Beginnings
Maranatha began in 1971 in Paducah, Kentucky as a youth center led by Bob Weiner, 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.
Maranatha's members were often the best and brightest on campus. Members were told to work hard, get the best grades, and look as good as you could 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 pro-life 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."
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.
Read more about this topic: Maranatha Campus Ministries
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“These beginnings of commerce on a lake in the wilderness are very interesting,—these larger white birds that come to keep company with the gulls.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The beginnings of altruism can be seen in children as early as the age of two. How then can we be so concerned that they count by the age of three, read by four, and walk with their hands across the overhead parallel bars by five, and not be concerned that they act with kindness to others?”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)