Vineyard Movement Research Paper

After understanding the heart of John Wimber, to get to the root of discovering the movement was from God; we must dive into the fruit of the movement. One of the first fruits that have been birthed out of the Vineyard Movement was their worship songs. In the 1990s the Vineyard church forever shaped modern contemporary Christian music. As reported in Christian Today: “The songs on the 'Come Now is the Time to Worship' (1998) and 'Hungry' (1999) albums, particularly their title songs, are some of the most well-known of the following decade (3)” It’s through this time of birthing songs the Vineyard became known as a church with great emotional response to their singing full of exuberant praise, dancing, crying, and wailing to the Lord. While
some felt that the Vineyard Worship was to full of emotionalism the leadership in the Vineyard Church did their best to help prevent their worship services from becoming a show. While discussing the 1990’s leadership of the Mumfords the Ireland leaders of the Vineyard Worship Movement (and later parents of the band Mumford and Sons) an interview recalled “Cooke recalls a worship training session in which the Vineyard UK and Ireland directors John and Eleanor Mumford were teaching people on praying for the presence of the Holy Spirit. During the session they asked for the lights to be switched on and told the band not to play. Cooke says: "It was like they were doing everything physically possible to make sure that anything that was going to happen in the room once we had invited the Holy Spirit to increase his presence there, we knew that it really was the Lord, and not just something that was happening from the stage. "It was such a low-hype environment, and yet the Lord really ministered to people and it was really very profound. It's something that don't see that happen a lot these days, but personally I love that. (6).” The worship of the Vineyard was a cry of desperation to have the Lord invade their life. It was not a show, as a church planting movement the Vineyard kept their songs simple so as the church multiplied new church plants could play simple songs to lead their church plants into worship.
The next fruit that came out of the Vineyard church was their emphasis on Revival.
However, one of the greatest known Revivals that was birthed out of the Vineyard Movement became one of the most controversial revivals that really caused people to question the spiritual soundness of the Vineyard movement. That revival was the “Toronto Blessing”, a movement that grew to fame for services being full of “spiritual drunkedness” people constantly being “slain in the spirit”, and others rolling around the floor barking like wild animals. To quote one person who had contact with blessing: “Bruce Trevor, a City solicitor, was still breathing in sharp intakes a few minutes after the service. "It comes to me in all sorts of ways. Currently it affects my lower jaw. It shakes and trembles. In the past I have roared, shaken with laughter, cried and whirled my arms. The more you co-operate the more the spirit regards you as an open vessel and will move you. Sometimes it's in a church context, sometimes it's outside. (7)”. The Toronto Blessing as it became known was full of so many spiritual manifestations that Wimber himself had to go up to help provide direction for the church. However, due to a difference between Wimber and the Toronto Airport Vineyard the church decided to part ways with the Vineyard Church becoming independent. When discussing this decision with churches that were part of the Vineyard Wimber explained: “the Canadian congregation had lost the association's
"endorsement" because it had encouraged and showcased the animal sounds and other such "exotic" expressions to draw attention to itself we cannot at any time endorse, encourage, offer theological justification or biblical proof-texting for any exotic practices that are extrabiblical whether in Toronto or elsewhere," Wimber wrote. "Though we understand that when the Holy Spirit is manifest among us there may be phenomena that we do not understand, it is our conviction that these manifestations should not be promoted, placed on stage, nor used as the basis for theologizing that leads to new teaching, (8)" However the damage to the Vineyard reputation was already taking its toll. People began to feel the Vineyard was a movement of spiritual excess. However, this did happen due to Wimbers philosophy of “Letting the bush grow before trimming it”. Wimber did not ever want to seem like he was quenching the spirit therefore because of this the weak fruit was allowed to grow and spread across the Vineyard movement.