Maranatha Campus Ministries

Maranatha began in 1971 in Paducah, Kentucky as a youth center led by Bob Weiner,[1] a former Assemblies of God youth pastor. It was an outreach of a California-based ministry called "Global Missions." Weiner and his wife, Rose, had helped lead a large revival in Paducah earlier that year. Many disenfranchised "60's" teens found a new expression of Christianity in the center located near Paducah Tilghman High School. Large numbers of students from the surrounding area also began attending.

In 1972, Weiner founded a campus ministry called the "Maranatha House" at Murray State University, a few miles from Paducah. The word "Maranatha" means "Our Lord, come" or "Our Lord is come" in Aramaic, and was a popular Christian phrase around that time. Later in 1972, Weiner struck out on his own and changed Maranatha House's name to "Maranatha Christian Church." During the mid-1970s and early 1980s, other Maranatha chapters were established across the United States and Canada, as well as in Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. The ministry moved its headquarters from Paducah to Gainesville, Florida in 1979.

Weiner and his wife, Rose drew from a wide variety of leaders and influences all across the mainstream of the Charismatic movement including Kenneth Copeland and the Word of Faith movement, The Latter Rain Movement, Dennis Peacoke, Derek Prince, Ern Baxter and the Shepherding Movement, Paul Cain and the prophetic movement, Paul Jehle, Gary North, and other non-Charismatics who had Reconstructionist or Theonomic ideas.

Early members were discipled through weekly meetings and periodic weekend conferences which hosted top national speakers. Maranatha conference speakers included many of the big names in the Charismatic movement of the time, including ministers such as Oral Roberts and Larry Tomczak. A 1987 conference included Rosey Grier, Rich Wilkerson, and Larry Tomczak.[2]

Maranatha's members were told to work hard, get the best grades, and look as good as possible in order to rise in the economic and political ladders of success to be next to influence decision-makers. The organization was one of the major players in the Christian right during the 1980s. It first got involved in anti-abortion activism in the 1970s, and this soon spread to other conservative causes. It also had an outreach to athletes, Champions for Christ. The group often referred to itself as "God's Green Berets."[3]

Unlike most campus ministries, Maranatha functioned as a denomination. Its campus chapters were called "churches," and its leaders "pastors." At a local level, decisions were made by the pastors and elders of the university churches in their movement as well as by the traveling ministry teams.

In 1988 Maranatha established a church in South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. This church changed its name to His People in about 1990.

At a November 1989 meeting, after a few years of private conflict about the governance structure of the movement, Maranatha's board decided to disband the organization. The official explanation was that many leaders were uncomfortable with the group's denomination-like structure.[15] However, another factor was intense criticism from the secular and Christian press, as well as former members and college administrators. This criticism had continued almost unabated since the CRI report, and grew especially pointed after the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article [16] detailing concerns about abusive religious groups on college campuses. (See Criticism and controversy section.)

Many former Maranatha pastors have apologized and repented for the abuses of the organization, either personally or through books, and have asked for forgiveness. In the view of these pastors, dissolving the organization was necessary to allow for greater freedom in Christ. Indeed, at the last international conference held in San Antonio, Texas, in December 1989, Weiner publicly apologized and asked for forgiveness for any abuses anyone suffered from him personally from authoritarianism or from the organization. He also printed a public apology to the church at large in Charisma Magazine in the winter of 1990.

In the break-up, leaders announced that the individual local churches were free to become independent entirely or to voluntarily associate with whomever they chose. Many of the local churches struggled with shrinking congregations and dwindling funds, merged with other churches, or closed. Most of the local churches that survived have different names now.

In 1994, several former Maranatha churches and ministries joined with other groups to form Morning Star International, under the leadership of former Maranatha pastors Rice Broocks, Phil Bonasso and Steve Murrell. Every Nation currently counts in its roster of churches at least seven former Maranatha churches in the United States, as well as a network of eight former Maranatha churches in the Philippines founded by Murrell.

Every Nation has publicly disavowed Maranatha's more extreme practices. It claims that Weiner and Maranatha practiced "controlling discipleship, authoritarian leadership, and theological mysticism," but that Every Nation itself "unequivocally rejects" such practices.[17] In a May 2006 letter, Murrell stated that Every Nation does not permit any practices and teachings that were "controlling, coercive, or intrusive, or that violate biblical principles (or) the priesthood of the believer."[18]

Morton Blackwell, former special assistant to President Reagan (who formed Students for America to lobby for President Reagan's policies on campuses) claimed that he hadn't seen anything in Maranatha's doctrine "outside the Christian tradition." Ralph Reed, later to become famous as the president of the Christian Coalition, said that he thought Maranatha got "a bum rap" from its critics.[3]

Notable people to emerge from Maranatha include:

• Gregory Dickow, pastor of Life Changers International Church, based in Chicago
• Reggie White
• A. C. Green
• Debbye Turner, former Miss America
• Paul Wylie
• Terry Crews was briefly involved in the organization as a student at Western Michigan University, but left.[19]

• Maranatha Campus Ministries, International
• Champions for Christ

• Every Nation

• Full text of Churches That Abuse, Ronald Enroth. Posted with author's permission. Maranatha Christian Ministries is addressed in Chapters 5 and 7