ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126 USA
E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com, Web Site: www.assistnews.net <http://www.assistnews.net/>

BOB DYLAN’S FORMER PASTOR NOW THE “PROPERTY OF JESUS”
Kenn Gulliksen reveals an extraordinary turn-around in his spiritual life and how he is starting a series of Bible studies at a Southern California church

By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries

COSTA MESA, CA  (ANS) -- It was early in 1979 when a girlfriend of Bob Dylan came to a service at Kenn Gulliksen's Vineyard Christian Fellowship in a Los Angeles suburb. After re-committing her life to Christ, she asked if some of the pastors could come with her to see a boyfriend, who turned out to be Bob Dylan.

Gulliksen assigned two of his assistant pastors, Larry Myers and Paul Emond, to go and see the friend at a house in Malibu, who Gulliksen didn't realize was Dylan. When they arrived at the home, they found that Dylan was very interested in learning what the Bible says about Jesus Christ. Myers then began sharing what was in Genesis and walked him through the Old Testament and ended in Revelation. It appeared that Dylan was a man who had been seeking for many years. A few days later, privately and on his own, Bob Dylan believed in Jesus Christ as his Messiah and was even later baptized. (Pictured: Kenn Gulliksen in his early days).

Dylan joined the church’s School of the Bible and, for a time, gave up his career. A friend of mine, who sat next to Dylan at the school said, “It was wonderful. Bob would come each day like a school kid who had discovered something new and wonderful and would be excited about completing his homework.” (Pictured: Album cover of "Saved").

Soon, Dylan began writing his wonderful Christian songs which included “Property of Jesus,” something that Gulliksen says he has now become. [According to a previous interview with Gulliksen, Dylan has never renounced his Christian faith and is still on a “search.”]

Kenn Gulliksen, a delightful gentle man, has played an extraordinary role in both the early days of Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel and later the Vineyard churches which he founded and later handed over the leadership to John Wimber. (Pictured: Kenn Gulliksen after conducting baptism).

“POWER WITHOUT LOVE IS A CLANGING CYMBAL”

“I personally regretted giving John the Vineyard - lock, stock and barrel,” he said in an interview. “I think I abdicated my role which was to be more of a balancing to John. I didn’t seek co-leadership, but I should have remained more involved with an emphasis on the Word and love because the emphasis was then on ‘Power’ and, of course, power without love is a clanging cymbal and I think that the Vineyard became a clanging cymbal for a while.

“I was so needy, personally, of acceptance – I didn’t realize it, of course – that I became somewhat of a fraud. My gifts were teaching and evangelism and those weren’t [well] regarded in the Vineyard by John. ...Still, we led 12,000 people to Christ in LA – you can’t do that without power. In 1992 (I had been the national coordinator for two years), John and I had a very strong personal conflict.  It is really private and not worth detailing, but it was leadership style and direction.  John said some phenomenally hurtful things and I said some things in response.  That’s when I left the Vineyard to go back to LA and reconnected with Calvary – sort of – because I know it’s not wise to be independent.

“I still had fellowship with everybody in the Vineyard and also in the Calvary Chapels. In any event, John Wimber died in 1997. My wife Joanie and I went to the service and we were warmly received by Carol Wimber and everybody. Because we hadn’t burned bridges, we felt like a couple without a tribe. We loved the Vineyard and we loved Calvary Chapel and we loved our Lutheran background. We wanted to love everybody.”

Kenn Gulliksen then spoke of his illnesses that he has been battling now for several years. “I have severe degenerative disease of the spine,” he revealed. “When I was younger, I dove off a ledge into what turned out to be shallow ocean and I broke my neck. Then, later on, I was involved in a car collision and broke it again, so I wound up with two major surgeries on my neck and in my back I had a number of ruptured discs.

“Because of this, I had to stand down from the church in West LA that I pastored to work on my health and our marriage. That year went by very quickly and the most amazing thing occurred June 2002. I was so blind to things in my life from being very narcissistic, controlling and manipulative --things that I didn’t see that Joanie did. So she did one of most loving, most selfless things that anyone could do -- she separated from me.

“We lived in a little apartment and she left me with a letter explaining why she was doing this. She said that I needed to deal with these things - that I wasn’t allowing God to be what He needed to be in my life. I realized that I had turned her into the comforter, so she left for a year. During that year, the Lord did six amazing,  supernatural, unbelievable things that would take hours to explain, but they were undeniably visitations from the Lord.

MASKS

“The first one was - He showed me that His grace had nothing to do with my performance. I realized that I had been serving God out of duty, not out of the love that I had taught my people. That was the beginning of five major events – things that God did supernaturally that exposed my sin, my self-centeredness, the mask that I had put on Him. I viewed God as a kidnapper instead of a rescuer. I also wore so many masks myself so that whoever I was talking to, I put on a mask in order to get them to like me. I did this so much that I didn’t know who I was myself anymore. I realized if I pulled the masks down, there was no body there.

“This was also the year that I was 56 years old. After all of the so-called successes that I had had, if you would have asked me at 46, what I expected at 56, I would have said; that I expected I would be pastoring my last and largest church; that I would have a hundred assistants doing everything that I didn’t want to do; we would be financially secure and own our home; that our marriage would be brilliant and my kids would think that I was Superman; also, that my health would be restored.

“But the opposite occurred. Every single thing that I had expected, the Lord by His grace, took away to show me who He was; to show me true grace. And I finally began to feel that I had met God. Even though I had been saved and filled with the Spirit all of these years, it took that utter humiliation and aloneness for Him to expose to me my poverty and to see him as the one who loved me and accepted me without my performance. Anyway, it changed everything.

“I fell back in love with Jesus –the real Jesus. Joanie came back after a year and we now are in this most amazing place where I have no income and no church to pastor. We don’t own a home. We sold our home three years ago and home prices have doubled since then, and so we are priced out of a home. I have no insurance. My health isn’t any better, but our marriage is finally getting to be real and honest and genuine -- what God wants marriages to be. My kids are beginning to discover that they can respect me because the hypocrite is dead and Dad is re-born. That is simply to say that everything that I thought and expected was taken and replaced with a true relationship with Jesus with contentment, joy and peace. I have no clue how we are going to make the rent payment each month, but amazingly I do believe the best is yet to come.

“And finally, for the last years, I have been speaking on Sundays at churches where I have been invited and they are Vineyards, Calvary’s, Independent churches. We have been living off the equity of our home and the income which I get from speaking (which may be $250 for a Sunday, so it doesn't even cover groceries), but without any anxiety because we know we are right where God wants us to be.”

FRIDAY NIGHTS WITH KENN GULLIKSEN

Gulliksen then announced that on Friday, June 25, he will be beginning a series of Bible Studies on the book of Philippians at the Village Church of Irvine, California, for his close friend, Pastor Bruce Sonnenberg, called Friday Nights with Ken Gulliksen. He will also be leading worship, something he did many years ago for the hippies at the early days of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa.

“I think that it is Bruce’s intention to reach out to backslidden Christians (old Jesus Movement people who have fallen away), and those who are suffering from afflictions and have fallen into bad habits,” he said. “We will, of course, be sharing the Gospel.”

Kenn Gulliksen is an extraordinary, humble man, and he’s glad to say that finally, after all he has been through, he is the “Property of Jesus.”

For more information on the Village Church of Irvine, go to www.villagechurchirvine.com <http://www.villagechurchirvine.com/> .  

If you would like an up-to-date photo of Kenn and Joanie Gulliksen, please contact me at danjuma1@aol.com.  I should be getting one very soon.

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