Name	Kathryn Kuhlman
Caption	Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman
Birth date	May 09, 1907
Birth place	Concordia, Missouri, U.S.A
Religion	Christianity
Nationality	American (of German ancestry)
Known for	Faith healing
Occupation	Evangelist
Spouse	Burroughs Allen Waltrip (Mister), October 18, 1938- ? 1948(divorced)
Death date	February 20, 1976
Death place	Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.A.
Death cause	complications from open heart surgery.
Parents	Joseph Adolph Kuhlman and Emma Walkenhorst
Mentored	Joan Gieson

Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman (May 9, 1907–February 20, 1976) was an American faith healer and evangelist.

Early life

Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman was born in Concordia, Missouri, to German-American parents. She was born-again at the age of 14 in the Methodist Church of Concordia, and began preaching in the West at the age of sixteen in primarily Baptist Churches.

Career

Kuhlman traveled extensively around the United States and in many other countries holding "healing crusades" between the 1940s and 1970s. She had a weekly TV program in the 1960s and 1970s called I Believe In Miracles that was aired nationally. The foundation was established in 1954, and its Canadian branch in 1970. Joan Gieson became her assistant for 8½ years.

Following a 1967 fellowship in Philadelphia, Dr. William A. Nolen conducted a case study of 23 people who claimed to have been cured during her services. Nolen's long term follow-ups concluded there were no cures in those cases. Furthermore, one woman who was said to have been cured of spinal cancer took off her brace and ran across the stage at Kuhlman's command; her spine collapsed the following day and she died four months later.

By 1970 she moved to Los Angeles conducting faith healing for thousands of people each day as an heir to Aimee Semple McPherson. She became well-known despite, as she told reporters, having no theological training. Two former associates accused her in the lawsuit of diverting funds and illegally removing records, which she denied and said the records were not private. According to Kuhlman, the lawsuit was settled prior to trial. As a result, she had open heart surgery in Tulsa, Oklahoma from which she died in February 1976. She left $267,500, the bulk of her estate, to three family members and twenty employees.

Healing

Kuhlman's critics claim that she deceived her audience because there is no scientific evidence to validate faith healing.

Many accounts of healings were published in her books, which were "ghost-written" by author Jamie Buckingham of Florida, including her autobiography, which was dictated at a hotel in Las Vegas. Buckingham also wrote his own Kuhlman biography that presented an unvarnished account of her life.

Many other faith healers, including Benny Hinn, who have been inspired by Kathryn Kuhlman have faced similar suspicions about their methods and practices.

References

Books by Kuhlman

Kathryn Kuhlman, I Believe in Miracles Bridge-Logos Publishers; Rev Upd edition (October 1992) ISBN 0882706578

Kathryn Kuhlman, Never Too Late Bridge-Logos Publishers (August 1995) ISBN 0882707205

External links

Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation -Official

Find A Grave Entry

Joan Gieson with Kathryn Kuhlman

Category:1907 births Category:1976 deaths Category:People from Concordia, Missouri Category:American Methodists Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale) Category:Faith healers Category:Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity Category:American Charismatics Category:Oral Roberts University people

Name	Lonnie Frisbee
Birth name	Lonnie Frisbee
Caption	Lonnie Frisbee in the 1960s
Birth date	June 06, 1949
Birth place	Costa Mesa, California, United States
Nationality	American
Death date	March 12, 1993
Years active	1966-1991 (25 years)
Style	Power evangelism, gifts of the Spirit
Influenced	Calvary Chapel, Jesus Movement, Vineyard Movement, House of Miracles, Chuck Smith, John Wimber, Mike MacIntosh, and Greg Laurie
Religion	Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity
Occupation	Pentecostal evangelist and minister
Spouse	Connie (divorced in 1973)

Lonnie Frisbee (June 6, 1949 – March 12, 1993) was an American Pentecostal evangelist and self-described "seeing prophet" and mystic in the late 1960s and 1970s. The term 'power evangelism' comes from Frisbee's ministry, some of his harshest critics for heavy use of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit came from the churches he helped found. He also influenced many prophetic evangelists including Jonathan Land, Marc Dupont, Jill Austin and others. As part of his ostracism from his former churches his work was maligned but he forgave those who tried to discredit him before his death from AIDS in 1993.

Early life and career

Frisbee was raised in a single parent home and was exposed to "sketchy, dangerous characters" as a child. He described himself as a "nudist-vegetarian-hippie". Frisbee left for San Francisco where he had won a fellowship to the San Francisco Art Academy. When Christian missionaries first met him, they said he was talking about "Jesus and flying saucers". Frisbee converted to Christianity, and joined the first street Christian community, The Living Room, a storefront coffeehouse commune of four couples in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco started in 1967. He quit the art academy and moved to Novato, California to set up a commune and later reconnected with his former girlfriend Connie whom he then married. The community was soon dubbed The House of Acts after the community of early Christians in the Acts of the Apostles. Frisbee designed a sign to put outside the house, but was informed that if he gave it an official name, it would no longer be considered a mere guest house and would be subject to renovations. The community took the sign down to avoid the financial obligation. Frisbee continued painting detailed oils including of missions. ]] Chuck Smith, meanwhile, had been making plans to build a chapel out of a surplus school building in the City of Santa Ana, near Costa Mesa when he met Frisbee. Smith's daughter's boyfriend John was a former addict who had turned to Christianity and when Smith wanted to meet a hippie John brought home Frisbee who was hitch-hiking so he could meet people to tell about Jesus and salvation. Lonnie and his wife Connie joined the fledgling Calvary Chapel congregation and Smith was struck by Lonnie's charisma, "I was not at all prepared for the love that this young man would radiate." Frisbee became one of the most important ministers in the church when on 17 May 1968 Smith put the young couple in charge of the Costa Mesa rehab house called "The House of Miracles" with John Higgins and his wife Jackie, within a week it had 35 new converts. Bunk beds were built in the garage to house all the new converts. The counterculture of hippies and surfers hung around the beaches and music and the resulting dancing was the main form of communication. This may have been the largest Christian communal group in US history. By 1971, the Jesus Movement had broken in the media with major media outlets such as Life, Newsweek and Rolling Stone covering it. Frisbee, due to his prominence in the movement, was frequently photographed and interviewed. It was also in 1971 that Frisbee and Smith parted ways because their ideological differences had become too great. Smith discounted Pentecostalism, maintaining that love was the greatest manifestation of the Holy Spirit while Frisbee was strongly involved in theology centering on spiritual gifts and New Testament occurrences. Frisbee announced that he would leave California altogether and go to a movement in Florida led by Derek Prince and Bob Mumford which taught a pyramid shepherding style of leadership and was later coined as the Shepherding Movement. Connie later re-married. Lonnie left the organization.

Vineyard Movement

Meanwhile, in May 1977 John Wimber was laying the groundwork for what would become the Association of Vineyard Churches, also known as the Vineyard Movement, he had witnessed the explosive growth of Calvary Chapel and sought to build a church that embraced the healings and miracles that he had previously been taught were no longer a part of Christian life. He began teaching and preaching about spiritual gifts and healings which did occur but it wasn't until May 1980 when Lonnie testified that the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit took hold of the church. Lonnie was invited by John Wimber to go to what was then a Yorba Linda branch of the Calvary Chapel movement, to preach. Since his early days at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, Lonnie had made a shift in his emphasis from evangelism to the dramatic and demonstrative manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit. After speaking Lonnie invited all the young people 25 and under to come forward and invited the Holy Spirit to bring God's power into their lives. Witnesses say it looked like a battlefield as young people fell and began to shake and speak in tongues. The young kids, many in Junior High and High School, were so "filled with the Spirit" that they soon started baptizing friends in Jacuzzis and swimming pools around town. The church catapulted in growth over the next few months and the event is credited with launching the Vineyard Movement. After this time, Frisbee and Wimber began traveling the world, going to such places as South Africa and Europe; Frisbee being a much sought-after preacher with his "Jesus-like" look getting him instant recognition from South Africa to Denmark. Eventually some church officials felt that his inability to overcome what the church considers sexual immorality became too big a hindrance to his ability to minister. An article in The Orange County Weekly, headlined "The First Jesus Freak," chronicles Frisbee's life, in which Matt Coker writes, "Chuck Smith Jr. says he was having lunch with Wimber one day when he asked how the pastor reconciled working with a known homosexual like Frisbee. Wimber asked how the younger Smith knew this. Smith said he’d received a call from a pastor who’d just heard a young man confess to having been in a six-month relationship with Frisbee. Wimber called Smith the next day to say he’d confronted Frisbee, who openly admitted to the affair and agreed to leave."

In a 2005 interview by Christianity Today film reviewer Peter Chattaway with David Di Sabatino, the documentary director of Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher, the two spoke about addressing Lonnie's homosexuality with his family. Said Di Sabatino, "I brought to light some things that not a lot of people knew. I've been in rooms with his family where I've had to tell them that he defined himself as gay, way back. Nobody knew that. There's a lot of hubris in that, to come to people who loved him and prayed for him, and to stand there and say, "You didn't really know this, but..." In the same interview Di Sabatino also stated, "His early testimony at Calvary Chapel was that he had come out of the homosexual lifestyle, but he felt like a leper because a lot of people turned away from him after that, so he took it out of his testimony—and I think that's an indictment of the church." Di Sabatino commented on Frisbee's homosexuality as a flaw and stated that Frisbee's brother claimed Frisbee was raped at the age of 8 years old and postulated that an incident of that nature "fragments your identity, and now I can't say that I'm surprised at all." Some saw this as further maligning Frisbee's work and an inappropriate characterization at a funeral service. A pre-release version of the DVD was produced that featured 21 recordings of songs by Larry Norman alone, as well as others by Randy Stonehill, Love Song, Fred Caban, Mark Heard, and Stonewood Cross. However, due to licensing issues most of the music was changed for the final release.

See also

Duane Pederson

Jesus music

Mel White

Troy D. Perry

References

External links

Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher, official site

Lonnie Frisbee's testimony (preaching) on Mother's Day at Pastor John Wimber's Church, May 11, 1988, part 2; audio only with extensive photo slideshow. It is believed by some that this very meeting inspired the Vineyard Church movement (trailer on video gives date of 5-11-88, however vineyardusa.org states that this occurred in 1980).

Lonnie Frisbee ministering at Tom Stipe’s Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Denver, Colorado

Lonnie Frisbee related videos on YouTube

photo of Frisbee

Category:1949 births Category:1993 deaths Category:American Christian clergy Category:American evangelicals Category:American Pentecostals Category:Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity Category:Christian evangelicalism Category:Christian ministers Category:Jesus movement Category:Hippie films Category:LGBT Christians Category:LGBT clergy Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:Religious scandals Category:Christian mystics