In an online kerfuffle over the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), Alisa Childers claimed that the movement is “one of the greatest threats to the gospel in this moment in church history.” She has made this claim regularly on her podcast. In Childers’ view, the NAR leadership structure in which individual apostles govern a church or network of churches is key. Since she holds to an elder-led church, she is suspicious of non-denominational congregations or networks led by a single person, even when that person disavows NAR. It’s the structure, not the title, that makes a person or network NAR.
Childers’ view of the NAR is rooted in three books by Doug Geivett and Holly Pivec. Now emeritus, Geivett taught philosophy at Biola, and Pivec is a Biola alumna. Beginning in 2014, Geivett and Pivec launched a critique of NAR in the genre of popular evangelical polemics. These polemics are theological criticisms of one part of the movement by another. Geivett and Pivec’s account, however, conflates distinct views and trajectories to portray the NAR as a vast and dangerous movement.
Their overly-broad definition of the NAR is why the category has outlived its usefulness. By now, it seems everyone knows that Peter Wagner coined this description of a loose but salient movement within low-church Protestantism that combined an ecclesiology of apostles and prophets, the Seven Mountain Mandate, and spiritual warfare (see previous editions of The Protestant Mind on each of these elements). But, several decades into this phenomenon, the distinction between the movement Wagner described and what was created gets lost. Most of the contributors to the book The New Apostolic Churches (1998) did not see themselves as “apostles.” With his eye always on the latest trends in church growth, Wagner was describing the rise of network Christianity.
The NAR is the invention of Peter Wagner. What goes under the NAR label is part of a larger movement of congregational networks created by members of the silent generation and baby boomers after 1965. After his death in 2016, Wagner divided the organizations he created among his heirs, all of whom are now in their seventies. The NAR will not outlive them.
Childers’ reliance on Geivett and Pivec is one example of confusing what Peter Wagner described with what he built. He reported on the rise of non-denominational networks, but he built a distinctive NeoCharismatic version of those networks. This leads to the second problem: how to describe these networks theologically. This problem is more acute because networks tend to dissolve or realign as a founder dies or changes theological positions. I prefer to label what Wagner built as NeoCharismatic because it better captures the theological development of different strains in the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement.
Before I tackle the theological distinctives, let me explain the larger networks.
Non-Denominational Network Protestantism
What I have called the new evangelical populism of the past two decades is a coalition of conservative Protestants, most of whom are part of recent non-denominational megachurches and networks. These networks are forms of congregationalism, in which the local congregation has autonomy. Some networks eschew any denominational label, while others have become denominations or are loosely associated with a denomination. Nevertheless, they all represent strong forms of non-conformity, and thus carry anti-institutionalism within their DNA. This is what links these networks to Baptists in the evangelical world and Assemblies of God in the Pentecostal-Charismatic world.
One can divide these networks into two broad types. The first type is the evangelical networks of Bible churches, independent Baptists, or seeker-sensitive congregations. The Bible church and Baptist ecosystem in Phoenix that created Phoenix Seminary exemplifies a broad dispensational evangelical network of congregations.
A second broad type is independent Charismatic networks. In their book The Rise of Network Christianity (2017), Brad Christerson and Richard Flory described these networks by building on the research of sociologist Donald Miller.
Miller called emerging networks of Charismatic congregations “new-paradigm churches.” His five-year study Reinventing American Protestantism (1997) focused on Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel congregations (now Calvary Chapel Association), the Association of Vineyard of Churches (now VineyardUSA), and Hope Chapel network (affiliated with The Foursquare Church started by Aimee Semple McPherson). These networks spanned the Pentecostal-Charismatic world. When he published his results, Miller claimed he was witnessing “a second reformation.”
As Miller finalized Reinventing American Protestantism, Peter Wagner organized the “National Symposium on the Postdenominational Church” in May 1996. The speakers came from Wagner’s church-growth friends and his new Pentecostal and Charismatic friends. Most likely influenced by Alvin Toffler’s blockbuster book The Third Wave (1980), Wagner had coined the term “third wave” in 1983 to describe what he saw happening in Vineyard churches under John Wimber. He wrote The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit (1988) about evangelicals’ adoption of Charismatic spirituality as a separate phenomenon from its adoption by mainline Protestants and Catholics.
By 1996, Wagner was looking for a new label to describe the new Charismatic and non-Charismatic networks of congregations in evangelicalism. This is what led him to coin the NAR label. There were several influences on Wagner that caused him to stop using the term “post-denominational” in favor of NAR.
The first influence was church-growth advocates. Miller was not alone in calling these new networks a second reformation. The Methodist scholar Lyle Schaller claimed that a reformation was already happening in The New Reformation (1995). The churches leading this reformation replaced hierarchy within a denomination with governance entirely within the local congregation. They combined this with a focus on prayer, new musical forms of worship, and a sensitivity to cultural shifts. These were the seeker-sensitive congregations with contemporary, 1970s worship music exemplified by Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard movement.
Fellow Methodist George Hunter agreed with Schaller’s definition, but called these churches “apostolic” in his book Church for the Unchurched (1996). Hunter meant churches that reached the unchurched by recovering an apostolic ministry grounded in building relationships through small groups. These congregations had in practice rejected denominational hierarchy, even if some of them were still technically part of a denomination.
The networks growing out of new megachurches like Saddleback Church, founded by Rick Warren in 1980, and Willow Creek Community Church, founded by Dave Holmbo and Bill Hybels in 1975, were of particular interest to Schaller and Hunter. Deploying a more seeker-sensitive model of evangelism, these congregations formed their own relational networks even if, as with Saddleback, they remained part of a denomination. Saddleback is now independent, breaking with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2023 over the hiring of women pastors.
One of the buzzwords describing this phenomenon was post-denominationalism. Baby Boomers were leaving denominations and becoming a “post-denominational generation,” as San Francisco Chronicle religion writer Don Lattin put it in 1995. Wagner convened a symposium on post-denominationalism, pointing to these new networks of Charismatic and evangelical congregations that a 1991 Christianity Today article, “The New Denominations,” called “wildflowers” in the garden of denominationalism.
In interviews conducted for his book The Violent Take It by Force (2024), Matthew Taylor points to a lunch prior to the start of the 1996 conference where the NAR label was chosen. Larry Stockstill was among those present. A former Baptist and graduate of Oral Roberts University, Stockstill had turned Bethany World Prayer Center (now Bethany Church) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana into a Charismatic megachurch by the early 1990s. He also implemented a small group model, which Stockstill described in The Cell Church (1998). Apostolic, for Stockstill, meant maintaining a pattern of ministry centered on relationships and small groups that he saw in Jesus’ choosing the twelve and the use of the house church in the first century.
NAR initially referred to the emergence of megachurch-led networks. This is what the collection of authors in Wagner’s edited volume The New Apostolic Churches primarily represented.
Wagner, however, was not content to describe this new reformation. He wanted to shape and lead it. Although he was unsuccessful in shaping the larger movement of network Protestantism that Schaller, Hunter, and Miller described, he built his own network under the label NAR. The NAR became a subset of networks within a larger movement. Even when Wagner held the NAR together, its networks remained a small part of a larger whole.
With Wagner’s death in 2016, many networks have realigned, making it even more challenging to identify which networks are NAR. The constant overlap, dissolution, fragmentation, and realignment among these independent Charismatic networks compound the problem.
Splitting the Independent Charismatics
Between 1980 and 2008, Wagner went through two dramatic theological shifts. During the 1980s, he moved from a non-Charismatic to a Charismatic evangelical. John Wimber, who led the Vineyard movement from 1982, was key to this development. Then, beginning in 1988, Wagner slowly shifted from Charismatic to NeoCharismatic evangelical. In the process, he split with John Wimber and absorbed theologies from different parts of the independent Charismatic networks. In classic American style, Wagner believed in what he called “consecrated pragmatism,” or doing what works, and his theology shifted accordingly.
Wagner’s split with John Wimber occurred during a series of debates between 1988 and 1997. These debates were about the nature of contemporary prophecy, spiritual warfare, and the issues stemming from the Toronto Blessing revival (1994-1996), especially participants’ shaking, quivering, falling down, and laughing. As a result of these debates, theological fractures occurred in the independent Charismatic networks that differentiated Charismatics who aligned more with Wimber from the NeoCharismatic theology Wagner developed.
This also led to splits over the nature of prophecy. By 1989, Wayne Grudem had become an elder in a local Vineyard congregation. His view of prophecy as “reporting something God spontaneously brings to mind” became the standard view, in part because it explained what Wimber was doing in giving “words of knowledge.” During meetings, Wimber would tell the congregation an impression that came to his mind, like that someone had a back problem. If a person stood in response, Wimber would then pray for God to heal them.
Grudem became the theological connection between the independent evangelical networks and Wimber’s Vineyard movement in the 1990s. When Grudem released his systematic theology (1994), it skyrocketed because Grudem combined historic premillennialism, Charismatic prophecy, and complementarianism. In doing so, he managed to forge a connection between the Bible church and Baptist networks and the independent Charismatic networks. Grudem’s move to Phoenix Seminary in 2001 merely solidified this status and helped to turn the Southwest corridor from Phoenix to Anaheim into a new evangelical hotbed.
Wagner did not go with Grudem. Wagner admitted that he did not understand what Vineyard apologists meant by prophecy until he read Bill Hamon’s Prophets and Personal Prophecy (1987). Hamon came out of the Latter Rain Movement (LRM), a Canadian Pentecostal revival in the 1950s, but he offered his own idiosyncratic interpretation of the LRM’s emphasis on the fivefold ministries listed in Ephesians 4:11.
Whereas Grudem had differentiated between Old Testament prophets and New Testament prophecy, Hamon saw them as functionally the same. Hamon also argued that the office of the prophet was a permanent part of God’s plan. He used the distinction Kenneth Hagin made in the 1950s between a “rhema word” and a “Logos word” to differentiate between prophecy and Scripture. Rhema referred to a spoken word from God through the prophet, while Logos was Christ and Scripture.
The prophet revealed the mind of Christ to humanity through a rhema word specific to a present situation. Although not replacing Scripture, the prophet replaced Christian tradition as the inspired interpreter of scripture and contemporary events.
Hamon was in the audience when Wagner announced the NAR label. It was a perfect fit, because Hamon’s vision of a post-denominational church was a series of networks led by apostles who were, in turn, guided by prophets. Wagner embraced Hamon’s view over Grudem’s.
Even though he had split with Wagner, Wimber managed to hold his movement together until the Toronto Blessing erupted in 1994. Randy Clark, a protégé of Wimber, preached at the Toronto Airport Vineyard. Things started happening, such as people spontaneously breaking out in laughter. The pastor John Arnott worked with Clark to maintain some loose boundaries, but did not want to stop the manifestations of revival. As a result, Wimber formally separated from Arnott’s congregation, resulting in new networks forming out of the Vineyard.
After Wimber’s death, the Vineyard developed its current position. It became a Charismatic and evangelical association of congregations. Several networks among the independent Charismatic networks fractured with some following Wagner and others, like Randy Clark, forging their own ministries. Many of these independent networks have been described as NAR when they should not be.
Becoming NAR
The NAR refers to a small group of Charismatic networks that followed Wagner down the road to a NeoCharismatic theology. I still hold to my claim in 2021 that there are three major elements of this theology. The first is the restoration of the offices of prophet and apostle, largely shaped by Bill Hamon. The true church must be governed by apostles who are officially installed into the office by a recognition of their spiritual gifts. Those occupying the office of prophet generally are the ones who discern the apostles. In Wagner’s case, Cindy Jacobs and Chuck Pierce were prophets who told him he was an apostle.
The difference between Charismatics and NeoCharismatics is not simply over the offices of apostle and prophet. It’s also over how to understand contemporary prophecy. Beginning with Kenneth Hagin, the distinction between a “rhema word” and a “Logos word” is a NeoCharismatic development that differentiates Hagin’s Rhema network and Wagner’s NAR network from others. When combined with the office of prophet, it creates a more elevated understanding of contemporary prophecy. The prophet must now receive regular “words” from God to direct and guide the nation and the church. This is what one sees happening with the so-called Trump prophecies.
The second element is strategic-level spiritual warfare, a position I explained in a previous newsletter. Rooted in the idea that there are territorial spirits over cities, countries, and cultures, Wimber and most Pentecostals explicitly rejected it. While all Pentecostals and Charismatics believe in spiritual warfare and the reality of demons as personal agents, they do not hold to, or remain ambivalent, about a hierarchy of demons with some controlling vast territories or that these territorial spirits must be identified and confronted as part of evangelism and mission. This position is one of the more controversial NeoCharismatic developments.
The final element is an approach to cultural transformation grounded in the Americanization of Abraham Kuyper’s theology. Wagner called it “Dominionism,” which picks up on the Christian Reconstructionist interpretation of Kuyper. He shared the postmillennial position of Christian Reconstructionism, but expressed this position through the Seven Mountain Mandate that Lance Wallnau developed in the early 2000s. For Wagner, the move into postmillennialism and Dominionism recovered what Latin American Liberation theologians told him was missing from his theology of church growth in the 1970s.
Because the Seven Mountain Mandate is an extension of Kuyperian sphere-sovereignty, it maintains Kuyper’s interpretive flexibility. For Lance Wallnau, the Seven Mountain Mandate reinforces a soft Christian nationalism, but for others it is simply a way of engaging in cultural transformation. Even with Wallnau, it’s more of a Judeo-Christian nationalism because Wallnau is a Christian Zionist. It’s hard to find persons in the independent Charismatic networks who are not Christian Zionists.
The challenges in sorting the networks of independent Charismatic Christianity are why the NAR label needs to be left behind. With Wagner’s death, the NAR, strictly speaking, reduces to his heirs like Cindy Jacobs, Chuck Pierce, Lance Wallnau, Ché Ahn, and Lou Engle. Since all of Wagner’s heirs are in their seventies, there is already realignment happening in the networks. Now in his nineties, Bill Hamon’s networks will not outlive him either. This does not mean that the congregations will suddenly die. They will simply align with another network or a new leader.
To most outsiders, this world of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity remains a black box. Even evangelicals like Doug Geivett and Holy Pivec have a hard time penetrating its inner workings. They instinctively pivot toward John MacArthur’s description of a Charismatic Chaos (1992), which MacArthur wrote in response to everything Wimber and Wagner stirred up. This is one reason why I could not recommend their work on the NAR.
Secular journalists and mainline Protestants are just as puzzled. Since Matthew Taylor published his book, most rely on Taylor’s analysis, which is the best volume to date. Taylor recognizes that the NAR is a smaller network, but starting with Paula White-Cain, as he does, tends to cause the reader to confuse her with the NAR. Paula White-Cain may share some beliefs with Wagner’s heirs, but it’s better to call her NeoCharismatic than NAR.
Many of the beliefs in the NAR will outlive it. It’s better to classify such beliefs as NeoCharismatic developments in the Pentecostal-Charismatic world than NAR. This is how one holds together the prosperity theology of Paula White-Cain with the ecclesiology of apostles and prophets among NAR adherents.
