While the Vineyard continued to grow worldwide after Wimber’s death and today has more than 2,500 congregations worldwide, the group’s growth has stalled in the United States, where there are 545 churches. Most of the churches are small — reporting a median congregation size of 75 people in 2021. The Vineyard in Anaheim was one of the larger churches in the movement — reporting 674 adults and 184 children/youth in 2021.
Finding the right structure to allow Vineyard churches to work together while still following God’s will has not always been easy.
Caleb Maskell. Photo courtesy of Vineyard USA
Caleb Maskell, national director of theology and education for Vineyard USA, said the Vineyard has historically been a network of interdependent churches bound more by friendship and shared values than strict rules. Among those values is what Maskell called “a bias towards reality.”
That’s in contrast to a more “name it and claim it” style of Pentecostalism — which sometimes claims future hopes as if they are already reality. He said that in the Vineyard, it’s better to be truthful and boring rather than spectacular but inaccurate.
“We pray for healing and either God heals or doesn’t heal, and either way, blessed be the name of the Lord,” he said. “We have to be able to tell the truth. For us, faith in God’s power to lead and intervene in our lives is not at odds with discerning questions or critical inquiry.”
Early Vineyard leaders, including Wimber, had Quaker roots, which affected their leadership style. While Wimber was decisive, often taking big risks and leading in what Maskell called a “plenipotentiary” manner, he also believed saying “God told me to do this” was not enough to justify a leadership decision.
That can clash with the kind of leadership found in other charismatic or Pentecostal churches — such as the so-called New Apostolic Reformation or Network Christianity, where pastors and leaders claim to hear directly from God and make decisions on their own without consultation.
Anthea Butler, Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania, said that in so-called apostolic church movements, appealing to divine inspiration can be a kind of power play for church leaders.
“Many times when people say ‘God told me,’ that means ‘this is what I want to do and I’m going to use God to justify it,’” said Butler, who has studied charismatic and Pentecostal movements like the Vineyard. “It’s a form of authoritarianism, using God as a way to escape accountability.”
A graduate of Fuller Seminary, she lived in Southern California during the heyday of Wimber’s ministry and said he had profound influence on the way charismatic and evangelical churches operate. The Scotts’ decision to leave the Vineyard USA will cause a great deal of harm to that movement, she said.
“I found it very troubling that these people have decided that they can trash the history of what John Wimber did — and how God moved through John Wimber, and take this church into some kind of amorphous, apostolic theological conundrum,” she said. “In my opinion, this is not simply a power grab but a money grab for a property that is worth millions in Southern California.”
The Vineyard, like many other groups, is trying to balance accountability with a nimble form of governance that allows leaders to make the best decisions and act quickly and decisively, said Maskell. The group has no structural way to stop a pastor who wants to take a church and walk away.
