Gary Tyra’s
The Holy
Spirit in Mission is an important book, successful in significant ways and
even in its weaknesses an occasion for deep reflection.
Tyra, associate
professor of biblical and practical theology at
Vanguard University, is at his
best when he focuses on the biblical and pastoral aspects of “prophetic speech
and action in Christian witness”, as the subtitle puts it. In those chapters
focused on biblical interpretation and pastoral wisdom Trya provides not only
fresh insights but also a model for the kind of scholarship that can
effectively bridge the gap between Pentecostal experience and non-Pentecostal
habits of thinking. As the global Church becomes increasingly shaped by
Pentecostal experiences foreign to the faith journey of many other Christians
it is necessary for the good of Christian unity and fellowship that patient,
careful work be done to overcome suspicions and misunderstandings between
Christians who have experienced the work of the Holy Spirit in different ways. This
effort to bridge communities leads Tyra to make an understandable decision to
limit his study to prophetic speech and action, and avoid discussion of the
ecumenically sensitive topic of
modern-day prophets and apostles. Given how
controversial this subject is even within charismatic and Pentecostal circles,
it is understandable that Tyra would seek to avoid the topic. Tyra skillfully
shows how the biblical narrative illustrates the central role prophetic speech
and action and he draws on his pastoral experience to suggest ways that
openness to prophetic leading can be responsibly incorporated into individual
and congregational life.
Had Tyra limited himself to biblical and pastoral counsel
his strategy of encouraging the prophetic guidance of the Spirit while avoiding
the controversy of a modern day office of prophets and apostles would have been
successful. Unfortunately, Tyra decided to devote a chapter to contemporary
church history to prove that “missional faithfulness and the global growth of
Pentecostalism” are intrinsically tied to prophetic speech and action. Any
attempt to demonstrate the role of prophecy in Pentecostalism without touching
on the delicate topic of “prophets” is extremely challenging because many of
the stories that seem most to validate the power of prophecy in Pentecostalism’s
growth are unavoidably connected to the actions of highly controversial
prophets. Nowhere is this clearer than in the history of the widely influential
Vineyard Churches. Yet, astonishingly, Tyra seeks to tell the story of
prophetic speech empowering the Vineyard movement without including the
controversy over the role of prophets that caused such division within the
leadership of the Vineyard movement. Tyra limits his account to one interview
he conducted with Lance Pittluck an American Vineyard pastor and current board
member. Pittock claims that the growth of the Vineyard movement in England was
due to a prophetic word heard by John and Eleanor Mumford. If this were the simple truth then the story would fit neatly within Tyra's book. Unfortunately, this is
only a narrow slice of the story of how supposed prophecy influenced the Vineyard
in England. This broader narrative is expertly told in William Kay’s 2007 book
Apostolic Networks in Britain, published
as part of Paternoster’s “Studies in Evangelical History and Thought” series
edited by, among others, Mark Noll and David Bebbington.
In Kay’s telling, the story of the Vineyard in England is
inextricably tied to the controversy around the
notorious Kansas City Prophets
and the broader controversy over modern day prophets. Whereas Pittock’s account
of the Vineyard in England focuses on the type of prophetic speech that does
not rely or eoncourage a view of an office of prophet, and is therefore easy to
fit into Tyra’s broader discussion, Kay’s thicker narrative puts the
controversy over modern day prophets at the center of an understanding of how
the Vineyard ministry evolved in England and leads to major questions over how
John Wimber himself came to view prophetic knowledge. According to Kay, “Paul
Cain, the most prominent of the Kansas City Prophets, told John and Eleanor
Mumford that the revival would ‘probably find its starting point…when the Lord
will just start to move throughout London and throughout England.” What Pittock
sees as a wholesome prophecy given by the Mumford’s to Wimber was in fact part
of deeply divisive stretch in the history of the Vineyard movement. I quote Kay
at length:
Paul Cain went to
see Wimber at the end of 1988 to warn him to give greater priority to holiness
within the Vineyard movement. Cain brought with him the background influences
of the Latter Rain movement....[which] developed an eschatology all of its own.
By identifying the new apostles as ‘manifest sons of God’ whose task would be
to restore the church, it rapidly generated hyper-real expectation of its
proponents and their central place within the unfolding drama of the end times
and, in doing so, moved outside the normal parameters of bliblical
doctrine…there is no evidence that Latter Rain beliefs were transmitted
directly through Cain to Wimber. Nevertheless Cain made an impact on Wimber.
Several
participants tell the sotry of these extraordinary events. The meeting between
the two men was engineered by Jack Deer, a onetime professor at Dallas
Theological Seminary, who had been fired from his position because o fhis
conversion to Third Wave beliefs. Deere had asked Cain for a sign by which he
could persuade WImber to meet together. Cain replied, the day I arrive there
will be an earthquake in your area.’ When Deere asked whether the earthquake
would be a big one, he replied, ‘no, but there will be a big earthquake in the
world on the day I leave.’ So Wimber reluctantly welcomed Cain to his home in
Anahiem on 5th of December 1988. Cain, in prophetic mode, told
WImber to ‘discipline and rasie up a people of purity and holiness’ and that
Wimber’s role ‘would be significantly altered—more authoritative (not
authoritarian) and directive.’ He also told Wimber that, if he issued this call
for holiness, Wimber’s son Sean would be delivered ‘from rebellion and drug
addiction.’ The earthquake on 3rd of December 1988 occurred at 3:38
am, the day that Cain had reached California. Cain left on the morning of
December 7th when the Soviet-Armenian earthquake occurred at 10:51
p.m. (Pacific Standard Time).
In August 1989 Cain
prophesied ‘revival will find its starting point sometime in October [of 1990]
when the Lord will just start moving
through London and through England’. In June 1990 Sean Wimber came back
to the family home and returned to the faith. Wimber saw this as a patterning
event symbolic of the global revival. ‘As more prodigals return’, Wimber said,
‘pockets of revival spread throughout the house of God’. In obedience to these
prophecies, WImber moved with his family to England and organized a series of
regional conferences entitled “Holiness unto the Lord’ throughout the United
Kingdom…
The predicted
revival failed to materialize. WImber initially attempted to account for this
by explaining that revival was to come in stages, but this was unconvincing. In
January 1991 at the Revival Fire conference Wimber had to face criticism. He
then asked the question, ‘did revival come in October?’ and with evident
disappointment he answered it himself, ‘no, it has not in England at this
time.’ And he went on to state that, rather than revival, America would
experience the judgement of God in the First Gulf War because of the nation’s
rejection of the Lord. When the First Gulf War eneded rapidly and without any
setbacks for the Americans, the role of prophets, which had been a matter of
dispute in the Vineyard since the early 1990s, boiled over at a Vineyard Board
meeting at Snoqualmie Falls, Washington, in May 1991. Wimber fell out with Cain
and later with the entire prophetic movement: ‘I don’t believe there are such
things as prophets today’.
The dramatic difference between Tyra’s telling and Kay’s
does not impugn the motives or memory of Lance Pittluck. What Pittluck may have
heard was a partial truth, the kind of sanitized history that we are all
inclined to pass on about groups we are committed to. Tyra would have been
better served by either not trying to use contemporary history as a proof for
his thesis or by telling the full history in a way that includes the
controversy over modern-day prophets that is so clearly at the heart of the
Vineyard’s ministry in England. As it stands, his attempt to simplistically
bind his biblical and pastoral wisdom to contemporary history is a significant
weakness in an otherwise strong book.
