered by the Spirit leads directly to the Christian disciple operating in the Gifts of the Spirit. Here again Wimber made a fresh contribution. One of his slogans reflects his approach: “we all get to play.” On the one hand, he was concerned that traditional elements within the Pentecostal tradition, and later reflected in the “Kansas City Prophets”, had produced a culture of anointed “superstars” who moved effectively in the charismatic gifts, making the general Christian disciple an observer more than a participant. While he put some of this down to ministry models, often saying that “models rule”, he also discerned that the more fundamental issue was the theology of the charismatic gifts. This led to his notion of “situational” versus “static” gifts of the Spirit and to his metaphor of the gifts as “the dancing hand of God.” On the other hand, traditional conservative evangelical teaching on the charismatic gifts tended to make them little more than natural talents, received at birth, but enhanced at rebirth, reducing their charismatic dimension and severing them from the situational and empowering work of the Spirit. Wimber resisted both the “natural talent” view of the gifts and the “superstar” view of the gifts.