Michael Harper (1931—2010)
Country of Origin
-
England
Countries/Regions of Ministry
- United Kingdom
Traditions
- Anglican
- Orthodox
Ministries
- pastor
- Christian editor
Michael Harper expected to continue the family business of wholesaling food to the grocery and restaurant industries in London. He studied at two elite private schools before entering Emmanuel College, Cambridge, on a scholarship in 1950 to pursue law. When asked during an initial interview with the dean what church he belonged to, he couldn’t think of the name. “Oh—er, the usual,” he blurted out. Religion was hardly at the front of his mind.
But one Sunday morning, at a friend’s suggestion, he attended King’s College Chapel during a Communion service. He reported:
For the first time in my life I felt the touch of God. There is nothing on earth to compare with that glorious experience when you know that you have passed into the safe hands of Christ….The Holy Spirit had been working on me for several weeks, and I had been discovering that even some of my virtues were vices. But now things had been put right. I was in the clear. How comforting were the bread and wine to me that morning.
Harper immediately began attending Christian Union meetings, reading Christian books, and developing a devotional life. After two years of college, he changed his major from law to theology. “My parents were confused. They thought I had become infected with religious mania,” he wrote later. When he announced that he wanted to continue theological studies after graduation, and enroll at Ridley Hall, Cambridge’s ministerial school, his father frowned and said if his son was going to take this fork in the road, he had better end up as the Archbishop of Canterbury!
Spiritual fervency was high in Ridley Hall, especially when evangelist Billy Graham came to London in 1954. Michael Harper was ordained into the Church of England the next year, and a year later married his wife, Jeanne. After an initial position in Battersea, they came in 1958 to a wellspring of evangelical life in the Anglican world, All Souls Church, Langham Place, London, where the noteworthy John R. W. Stott had just been appointed rector. Harper’s assignment, as one of six curates, was to reach out to five Oxford Street department stores as a kind of “business chaplain.” He spent hours on the sales floors chatting with staff, and organized a weekly lunch-hour service for employees and their bosses. He and Jeanne were happy with that post, but when it came to preaching, they did not see the response they hoped for. People listened politely, then headed out with little comment. Harper sensed that for all his careful sermon preparation, the power of the gospel was missing. It bothered him for a long time.
In May 1962, he was invited to speak at a weekend conference outside London. He prepared five talks from the book of Ephesians. The longer he worked, the more Paul’s two prayers (1:17-23 and 3:14-21) began to come alive. He recounted:
Paul was not praying for intellectual knowledge. Rather, Paul was praying that his fellow Christians in Ephesus would have the kind of knowledge that is supernaturally inspired, and that was something I knew very little about in personal experience.
The longer Harper worked on his messages, even on the train to the conference, the more excited he became. The weekend sessions were powerfully effective. He could not wait to get back to Jeanne and give the glowing report. A few weeks later, she received an equivalent awakening of spiritual life and passion, and from that point onward, their walk with God took a new path. They considered the renewal to be their baptism in the Holy Spirit, though they did not speak in tongues--“a complete red herring,” Michael testified at the time, “beneath the dignity of an Anglican minister.”
At this time, news of the fledgling Charismatic movement in the United States was crossing the Atlantic. The Harpers could not help noticing how many Episcopalians (fellow Anglicans) were involved. Closer at hand, a faithful architect in the All Souls congregation said that he had been baptized in the Spirit and spoken in tongues while in his bathtub! He testified that he had gone to a meeting with David du Plessis, who advised him to choose a relaxing environment as he waited for the Holy Spirit. Shortly after, in the summer of 1963, the American Lutheran leader Larry Christenson and his wife, Norris, were passing through London on their way home from a conference in Finland. The Harpers invited them to stay with them. When the calm, respectable guest asked Michael if he had spoken in tongues yet, he replied, “No—but I want to.” Christenson offered some practical instructions, but then dropped the subject.That night, with mutiple guests sharing the hospitality of the Harpers’ small flat, Harper testified:
… Jeanne and I found ourselves sleeping in the living room. Jeanne slept on the sofa, and I was on the floor; the nearest I’ve yet got to becoming a “holy roller.” I found sleep difficult that night. For one thing it wasn’t exactly comfortable. For another my mind was preoccupied…. “Was I on the right track? Was this not a dangerous and divisive movement? Was I not leading many people astray? What would my friends be thinking of me? What about my future?”
Around the middle of the night I remembered all that Larry had said to me. “Try it; begin to speak; don’t speak English,” and so on. So I tried. Maybe for a split second there were some man-made sounds. I forget. But almost instantly I was speaking a new language. As I did so, two wonderful things happened all at once. The Lord seemed to take two steps forward. He had seemed a little out of touch. Now He was really close. And secondly those worries and fear evaporated. And here I was, not in any state of ecstasy (I defy anyone to feel ecstatic lying on a hard floor!), but speaking to God with a freedom and joy I had always wanted to, and never quite found possible.
Afterwards, Harper organized several meetings for Christenson and other Charismatics visiting the UK, including du Plessis. He arranged to reprint 2,000 copies of Christenson’s booklet Speaking in Tongues, a Gift for the Body of Christ. People began writing and asking for tape recordings as well. For the Harpers, ministry got to place where his work as a curate no longer held first place in his heart. In February 1964, he and his rector came to an amiable parting of ways.
A new charity, later called the Fountain Trust, became the nerve center for Charismatic publications and conferences across the British Isles. Harper served as its director for the next eleven years. It was not a formal organization with members but voiced what the Holy Spirit was doing across various sectors of Christendom. Its Renewal magazine provided a steady stream of credible testimonies and thoughtful teachings.
In one issue, Harper wrote, “It was when Protestant believers saw Roman Catholics filled with the Spirit and speaking in tongues that they knew they had to extend the hand of fellowship. We could not reject those whom God clearly regarded as his children.” His travels to other parts of Europe and the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and several African nations brought life and wisdom to Spirit-hungry audiences for at least twenty years.
In 1984, Harper resettled as canon of Chichester Cathedral on the south coast of England. A decade later, he moved his ordination from Anglicanism to Orthodoxy out of concern for doctrinal fidelity. But he never stopped advocating for the Holy Spirit to have his way, even in the most liturgical settings. “The Lord is coming for a prepared Church,” he had written, “but he is not coming back for a small coterie of charismatics who are too impatient to wait for the rest of the Church. He is preparing the Church for his return. The renewal is well under way; but there is still much to be done.”