John Wimber’s legacy of Worship
Voice of the Vineyard
Larry L. Myers 
August 3, 1998

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As I began to write about John Wimber’s legacy in the area of worship I revisited the “early days” of the Vineyard and the Jesus Movement. Almost immediately I found myself awash in nostalgic tears as I recalled my early experiences of transformation and renewal that were facilitated by what was then a new expression of worship called “contemporary praise and worship”.  

Having graduated from a well known, conservative evangelical seminary in 1972, I found myself being powerfully attracted to what was happening in a new church in Southern California called Calvary Chapel. Though I appreciated most of the teaching (because of my background I was still stumbling over the so called “charismatic” elements of the Jesus Movement), I loved the music. As a musician I had been involved in church music since I started high school, but there was something very different about this music. I had come from a church where contemporary Christian music was the music of Ralph Carmichael, or the musicals of John Peterson, the Jimmy Owens Singers and the Spurlows. In that church we even experimented with modern arrangements of the hymns using guitars and other folk instruments. But now something entirely different was happening. Larry Norman was asking “why should the devil have all the good music?” and there was Randy Stonehill, and the 2nd Chapter of Acts. And then I heard Love Song at a concert in Fort Worth and my life changed. The presence of the Holy Spirit ( again, at that time I didn’t know that’s what or who it was) was heavy and the Spirit of Worship was so powerful and sweet that I knew then and there that somehow, somewhere I wanted to be involved with this music the rest of my life. This was when I learned of Maranatha! Music.

It would be a year later, in 1975, when I moved back to Los Angeles to work with Chuck Girard and to help Kenn Gulliksen nurture the original Vineyard, that I would become immersed in the new contemporary praise and worship. In addition to Love Song, there was Gentle Faith, Country Faith, The Way, Children of the Day, Debby Kerner, Karen Lafferty, Chuck Butler, and of course, a little later, Keith Green. These people, along with many others, were writing the “new “ worship songs. Remember “Maranatha”, “Little Country Church”, “For those tears I cried”, “I’ve got a river of life”, “Thy Lovingkindness”, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God”, and on, and on, and on. And then along came John! And something changed.... but what?  

John’s contributions came from three major influences, his musical background, his church background, and his expertise as a church growth consultant. 

John was an excellent musician. He had studied music from childhood and had become not only a competent mult-instrumentalist, but a very fine arranger and a successful record producer. It was not easy to get John to talk about those days but I know that in his early years John’s first love was the sax and jazz. In fact, the legendary Shorty Rogers, who was one of the leaders of the West Coast “Cool” Jazz scene and who became a committed Christian in the late 70’s, told me that he remembers John from those days and that he was a fine sax man. John, in a moment of weakness, also told me a few years ago that his goal, after having been a successful record producer, was to become a top arranger in Hollywood. But before that was to happen God intervened and changed the entire course of his life.  

So, besides being interesting, what has all this got to do with John’s contribution to worship as we know it? First, he had a personal, working knowledge of the contemporary pop/rock music scene so that the music he liked, that he wrote, that expressed his heart was the same musical idiom that most baby boomers related to. As he often said, he wanted to build a church that he would actually like to go to. And this was reflected in the music. This of course established a precedent and a principle that as each succeeding generation comes along, we have, do I dare say it, a mandate to incorporate new musical idioms that will relate especially to that generation, while not abandoning what has gone before. Second, because of John’s years of working as an entertainer he had a particular distaste for music in the church that is called “worship” music but is nothing more than entertainment. I can’t say for sure that he was completely opposed to the latter if it was meant to bless the church, but he was particularly concerned with the confusing of one with the other. Worship is for the Lord, nothing more, nothing less. He would not tolerate a worship leader if that person was actually operating out of a “spirit of entertainment” rather that a “spirit of worship”. 

The second major influence on John’s contribution to worship was the church. I think it would be fa ir to say that John’s early experiences with church life actually convinced him that there might be another way to do it. The first, which is the converse of the first point above, is that even though there were many wonderful and meaningful gospel songs and hymns, they were hard to relate to culturally. Second, the musical part of the service consisted of maybe two hymns (or gospel songs), an offertory (either a choir or solo) , and maybe one more songs before the message. And this is the way it still works in most churches today. But because of John’s hunger for the presence of God in the meeting, and because of the high value God places on worship, the musical portion of the meeting was extended to 25, 30 or more minutes.  

The third major influence on John, I think, was his work as a church growth consultant and the years of studying hundreds of churches in many denominations across America. This forced him to seek and understand both Biblical and pragmatic principles of church growth and church life. In the realm of worship I believe this led to four key concepts. First, the rediscovery of the Biblical injunction that worship is the Church’s highest calling and is to be our highest value. Second, because of this, worship is not subordinated to the preaching of the Word, and that in practice its “function” is not just to prepare the people for the Word. This is still the dominate understanding in the Evangelical church today! Just yesterday I heard of a worship leader in one of the big traveling road show ministries who was scolded because he/she was more concerned about leading the people into worship than in “preparing the people for the speaker”. But John’s teaching and practice was that worship is essential in its own right. It is not for the purpose of preparing us for the Word, although it does that, but it is our first and highest calling as the Bride of Christ. Third, worship is not to be used to hype or manipulate people. This is similar to the second principle but addresses the more crass misuse of worship. John was so opposed to using worship to get people to give money, or to get them to “come forward” either for salvation or for ministry. Fourth, and perhaps most important, John articulated for us the concept that worship is to facilitate and express our personal and corporate relationship with our Heavenly Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the dear Holy Spirit. And in order to truly accomplish this we need to use 2nd. person pronouns instead of 3rd. person pronouns. We want to sing to Him, not just about Him. This is a key distinction from most of the traditional and even contemporary Church music written outside the Vineyard. In comparison, when I think about most of the early Maranatha! Music that immediately preceded John -, it is actually what might be called “evangelistic” worship music. They are songs about the Lord. There are some exceptions of couse. But all through the years, John’s commitment and value was to keep it personal. Let worship be worship. And even today, much of the “worship” music that comes out of the other “streams” of influence continues to be about the Lord not to the Lord. 

Even though we’ve lived with these basic concepts for so long they seem to have always been part of our experience, it is appropriate to acknowledge and express our deep appreciation for John’s legacy of defining and articulating them for us and for mentoring us into a fuller and deeper understanding and experience of our high calling of being worshippers of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

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