The so-called “Kansas City Prophets” were a group of charismatic leaders associated with the “New Apostolic” movement, including Paul Cain (1929-2019), Bob Jones (1930-2014) and Mike Bickle. For a crucial period in the late 1980s and early 1990s they were brought within the Vineyard Movement by John Wimber, and via Wimber they gained access to charismatic networks in England. Wimber had a considerable impact upon evangelicals in England and began a major conference ministry there from 1984. At the 1990 conference, held in London’s Docklands Arena and attended by 8,000 people, Wimber platformed the Kansas City Prophets. There was heightened excitement because the Prophets declared that a “revival” would break out at the conference, spreading from London to Germany and then to the whole of Europe.
The Kansas City Prophets provoked strong reactions. They were championed by Church of England charismatics such as David Pytches, author of “Does God Speak Today?” (1989), founder of the influential “New Wine” movement, and former Anglican Bishop of Chile, Bolivia and Peru. In advance of the London conference, Pytches introduced the Prophets to an English readership through his paperback, “Some Said It Thundered” (1990), which hit the top of the Christian best-seller charts but was withdrawn by the publisher because of disputes about its accuracy. The bona fide credentials of the Prophets were publicly defended by their English hosts who described them as “true servants of God, men of sound character, humility and evident integrity”. But there were also strongly negative reactions. Those within the Reformed constituency expressed alarm at the underlying theological assumptions of contemporary prophecy. Yet the staunchest challenge came from fellow charismatics, such as Clifford Hill, editor of “Prophecy Today” magazine, who became the Kansas City Prophets’ most vocal English critic. The accusations made in America against the Prophets by Ernie Gruen (another Kansas City pastor) were amplified by Hill for an English readership.
This Anglo-American controversy is a major gap in the historiography, touched on only briefly in histories of Wimber and Vineyard. Indeed, it has been deliberately neglected, perhaps because it ultimately proved an embarrassment to the English leadership. From an American perspective, Daniel Falls’s sympathetic study, “The Life and Legacy of Pat Bickle and a History of the Kansas City Prophets” (2019) – a massive volume, running to over 680 pages – entirely ignores the English connections. This paper therefore provides the first examination of the controversy as an important case-study in the transatlantic flow of charismatic ideas and personnel, and of the reception of American prophetic teaching within the English Establishment. The research is based upon archives on both sides of the Atlantic, principally John Wimber’s archives in Pennsylvania and Virginia, and Clifford Hill’s archives in Bedfordshire, as well as abundant commentary and correspondence on the Kansas City Prophets in English newspapers and magazines.