I was so blessed to hear this story, quite by chance—or more accurately, by providence—a few months after I retired from the United States Army as a chaplain. I was in Branson, Missouri, where I had been invited to sing at the Branson Gospel Music Convention during the week of July 14-17, 2009.

I arrived on Sunday, July 12, at the airport in Springfield, Missouri, rented a car, and began driving south to Branson. All along the way, I kept seeing pictures of Bill Medley on billboards. He was performing for the entire summer at the Moon River Theater in Branson, filling in for Andy Williams who was on vacation. Andy owned the theater, but Bill was the only entertainer whom Andy let fill in for him.

Hours later I arrived in Branson and checked into my hotel room at the Hilton at the convention center. I found out that day that soundtracks had to be on CD, not tape. I immediately phoned recording studios and made reservations to have mine transferred to a CD the next morning. So, Monday morning about 9:00 I drove through downtown Branson on the main street to the other side of town and into the countryside to the recording studio, had both songs transferred from tape to CD, and then headed back to the convention center.

Left to right: Bill Medley, McKenna Medley (daughter), Jim Linzey, Darren Medley (lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders), and Paul Revere at the Moon River Theatre (July 16, 2009).

When I got to the corner of the main street to begin my trek through all the traffic, I noticed an IHOP on the corner and thought, “This is my opportunity to easily get to the restroom.” So, I pulled into the parking lot, opened the door to IHOP, and walked in, and there, first booth on the right sat Bill Medley. His back was toward me, but I could see the side of his face. I thought, “This can’t be happening.” I walked down the aisle and went right by him and kept going. I thought, “When I leave, I’ll walk back the same way, then I can see his face to make sure that it’s Bill,” even though I knew it was him.

When I came out of the restroom, I was determined to greet him. I walked down the same aisle, and about eight feet from his booth our eyes met. There was no escaping! So, I boldly walked to the side of his table, crouched down at eye level, and asked, “Are you Bill Medley?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You and I have someone in common,” I said.

“Who?” he asked.

“Jack Colman.” Bill’s heart melted as an expression of love came over his face. “I know he was your vocal coach. He was mine, too,” I said, “and Jack used to tell me all about you.”

Bill was visibly stirred by memories, and then he shared wonderful stories about the spirituality of Jack and Jack’s wife, Sarah Jepson Coleman, who had co-written Portraits of Vision with Tommy Barnett. I was well acquainted with Sarah as well. When I was a student at Fuller Theological Seminary, where Sarah’s brother, Dr. Al Jepson, taught, I house sat for Jack and Sarah, and I sure enjoyed the tray of peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s chocolate kisses that she left for me.

Then I said to Bill, “You and I have someone else in common.”

“Who?” he asked.

“John Wimber,” I replied.

Again, Bill’s face melted with love as he spoke of John and Carol Wimber with great compassion, and shared how John was his and Bobby Hatfield’s producer and performed with them in concert on the keyboard.

After I told Bill that I studied Signs and Wonders under John at Fuller Theological Seminary and was on John’s large ministry team at the Anaheim Vineyard, Bill said, “Do you know how John came to know God?”

“No,” I answered.

“One day, John asked me, ‘What can you tell me about God?’ and I humorously replied, ‘You mean, Ray Charles?’

“Then John pointed to the sky and said, ‘No, the Great One!’”

Bill then witnessed to John about the Lord. While John did not receive Christ immediately, this prompted him to continue thinking about God until he received Him.

We can lead someone to the water, as Bill in this sense led John to God, but it does not mean that person will receive and drink of the water at that time.

I was in utter amazement that after hearing about Bill from Jack and Sarah decades earlier, and studying and ministering under John, here I was, crouched beside Bill at his table at IHOP learning how my former pastor and mentor came to Christ.

I told Bill that I was in town to perform at the Branson Gospel Music Convention that week, and he asked me if I would like to come to his concert at the Moon River Theater. I replied that I would, and he said, “The tickets are $50.” I replied that I would be happy to come, and he gave me the phone number to his road manager, whom I phoned as soon as I returned to the Hilton. The road manager was also a born again Christian, and we fellowshipped for about an hour on the phone. Then he said, “Your ticket will be waiting for you at the box office window, free of charge.” I profusely thanked him for the blessing.

After my performance at the Branson Gospel Music Convention, I went to Bill’s performance a few nights later. During Bill’s performance, he pointed at me several times and told the audience how he and I both knew some of the same people. He also promoted his Gospel CD that night and sold it at the table after his performance.

I was so blessed to have this encounter with Bill Medley and learn how he was instrumental in leading John Wimber to Jesus.

James F. Linzey studied Signs and Wonders under John Wimber at Fuller Theological Seminary and ministered under John on the Anaheim Vineyard’s Large Ministry Team. He studied voice and performance under Jack Coleman and is the chief editor of the Modern English Version Bible.

I just finished reading L. William Oliverio, Jr., monograph, Theological Hermeneutics in the Classical Pentecostal Tradition: A Typological Account. In the first six chapters, Oliverio maps the historical development of Pentecostal theology through a taxonomy of five types of historical Pentecostal hermeneutics. Along with their illustrative exemplars, these are: 1. the “original classical pentecostal hermeneutic” (Charles F. Parham, William J. Seymour, Charles H. Mason, Garfield T. Haywood); 2. the “early evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic” (Daniel W. Kerr, P.C. Nelson, Myer Pearlman); 3. the “contemporary evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic” (Gordon Fee, Roger Stronstad, Robert Menzies); 4. the “contextual-pentecostal hermeneutic” (Amos Yong, James Smith, John Christopher Thomas, Kenneth Archer); and 5. the “ecumenical-pentecostal hermeneutic” (Cecil M. Robeck Jr., Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Frank Macchia, Simon Chan and Koo Dong Yun).

Oliverio concludes by proposing a theological hermeneutic he finds most congruent towards ongoing 21st century challenges to both the worldwide Pentecostal tradition and the broader Christian tradition. One weakness to his taxonomy is that he admittedly works largely from North American Classical Pentecostal historiography. However, the interdependence between globalisation and globally diverse local Pentecostalisms, would suggest that his taxonomy comprises sufficient broadness for assessing emerging and local Pentecostal hermeneutical models worldwide.

Oliverio argues that the “original classical pentecostal hermeneutic” marked the “beginning of a new Christian tradition.” He also contends that even as the early Pentecostal movement understood its apostolic calling as that of calling the whole Church back to the root of New Testament “Pentecostal” experience, it was thereby highly ecumenical in orientation and moreover— comprising a broad range of theological diversity.

The “early evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic” later emerged through the influences of fundamentalism and modern evangelicalism, which led to a new stress on the inerrancy doctrine and creation of a “pentecostal scholasticism.” The “contemporary evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic,” emerged in the 1970’s, largely via the Lukan scholarship debates. It signified a new Pentecostal reliance on Evangelical hermeneutical methodologies, for arguing Classical Pentecostal doctrines of Spirit baptism along with the evidential tongues doctrine. Hence, this era marked a newfound appreciation for historical-grammatical methods of exegetical methods, focusing on identifying authorial meanings of scriptural texts.

I find it important to note Oliverio’s observation that the “contemporary evangelical-pentecostal hermeneutic’s stress on authorial meaning was itself philosophically rooted to the Hirschian (E.D. Hirsch) author-centered hermeneutic theory. Meanwhile, the “contextual-pentecostal hermeneutic,” which emerged in the latter part of the 1990’s, followed the Gadamerian school of thought (Hans-George Gadamer; fusion of the reader’s linguistic and conceptual horizon with the horizon of the text). Hence, this Pentecostal hermeneutic has stressed the reader’s contextual situation (especially the cultural-linguistic context) towards readings of Scripture, and the formative role this context plays towards theologizing. Oliverio identifies this phase as demarking the beginning of a truly authentic Pentecostal manner of theologizing. Yet Oliverio laments the historical wedge that has developed between these two hermeneutics, which he seeks to address through themes emerging from the “ecumenical-pentecostal hermeneutic” and his proposed “hermeneutical realism.

Although the accuracy of teaching is preeminent when judging the quality of a book, credit must be given for its tone when appropriate. From page one of Hull’s work, the reader is struck with the author’s sincerity, transparency, his passion for people, his drivenness for all that God has for him, and his willingness to risk all for his perception of the will of God in relation to the charismata.

This book comes from the heart of a pastor. More specifically, from the heart of a pastor who is trying to transition parishioners of a cessationist mindset into the fullness of the gifts of the Spirit. There is a generous mix of true-life anecdotes and biblical teaching. Some anecdotes leave you laughing or celebrating, others leave you in tears. At times his language is plain, but poignant: “If you lay your heart on the altar, someone will come and jump up and down on it” (p. 172).

Aside from Hull’s firm belief in the continuation of spiritual gifts in today’s church, even miraculous ones, perhaps his greatest contributions are in the chapters on healing and on hearing God’s voice, in which are packed practical guidelines that encourage faith while acknowledging God’s sovereignty.

It is, however, with reservations that I recommend Straight Talk to Pentecostals. With characteristic frankness, Hull admits that “I have had a prayer language for more than thirty years, but I am still not 100 percent sure it is God or my own flesh” (p. 118). More important, Hull holds an unbiblical view of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which he views as conversion (p. 116). Although he decries cessationist thinking as “inbred” and based more on “custom” than “study,” he is himself a Lukan cessationist when it comes to the baptism in the Holy Spirit, stating that the Pentecostal interpretation of Spirit-baptism is “impossible” (p. 111).

He bases his interpretation of the six occurrences of Spirit-baptism in Matthew, Mark, and Luke-Acts on the one occurrence in Paul (1 Corinthians 12:13), arguing that Paul’s usage is more weighty because it was seventh and last and twenty years removed from the “fluidity of the first years when they [the first Christians] were all trying to figure out the role of the Holy Spirit” (p. 114). One problem with this is that 1 Corinthians 12:13 appears to be the believer’s baptism by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ (a sensible and universal experience of all Christians), not the believer’s baptism in the Holy Spirit by the Heavenly Jesus that imparts a prophetic empowerment for service (a likewise sensible though not universal Christian experience; cf. R. Menzies’ Empowered for Witness). Hull shows no appreciation for the diversity of the NT writers and no appreciation for Luke’s uses of “filling” synonyms, which occur over 50 times in Acts alone. Neither does he show any appreciation for the probability that Luke, as a close companion of Paul and as someone who held Paul in high regard as a great man of God, is applying his considerable training in the Greco-Roman narrative style of historiography to clarify Paul’s epistolary writings for Christians thirty years removed from Paul. Instead, Lukan cessationist like Hull have effectively silenced Luke’s majority usage of “baptized” (3x) and “filled” (9x) in favor of Paul’s single usage of each term (1x[?]/1x). This use of Paul to parse Luke is a practice left over from cessationist Protestantism, and a hearty adieu by biblical exegetes is long overdue. (For more thorough discussion, see Roger Stronstad’s Spirit, Scripture and Theology: A Pentecostal Perspective and The Charismatic Theology of St. Luke).

Bill Jackson, The Quest for the Radical Middle: A History of the Vineyard (Cape Town, South Africa: Vineyard International Publishing, 1999), 419 pages.

New movements need their stories told and Bill Jackson, pastor of Black Mountain Vineyard Church in San Diego, has told the story of the Association of Vineyard Churches. This is an “insider” perspective because Jackson has been a part of the Vineyard movement since early in its history. Jackson’s book serves as an official history in that it is published by and sanctioned by the Vineyard leadership.

The title is the main theme in Jackson’s portrayal of John Wimber and the Vineyard movement. The middle ground is the attempt to retain the biblical foundation of Evangelicalism and the openness to the Spirit of Pentecostalism. Bill Jackson’s Vineyard history documents the ebb and flow of this challenge to balance the “Word and the Spirit” (p. 39). This “quest” is a difficult one as the history of any revivalistic and renewal movement will attest.

Jackson drew upon personal contacts, letters, interviews, audio and video-tapes, specialized web-sites, religious magazine articles and a few published works. The result is a sympathetic but sufficiently objective look into Wimber’s rich and complex life and ministry and the church renewal movement that he helped to launch.

Bill “Jax” Jackson

How this book struck me as a classical Pentecostal reviewer was to see a series of parallels between Vineyard history and Pentecostal history (and in particular the Assemblies of God of which I am a member). Let me enumerate a few similarities. First, revivalistic/renewal movements fear organizational loss of fervor. Jackson cites Max Weber’s theory of the routinization of charisma of religious movements (pp. 18, 349). As Vineyard moves into a new generation of leadership “who knew not Joseph [John Wimber]” will it sustain its growth and vitality? Second, both Vineyard and Pentecostals are “Jesus” people. For Vineyard it was Wimber’s reliance upon George E. Ladd’s theology of the kingdom as a springboard for doing the works of Jesus today. For Pentecostals it was the adoption of A. B. Simpson’s four-fold gospel of Jesus as Savior, Baptizer, Healer, and Coming King. Third, the educational thrust of both Vineyard and early Pentecostals was upon the training of pastors and church leaders. Vineyard, to this reviewer’s knowledge, has not founded a liberal arts college or seminary but has developed regional training programs for its leadership. Early Pentecostals founded Bible institutes to train its gospel workers. Fourth, God uses flawed people for His glory. For the Vineyard movement it was people like Lonnie Frisbee and Paul Cain. For Pentecostals it was Charles Parham and Aimee Semple McPherson. Fifth, crises that occur early in a movement’s story help to define its subsequent history and mission. For Vineyard it was the prophetic restoration ministries in Kansas City and the unusual spiritual phenomena in Toronto that shaped their middle-ground position of spirituality. For Pentecostals it was the role of glossolalia and the nature of the Godhead.

Bill Hull, “It’s Just Not Working” Leadership (Summer 2005), pages 26-28.

Bill Hull challenges the philosophical foundation upon which many ministries are based. We live today in a world where the church attendance number—that one number—allegedly speaks volumes about that church, its leaders, and its mission. The undue importance of that number should be seriously questioned.

Many pastors today, including myself, struggle with the ideals emphasized by the megachurch movement that has spread over the last two decades. Viewing church size alone as an indicator of success is a deception planted in minds of church leaders by a spiritual being who wishes to see the body of Christ fall.

We were stuck in the same rut that so many churches find themselves in—religious activity without real transformation.

It is refreshing to hear a leader such as Bill openly admit the spiritual struggles facing many church leaders. It is inspiring to listen to his story unfold as he makes commitments to change his philosophy and not go back. That is an example many of us younger pastors need. I applaud Bill Hull for accepting his internal struggle and working through it at a time when many leaders simply rely on the external trappings of success. To embrace the truth and commit to change may bring challenges and uncertainties, but it also transforms.

Bill’s main question to contemporary ministries is why? Why do we do what we do? Why do we do it the way we do? I can personally point to many instances where the church I serve in struggles to make disciples versus administrating programs intended to do just that. Let me give an example. There is a man who I’ll call Bob who has attended church for years with his wife and kids. He is a leader in the church that has served on committees. He and his wife are involved in Sunday worship services and his kids have attended youth programs since birth. And then all of a sudden his wife left him. They are now divorced and their teenage kids are left with a shaky spiritual foundation at best.

How does this happen? How does a family have so many “externals” going for them and yet fail to live like Christ? Bill Hull explains, “I told [my] church that the Great Commission is more about depth than strategy, and being spiritually transformed is the primary and exclusive work of the church. I told them believing the right things is not enough – being a Christian means actually following Jesus.”

We have lost this. The church has traded in the life that Christ calls us to live for an outward image. A family involved in the externals of church service and pew sitting can still lack the life of Christ within. A family that honors Christ is stronger than any other.