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Christy Wimber: The Girl Next Door

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DOIN THE STUFF

Christy Wimber and her husband, Sean, oversee "Doin the Stuff" which is a teaching ministry based on the compilation of John Wimber’s (Sean's father) teaching and training material from 30 years of ministry.

JOHN WIMBER 1934 – 1997

John Wimber was a founding leader of the Association of Vineyard Churches which today is one of the fastest growing church-planting movements in the world, with more than 1,500 churches worldwide. A professional musician who played the Las Vegas circuit for 5 years, John later signed with the Righteous Brothers. When John was gripped by God in 1963, he was a “beer-guzzling, drug abusing pop musician, who was converted at the age of 29 while chain-smoking his way through a Quaker-led Bible Study.”

He soon became a voracious Bible reader and after weeks of reading about life changing miracles in the Bible and attending boring church services, John asked a lay leader, “When do we get to do the stuff? You know, the stuff here in the Bible; the stuff Jesus did, like healing the sick, raising the dead, healing the blind - stuff like that?”

He was told that they didn’t do that anymore – only what they did in their weekly services. John replied, “You mean I gave up drugs for that?”

In John’s first decade as a Christian, he led hundreds of people to Christ. By 1970, he was leading 11 Bible studies that involved more than 500 people. He was asked to lead the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism & Church Growth. He later became an adjunct instructor at Fuller Theological Seminary, where his classes set attendance records.

Through extensive reading and encounters with missiologists and season missionaries, John was convinced that all the biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit should be active in the church today. He began to teach and train his church to imitate Jesus’ full-orbed kingdom ministry. He began to “do the stuff” of the Bible that he had formerly only read about.

By 1982, John joined the fledgling Vineyard movement. For the remainder of his life, John traveled extensively while teaching and ministering on evangelism and healing. He died from a massive brain hemorrhage in 1997.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

Christy grew up next door to the Wimbers. Raised in a Quaker home, she accepted Christ at a young age, but did not get serious with her faith until she was 18. At that time, Sean Wimber, who is nine years older than Christy, had gotten saved. They soon married in 1990 and began to travel internationally with John, working extensively in John’s ministry.

Since John’s death 11 years ago, Christy and Sean have worked to assemble the papers and teaching material John wrote over his 30-years in the ministry in what they call “Doin the Stuff.” This is for a family legacy as well as for the Vineyard churches. They have recently donated these papers to Regent University Library.

THE KINGDOM

Christy says the church is called to recognize what God is doing and move with His leading in salvation, healing, deliverance, etc. This is the Kingdom of God. She describes it as being “naturally supernatural” both inside and outside the church.

Christy has traveled around the world for years teaching on the Kingdom of God, at various conferences and retreats. She also has a new book release in November 2008, Everyone Gets to Play.