Carol Wimber 1937-2025: Colors of the Kingdom

‘John! John! Wake up! Jesus is God’s Son! Jesus is God’s Son!’

(Carol to John on her conversion, The Way It Was)

Carol saw what others didn’t. She painted pictures never seen before. And she expressed reality in a way that routed unreality. Thousands of pages have been written about her husband, John Wimber, and their leadership of the Vineyard movement. She painted truth best. Her book The Way It Was expresses exquisitely how God breathed renewal into the global Church through a costly ‘yes’ of two people.

Carol Wimber with her daughter Stephanie Wimber Ruppe

Someone said that ‘the purpose of art is to express the hidden voice of things.’ I hear singing in Carol’s paintings, even more so in her daughter Stephanie’s. Mother passed on to daughter something essential about the Kingdom of God (and California!) that I see on Stephanie’s canvases: bright, bold, fragrant, warm, adventurous.

Carol infuses John and her salvation with marvel (thanks a lot to Jesus, a little to the Golden State): ‘‘Whenever I remember the beautiful days of our salvation, I can almost smell the orange blossoms again. The whole experience for both of us was indelibly connected to that fragrance that cloaked Yorba Linda in those early days. The dusty warmth of the eucalyptus-lined country roads and everywhere the smell of citrus trees in bloom…I already know what heaven smells like; it will be no surprise to me. It smells like Yorba Linda in June of 1963’ (The Way It Was).

Carol’s best painting was this book, describing the wave she and John caught in post-war California. They were creative non-conformists, John a gifted musician and arranger who worked hard for the money. Carol had a natural elegance with a dark streak of despair; suicide ran in the family and tempted her. She found an anchor in John. But he couldn’t save her. On their wedding night, they prayed. Carol: ‘Dear Jesus, we don’t know what marriage is about, so will you help us, please?’ ‘Make our lives worthy of something,’ asked John.

Vegas bound because of John’s success in music, mother of two Carol bottomed out in depression. She cried out to Jesus and He broke the heaviness. Carol was usually one step ahead of John. Moving back to California shored up the family, as did a new goal of discovering Jesus together.

Carol hated pretense in anyone, especially the religious; her gaze routed it (I always felt pretentious in her presence, so I didn’t say much). She describes how John discovered Jesus' giving all for him. John took that soberly. Saying ‘yes’ to Jesus meant giving up everything. He did, beginning with career success that he exchanged for humiliating jobs. Without preaching, Carol paints the Cross as key to the Kingdom they entered together—no Pentecost without Blood.

 That river of blood (sacrificial obedience) runs throughout The Way It Was, infused with joyful gratitude and not a trace of self-pity. John and Carol joined a Yorba Linda fellowship and gathered people. They were catalytic. John (a genius) studied and became expert in the diverse expressions of American church life.

Carol's roses

The Holy Spirit fell on John and Carol and well, a movement was born that Carol depicts humorously. More blood, more power as their Spirited antics cost them a church home. ‘If it was a divorce, then they got the house, but we got the kids.’ Young people (‘we didn’t have a youth program, we were a youth program’) gravitated to what became the Vineyard, singing simple songs of love to Jesus that invited Him to heal and deliver.

Throughout each gathering ran a humble, persistent invitation to everyone present to obey Holy Spirit and do what Jesus did in the Gospels. John and Carol modeled it. Every service was a workshop in giving and receiving holy gifts aimed at what ails us—the best foundation ever for this once young Californian.  

Carol invites us into Cross and Kingdom as the Wimbers primed the Church around the world. Believers of every stripe wanted to catch this Wave and become conduits of it right where they worshipped. John and Carol cut through religious distinctives and pretense by activating the saints. A weary world was at the Wimber’s feet in Yorba Linda and in huge gatherings around the globe that changed the Body of Christ.    

The Way It Was takes us into this roar of Love and its impact on a family. Imparting heaven took a hellish toll, like a river overflowing its banks. Carol painted casualties poignantly: eldest son Chris’s death by cancer and John’s unraveling way too early. ‘I respected John always for keeping on and on even when his heart and body were breaking. I respected that man. It was a privilege to be his wife.’

The Spirited are sometimes the most afflicted. Healers don’t always receive the healing they impart. Cross and Kingdom remain in dynamic tension throughout Carol’s life. She lived a legacy. And she left us a portrait (get this book!) that lives on in us who still sing simple songs of love and pray with expectancy for every struggler: ‘Come Holy Spirit, do what only You can do.’