Here is another transcript from June 2005. Thanks Debbie Handy for sharing this old newsletter. (I have revised and expanded the original version - JB) :
How We Began
Jim Bentley, pastor
Before we
were Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Gadsden or before we were asked to change
our name to Gadsden Vineyard Church by the national Association of Vineyard
Churches (now know as VineyardUSA) we were Christians looking for “More.”
In 1980, I was a
high school art teacher at Glencoe and Hokes Bluff High Schools. I had been
following Keith Green and Last Days Ministry when Keith was alive, and I had
also been reading a lot of books.
Looking
back, I now know that God was driving me. It wasn’t something of my own
initiative. It’s not like I decided one day, “Hey, I’ll just become crazy and
change my whole life and make my family, friends, and those at work upset and
wonder what’s wrong with me. I think I will just get crazy so that all my
friends at church will distance themselves from me and My Sunday school teacher
will want to know why I’m putting cartoons up on the wall. You know, I’m just
going to be crazy. I’ll try that.”
I was somewhat
a normal Southern Baptist member since I was eleven, and then God started this
whole thing about being serious. “Why don’t you just quit being part time with
your Christianity? Why don’t you go for broke and be a full time Christian all
the time and see where that takes you?”
1982 Wayne F., one of the guys I was talking with regularly about a
more involved spiritual life, found a Christian Life magazine in October
1982. This whole issue was about a course taught in the basement of Fuller
Seminary by some guy named John Wimber called Missions Course 510 - Signs and
Wonders. Approximately 200 seminary students (and missionaries who were on furlough) signed up for this class. Wimber
taught that God still healed and performed supernatural acts in Third World
countries and even in this country and possibly even in this class. Afterwards,
Wimber would have a “clinic.” At the end of each class, he would take a few
minutes and say something like, “Let’s see if God wants to do something.”
I thought
that Wimber was the sanest sounding guy I had ever read. Before, I had always
bounced between two places. One place was really emotional and not very
thoughtful; the other was so thoughtful that it was really dull. Wimber used
both his emotions and his knowledge and made sense while sticking his neck out
trying new things. I read the magazine in late October 1982.
1983
On
Sunday, January 16, 1983, during the second song of a Meadowbrook Baptist
Sunday morning worship service, I was sitting on the third row where we always
had sat for the last eight years. One minute I didn’t want to pray, and
the next minute I just had to go to the prayer room. I told Jan, my wife, who
was standing up with the hymnal, “Hey, I think I’ve got to go to the prayer
room.”
Jan, my first
wife, was a very practical person. However, I was not, I was more artistic and
let's say emotionally driven at times. I was really like a kite flying around
in the sky, so to speak. She said, “Well, go.”
So, I
excused myself, went out to the prayer room, and I prayed a couple of
sentences. I don’t remember what I prayed, but I knew enough to quit talking.
The second I quit talking I heard a sentence come through my mind, the
strongest sentence I’ve ever heard, not another voice but a very strong thought.
It said, “I want you to start a church.”
Out loud,
I said, “I can’t pastor or preach.” I was thinking, “I’m an art teacher.”
Just as
strongly as the first time I heard a reply, “that’s not what I said.”
People
talk about the glory of God being like a weight. (The Hebrew word for “glory”
actually means weight). The only time I ever had a physical experience that
matched this experience was when I had my wisdom teeth out and the dentist gave
me Valium. At that moment in the prayer room, I had the sensation of being
pushed down into the carpet. I felt very heavy and very relaxed at the same
time. It lifted off in a minute or so, and I realized that God had communicated
with me.
“What
does this mean? Should I give up teaching and go to seminary? What do I do?”
I finally
went outside and walked around. I couldn’t go back in and sit down. The special
guest was inside speaking about how useful Sanford’s education classes were. (I
think it was Christian Education Month.)
Everyone
I was close to was out of town. My pastor was out of town. My friends were out
of town. There was no one there but one guy that knew my trek. I found him at
the end of the service and told him what God had said, and he told me that he’d
been called and was going to seminary. He said, “You should probably go to
seminary. That’s what I’m going to do.” In reality he didn’t go to seminary
after he moved to Texas. I guess God was calling him to Texas so that he would
get a job in hospital administration.
Later in
the spring, I wrote to John Wimber. In the meantime, I talked to my pastor and
other pastors, but I was never satisfied with their answers to my questions.
However, Wimber replied and wrote me that he was going to be in Nashville in
April. He invited me to come and promised to meet with me after the meetings.
So, we
traveled to Nashville to Music Row to a church called the Belmont Church. Now,
this church had taken out all the pews where the choir had been and had a band
set up on the stage. As we entered the sanctuary, the band was singing a Maranatha
song called “As We Gather,” a really mellow praise song.
I
immediately started crying. The tears just bypassed my mind. It felt like the
scene from the movie ET where he said, “Home!” I felt like I had come home, but
I had not even met Wimber yet.
Now, that
was really weird. What was even weirder for me was this meeting was comprised
of 400 or so Church of Christ leaders from non-instrumental and instrumental
churches wearing three-piece dark blue or gray suits. I had on my blue jeans
and was with my wife and a college student that we had brought with us. A couple
from Florida had also been invited to meet John. It was obvious that we were
visitors.
Then,
this guy came up on the stage. His hair was a sandy blond color that was
beginning to turn white; he was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt with white pants
and shoes, something like Pat Boone would have worn back then.
I told my
wife, “I think that’s Wimber.” I was right.
He talked
about healing for a while, and then he said, “Let’s have a clinic.” That
wasn’t too bad. Someone heard the word “arthritis” and maybe the number “nine.”
Eventually, nine people stood up and came to the stage for people to begin to
pray for them. He told us to watch them and see if we could see what the Holy
Spirit was doing “to” and “in” them. I really couldn’t see anything except that maybe one guy was vibrating a
little.
I had
never been around this kind of thing. I could tell that whatever was happening
was important, but I had just not seen anything like this before.
The
meeting ended, and we went for supper. Then we came back for the evening
session. At the end of the session, John said, “God wants to anoint some of
you.” It looked like almost everyone in the session was a Church of Christ
minister. He asked everyone to stand. I stood up standing halfway in the aisle
because I’m a guy that doesn’t like to be trapped in the pew.
He then
said that God wanted to touch many of us in a new way and that there were
people here who needed to be refreshed. Then he asked God to send the Holy
Spirit. “In Jesus’ name, Holy Spirit, come.”
He took
the microphone, put it under his arm, and sat down on the top step of this old stage
that had seven or eight steps from the floor to the platform. Everyone was
standing, looking around at the other people standing. Nothing much was going
on. No music, just us standing and waiting. But waiting for what?
Then from
the back of the room, we heard a loud sound, something heavy hitting something
like wood. Then the sound was to the side of us. We realized that what we were
hearing were people who couldn’t stand up. They were falling backwards into the
wooden pews that had no padding. This started moving from the back of the room
toward the front slowly, two or three people falling back onto the pews on
every row.
When this
“effect or whatever you want to call it” got even with me, a guy who was
standing in the aisle across from me went nose first to the floor. Now,
backwards is one thing, especially when someone is pushing on your forehead
hard enough to cause you to lose your balance, but a Church of Christ guy in a
three-piece navy suit going down face forward - that’s impressive. That’s
really impressive. It was so impressive that his best friend crawled next to me
trying to talk to the guy whose face was on the carpet to find out if he was
okay. Wimber stood up from sitting on the top step and said in a calm voice,
“Sir, God’s with him. He’s okay.”
The
friend said back to Wimber, “I just wanted to know what happened to him, see if
he’s okay.” Eventually the best friend tried to talk to the guy down on the
carpet. I could hear the guy on carpet mumble something. The best friend got up,
walked down the aisle, went out a side door, and slammed it shut. By this time
the “effect” had spread all over the sanctuary. Wimber told the people standing
that they could bless the ones that had fallen back into the pews.
In a few
minutes the man who had stormed out came back in and apologized saying that he
just had never seen anything like this. I could hear his friend who was lying
on the floor next to me say, “I’m just fine.”
After the
session ended, I was going to leave because Wimber had disappeared, but the
team was still praying for people. We went to our car, but instead of leaving I
thought I would make one last try, so I said, "I’m going back inside and
see if I can find Wimber." So I went up to one of the people who had come
with John from California. I told Blaine Cook that I was from Alabama and was
supposed to meet John and Carol Wimber after the session. He told me that they
were going to meet at the IHOP restaurant down the street and that I could
follow him in my car.
When we
got to the restaurant, I told John and Carol Wimber that I was adopting them
that night. He told Steve, his assistant, “Give this young man a 100 cassettes
of teachings from our church.” (I would listen to them all that summer.)
That was
my first encounter. I literally stayed up all night because I had just seen
something and really didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t explain it. I told my
wife as we were driving home that this was supernatural and that I was pretty
sure this was God and not the enemy.
After
Nashville, we began a meeting in homes using the Vineyard small group model. We
did this until early 1984 and were still attending our home church. Nobody from
the church felt impressed to help do what God had asked me to do. Of course, I
wasn’t trying to get anyone to leave the church; I was just trying to tell my
friends the story.
In fact,
I went to a church that was of another denomination to talk to the pastor and
one of my best friends who went there about the things that I had seen. The
pastor said that he could see that I probably wouldn’t be happy in his church.
(Many churches believe the spiritual gifts ended with the first century
Christians, and their denomination was one of those.) At the time I didn’t
realize that he was really trying to get rid of me.
1984 In the summer of 1984, I attended my first big conference at the
Vineyard Anaheim. There were approximately 2000 people from all over the country
who attended and a few from outside of the country. The Holy Spirit was very
intense in the conference, and that was wonderful and surprising and a little
strange all at the same time. I thought that this was normal for the Vineyard
movement because I really didn’t have anything to gauge it by. Later I
discovered that this meeting was considered the all-time peak anointed
conference for two years before and after. I just thought that it was normal
for people to be manifesting demonic things over here and for someone else to
be healed over there and for others to be empowered in the front or the back of
the room. So, I came home expecting this to be the normal thing to happen in my
living room each week.
We
continued to meet in my living room where we would sing some songs and then
invite the Holy Spirit to come. We would sit and look at each other until
something happened or someone had an impression. Amazingly, God did at least
one thing every week. By January 1985, we were about a dozen folks. We count
January of 1985 as a kind of starting date since we got a checking account that
month and Nori Kelley and Debbie Handy became our first worship leaders.
In 1986
we rented the Christian Brothers’ building on Sunday afternoons, then moved to
an old fitness center for a year, and back to our living room for a year or so.
Then in January 1990 we came back to Christian Brothers and have never left.
Christian Brothers gave us their building a few years later. We bought the
Santos printing company building next door in 2001.
Friends would
come by and visit, sometimes a year or so later, and say, “You guys are always
changing a little every time we visit.” That is good. Living things are always
changing.
Jim taught art in Glencoe
and Hokes Bluff schools from 1973-1998. He has a MA in Art Education. He and
Jan were married 31 years before her passing. He and Patsy have been married
ten years. Patsy is a biblical counselor. They have seven grandchildren and two
godchildren.
