Power Evangelism

© 1986, 2009 John Wimber and Kevin Springer

Published by Chosen Books

11400 Hampshire Avenue South

Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

chosenbooks.com

Chosen Books is a division of

Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Chosen edition published 2014

ISBN 978-1-4412-6914-0

First edition published by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. in 1986.

Second revised and updated edition published by Regal in 2009.

Ebook edition originally created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

Preface

How to Use the Study Guide

Introduction

Part 1: The Kingdom Has Come

1. A Powerful Experience

2. The Kingdom of God

3. Caught Between Two Ages

4. The Gospel of the Kingdom

5. Power and Authority

Study Session 1: The Kingdom Has Come

Part 2: The Power Encounter

6. The Fight

7. A War Zone

8. Christians, Too

9. Fearing God’s Power

Study Session 2: The Power Encounter

Part 3: Power Evangelism

10. A Remarkable Encounter

11. Power Evangelism

12. How I Discovered Power Evangelism

13. A Growing Church

Study Session 3: Power Evangelism

Part 4: The Divine Appointment

14. God’s Appointment Book

15. The Process of Conversion

16. Launching Points

17. Winning Whole Households

Study Session 4: The Divine Appointment

Part 5: Signs and Wonders and Worldviews

18. In the Eye of the Beholder

19. The Excluded Middle

20. How Do Westerners See the World?

21. How Jesus Saw the World

22. Power Wrapped in Love

Study Session 5: Signs and Wonders and Worldviews

Part 6: The Works of Jesus

23. Glimpses of God’s Love

24. Power Over Demons

25. Power Over Disease

26. Power Over Nature

27. Power Over Death

Study Session 6: The Works of Jesus

Part 7: Signs and Wonders in the Church

28. Christ’s Method of Discipleship

29. Keys to Discipleship

30. Commissioning Ministry

31. Transferring Ministry

Study Session 7: Signs and Wonders in the Church

Afterword: What Shall I Do?

Appendix A: Signs and Wonders in Church History

Appendix B: Signs and Wonders in the Twentieth Century

Appendix C: Turning the Evangelical Key

Appendix D: Power Evangelism and the Megachurch

Endnotes

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments

PREFACE

On October 6, 2006, Christianity Today published the results of a survey titled The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals. The editors and a distinguished panel of 62 authors decided that Power Evangelism was the twelfth most influential book, just behind Richard J. Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and ahead of Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict.

John Wimber, who died November 17, 1997, would have been gratified to know that this book, which captured the heart and soul of his ministry, was so highly regarded today. This is why I was so pleased when the editors at Regal Books decided to publish a new edition of Power Evangelism.

When we wrote Power Evangelism in 1984, we never imagined that it would generate such remarkable influence. Terms in the book such as

power encounter,

divine appointment, signs and wonders and power evangelism itself are now common currency among Christians from a variety of traditions.

Power Evangelism, however, produced more than sales and popularity. Countless reviews and books have been written defending or attacking its ideas. Seminaries and Bible schools have sponsored theological symposiums to debate the pros and cons of power evangelism. Theologians and pastors have excoriated or championed what even we admit are radical—though in no way novel—concepts surrounding the Great Commission.

While I have been pleased to see that the influence of Power Evangelism has been considerable, it did not meet my expectations, at least in Western culture. The premise of this book is that Scripture teaches that power evangelism—the proclamation and supernatural demonstration of the kingdom of God—is the most effective way of winning followers of Christ.

Power evangelism encounters in the Bible and Church history result in families, villages and even communities dramatically converting to Christ en masse (see appendix A). Missionaries in developing and third-world cultures report similar phenomena (see appendix B). But we rarely hear of reports in North America and Western Europe such as Erlo Stegen’s ministry to the Zulus in South Africa, in which a woman was delivered of a demon and immediately returned to her village, preached the gospel and led hundreds to Christ. Oh, there are testimonies in Western culture of individuals being healed and, as a result, becoming followers of Christ. But rarely do witnesses to these miraculous encounters become believers themselves. Why?

There are many reasons (see chapter 20). None of these is mutually exclusive; taken together, they capture the mind of modern, Western men and women:

• Rationalism, not to be confused with rational thinking, seeks a rational explanation for all experience, making reason the chief guide in all matters of life. Supernatural events fly in the face of rationalism, and thus, a rational explanation explains away power evangelism.

• Individualism places an emphasis on independence and self-reliance, and with it the desire to control everything—people, things, events and even future events. Thus, the individual, not the group (family, clan, community) reigns supreme.

• Materialism assumes that nothing exists except matter and its movement and modifications; only what can be seen, tested and proved is real. This warps our thinking, making us live as though the material world is more real than the spiritual, blinding us to the supernatural.

• Relativism denies that there are absolute truths, making all truth dependent on personal experience. Thus, when someone encounters God and becomes a follower of Christ, those around him or her say, That’s truth for you, but it isn’t truth for me.

• Secularism is a lethal combination of the above; the idea that we live in a material universe that is closed off from divine intervention. Because power evangelism presupposes that God does intervene in the affairs of men and women, the secularist rejects it a priori.

All of these trends have dovetailed to transform Western culture into what today is commonly called the post-modern era. We live in a pluralistic society that is skeptical of any objective truth—whether scientific, religious or philosophical—as a way of understanding reality. Thus, post-moderns believe there is no true truth, to borrow a term from Dr. Francis Schaeffer, from which we can make spiritual or moral sense of the world.

This means that similar power evangelism events in, say, a small village in the Amazon and in Manhattan will have dramatically different responses and interpretations among the witnesses. For example, the response to a physical healing in the name of Jesus (and with it the clear articulation of the gospel) in a remote Amazon village would likely result in many other conversions among the villagers. The villagers would interpret the event as a supernatural encounter with God, and they would accept the explanation of who that God was from those who prayed for the healing. The witnesses would see what happened as applying to their own lives and become Christ followers.

Those living outside of Western culture tend not to be blinded to the supernatural by secularism and post-modernism (see chapter 19). To them, the world is not limited to the material, and God is active in the affairs of everyday life. And they hold their clan and community in high regard; they are not individualistic. Thus, power evangelism events in these cultures touch whole groups of people.

In Manhattan, witnesses to a similar power evangelism event would not see it as relevant to themselves. They would tend to seek an alternative explanation for what happened, perhaps calling it a hoax or a misunderstood medical anomaly. They might even acknowledge it is real for the person being healed, and that’s all that mattered. Thus, power evangelism does not carry the punch in Western culture that it does in much of the developing or ancient world.

One pastor of an evangelical church in Alaska illustrated the skepticism among believers regarding the supernatural. A member of his church witnessed several healings while on a short-term mission trip to Peru, something he shared with the entire congregation. The next day, a member of the church told the pastor that the missionary was either lying or deluded! I asked the pastor if the skeptic believed in the resurrection of Christ. Yes, he does, the pastor replied. He just doesn’t believe anything supernatural can happen today.

While cultural trends help to explain the unmet expectations of power evangelism in the West, they are far from the only factors. American Idol Christianity—the idea that superstar leaders are the exclusive spokespeople for Christ—also hamstrings the Church’s witness.

John Wimber believed that God called rank-and-file believers to a powerful influence on the world. He was passionate about the idea that all believers have the gifting and abilities to effectively share the gospel with others. But they need to be taught how to do what he called The Stuff—by which he meant how to express spiritual gifts and speak to others about Christ. This is a practical task; an equipping task.

In this regard, John Wimber was a populist pastor, releasing the ministry to the masses and challenging leaders to be equippers, thus fomenting a revolution that influences churches to this day.

John’s healing seminars and conferences were examples of this principle in action. Believers did not attend these events to be prayed for and healed by John; they enrolled in order to learn how they could pray for the sick themselves. Most sessions ended with packed auditoriums or classrooms of people praying over each other while John Wimber stood at the corner of the stage, smiling, or, in some instances, even slipping out the back!

I was raised in the Episcopal Church and recently worshipped at a parish in Del Mar, California. At the conclusion of the service, the congregation was invited by the priest to receive healing prayer from a team of laypeople who had been equipped for the task. Their approach was exactly as John Wimber had taught thousands of believers to pray in his seminars and conferences.

John Wimber’s ministry has been rightly described as the democratization of healing, in contrast to the many healing evangelists that dot the landscape today. His goal, as always, was to release the ministry to the people. This was perhaps the foundational principal of power evangelism.

But something happened in the late 1980s with the introduction in the Vineyard movement of prophets from the Latter Reign Movement of the 1950s. Their ministry, built on the idea that there are super-anointed men, moved the Vineyard and—for a while—John Wimber away from equipping ordinary people to do the work of the ministry. It wasn’t the prophetic gift that John objected to; it was the ministry model that it came wrapped in that turned average believers into a passive audience as opposed to empowered ministers.

John could see the shift, and he expressed dismay about it in sermons and in private conversations with me. But he became ill and died before he could fully correct it. The superstar prophets had a corrosive influence on power evangelism, dulling John’s message and ministry. (The broader rise of mega churches is another contributor to the undermining of equipping believers for effective evangelism and ministry. Again, see appendix D for my thoughts on this trend.)

My hope is that the publication of this new edition of Power Evangelism will influence a revival of the equipping of the saints to a vital witness and move the Church away from American Idol Christianity—the abdication of the ministry to superstar healing evangelists, prophets or mega pastors.

Kevin Springer

Camarillo, California

January 2009

HOW TO USE

THE STUDY GUIDE

Effective personal evangelism is not the product of happenstance. It requires understanding, good examples and personal practice for success. In other words, evangelism is a learned art.

When Jesus first called the disciples, He said, Come follow me, and I will make you fishers of men (Matt. 4:19). Successful fishermen are careful planners. Their actions are premeditated, based on careful study, experience and the answers to simple questions:

• What kind of fish are we going for? This determines where they will fish and the type of bait they will use.

• What size fish will we catch? This determines the strength of fishing line they will need.

• What license is required? Illegally caught fish cannot be kept.

• Where are we going to fish? Successful fishermen rely on accurate maps and experienced guides to find the best spots.

There’s nothing haphazard about successful fishing. It’s the same for fruitful evangelism. We need to know about the kind of people we are reaching out to (and the most appropriate way to speak to them), our spiritual authority, and our divine guidance. The Study Guide will help you grow in all of these areas.

Jesus also compared evangelism to farming (see Matt. 13:3-43). Farmers work different types of seeds and soils, fertilizers and irrigation methods. They must pay close attention to the weather and plant and harvest at just the right time. They must be patient, acknowledging their dependence on time and God’s grace for fruitfulness.

The wise farmer leaves little to chance, and the wise Christian should do the same when spreading the seed of the kingdom of God in the world. My purpose, then, is to equip you to be effective fishers of men and women, to be wise harvesters of souls.

At the end of each section of this book, you will find a project for small groups, though inspired and eager individuals will be able to adapt the material for personal study. I have a variety of small groups in mind: Sunday School classes, interdenominational Bible studies, fellowship gatherings, prayer groups and church service teams.

I have several objectives for small groups that use the Study Guide. First, it is an aid for individual study, helping to highlight key issues raised in Power Evangelism and to stimulate thought and prayer. Second, it is a guide to group discussion and group exercises concerning salient points raised in the book. A byproduct of this discussion is the inspiration and motivation for power evangelism. Third, it is a manual from which participants may learn how to lead others to faith in Christ.

To achieve these three objectives, I have developed seven sessions, which correspond to the book’s seven sections. The purpose statements at the beginning of each session will inform you about what you should expect to learn. Pay close attention to these statements; I have worded them carefully. Usually, the objective has two parts: (1) gaining understanding about some topic (such as divine appointments or worldviews), and (2) learning a new skill (such as how to break the ice in conversation with a stranger).

The seven sessions are most effectively covered at weekly intervals. This allows enough time to read and meditate on the four or five short chapters in each of the book’s sections. More frequent gatherings will deny crucial individual study, prayer and practice time; less frequent meetings will frustrate and discourage those eager to share their faith with others.

I recommend that the meetings always begin in worship and prayer. Byproducts of worship are a learning environment, open hearts to the Holy Spirit, and faith for sharing the gospel. It is neither my place nor my desire to dictate a particular style of worship for your group; that is best determined by your particular tradition. God sees and recognizes the attitude of your heart; that inner disposition of surrender and thanksgiving that may be expressed in exuberant singing, contemplative prayer and faithful liturgy. Usually, small-group prayer and worship works well when a trained musician (a guitar or piano player) leads the groups in singing. Regardless of your worship style, we encourage you to invite the Holy Spirit to come among you, teach you, and release His love and power in you during the gathering.

The second part of the meeting is usually discussion, which in the first few meetings is based on the questions provided in the Study Guide. Later, the discussion will focus on your experience in personal evangelism. As we wrote the questions, we kept in mind a Persian proverb: It is harder to ask a sensible question than to supply a sensible answer. We think sensible questions for the purposes of small groups are discussion starters only, and they are intended to elicit other questions related to each topic. Many questions will point participants back to the book, forcing them to reread key sections carefully.

The main ingredient to a successful discussion is a gifted leader—a person who brings out the best in others without dominating the discussion. I do not believe the leader must be a great teacher or a fully matured evangelist with all the answers. Another factor in successful discussions is for each participant to review the questions before each session so that he or she can contribute thoughtful insights. The last part of the meeting is prayer to put into action during the week what has been discussed. The most important quality for a successful small group is the willingness of participants to take risks, to step out in faith, and to rely on the Spirit’s leading and talk to people about Christ.

For many people, personal evangelism is quite threatening, even frightening. Do not be alarmed by this. If you come with an open heart and a willingness to take some risks, you will experience some success. All of this takes time. Throughout the seven sessions, you will grow in confidence, and many of you will see friends and family members come to a saving faith in Christ.

My hope is that this Study Guide will inspire you to spread the gospel. If as a result of this study only one person is saved because of you, it will have fulfilled our purpose.

INTRODUCTION

I knew little about God when I converted to Christianity in 1962.¹ A fourth-generation unbeliever, I had received no Christian training as a child. As an adult, I had neither belonged to nor regularly attended a church. At 29 years of age, I was a jazz musician with a soaring career and a diving marriage. The reason for my conversion to Christianity was simple: my life was in a shambles and I was told that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ offered hope from the despair. Certainly, my conversion was not the result of sincere intellectual enquiry into the mysteries of God.

Carol, my wife, also committed her life to Christ in 1962. A young mother with three children and another on the way, she had to contend with my disorderly lifestyle and her own gnawing sense of guilt for having turned away from her Christian heritage. She had been raised in the Church and had attended Christian parochial schools. So, like me, she too had turned to Christianity out of deep personal need, but unlike mine, her conversion also had an intellectual component. Her questions—about God and Satan, heaven and hell, salvation and damnation—were many and urgent. For Carol, reasonable answers to these questions were the foundation of faith.

For both of us, the results of our conversions were the same: freedom from guilt and the fear of death, a purpose for living, and a renewed marriage. We also immediately plunged into personal evangelism. There were so many who had not heard the gospel! Family members, friends, strangers—anyone willing to listen—heard the news of Jesus from us. But soon it became apparent that Carol and I each approached evangelism differently, perhaps due to our dissimilar backgrounds.

For Carol, a clear logical presentation of the gospel was central to the evangelistic task. She wanted to answer all the questions (even when people were not asking them!), always aiming for a solid intellectual base to the conversion. I relied more on my intuition; a spiritual guidance system that told me when people were ready to give their lives to Christ. I frequently interrupted Carol’s presentations (much to her