You are warmly invited to the

Thanksgiving Service

for the life and ministry of

Father Michael Harper

at 12 noon

Saturday 21 August 2010

at St George's Orthodox Cathedral, London

which is at the junction of Albany Street (the east side of Regent's Park)

and Redhill Street, London NW1 4BG

 This will include a short Orthodox liturgy

and contributions from several ICC colleagues

including the other co-founders of ICCOWE,

Fr Tom Forrect

Rev Larry Christenson

Fr Michael Harper, one of the giants of the charismatic renewal, and the first Chairman of ICCOWE, finished his race and went to be with the Lord on 6 January 2010.  His faithful wife, Jeanne, was with him in Cambridge, England.  The Funeral Service was held at St George's Cathedral on 14 January. 

   -------------------------------------

MICHAEL HARPER
adapted from
The International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic
Movements
article written and edited by Peter Hocken

MICHAEL CLAUDE HARPER (1931-2010) was a pioneer figure in the
charismatic renewal in Britain, a leader in worldwide renewal, and a
prolific author. Converted as an undergraduate at Cambridge, Harper was
ordained a priest of the Church of England in 1956. From 1958 to 1964 he
served at All Souls, Langham Place, one of London's major evangelical
churches, under John Stott. In the fall of 1962 he had an enlightening and
empowering experience of the Holy Spirit, receiving the gift of tongues in
August 1963. Harper sponsored talks by Francis McGuire, Larry
Christenson, and David du Plessis 1963, and organized residential
conferences at Stoke Poges in February and June 1964. He published
Christenson's booklet on tongues and his own booklet on prophecy. By the
summer of 1964 he resigned from All Souls church and became the first
full-time General Secretary of the Fountain Trust. The trust was
established to help further Harper's goals and ideals for spiritual renewal,
focusing on new life in the Holy Spirit for Christians in all churches, and
renewal of the body of Christ.

His organizational, teaching, and writing work now multiplied, with a first
trip to the United States in 1965 and to Australia and New Zealand in
1967. Editing the Fountain Trust's magazine, Renewal, from its
inception in January 1966, Harper became director in 1972, but in 1975 he
resigned as director and editor to concentrate on his teaching ministry,
based in Hounslow, West London, until 1981, when he moved to
Haywards Heath, Sussex. Harper was a canon of Chichester Cathedral
from 1984 to 1995, when he resigned Anglican orders to join the
Antiochian Greek Orthodox Church.

From the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, Harper's ministry was primarily
international with a twofold focus: serving renewal within the Anglican
Communion at promoting its ecumenical relations. The Anglican focus
developed from his role as convener of a charismatic conference for
Anglicans immediately before the Lambeth Conference in July 1978,
which led in 1981 to the formation of "Sharing of Ministries Abroad
(SOMA), of which he was appointed full-time international director in
1984. Harper's ecumenical service in the charismatic renewal found its
principal expression in the "European Charismatic Consultation" (ECC)
formed in 1988 and the International Charismatic Consultation on World
Evangelization (ICCOWE), which developed from a consultation held in
Singapore in 1987. Harper served as ICCOWE's chairman for the
worldwide ecumenical conference for charismatic leaders held in
Brighton, England (1991) and the ICCOWE-ECC European conferences in
Prague (1997, 1999).

Throughout his ministry Harper has been supported by his wife, Jeanne,
herself musically gifted and for many years active in the Lydia Fellowship
for women. Harper's gifts are illustrated in his steady literary output. His
practical spiritual teaching is seen in Power For the Body of Christ
(1964), Walk in the Spirit (1968), and Spiritual Warfare
(1970). His narrative skills shine in As At the Beginning (1965),
an account of Pentecostal origins and the first blossoming of charismatic
renewal; None Can Guess (1971), his own personal story; and
A New Way of Living (1973), on the Church of the Redeemer in
Houston, Texas. His ability to clarify contemporary issues in the light of
the Gospel is seen in Let My People Grow (1977), Three
Sisters (also under the title This Is the Day, 1979), and The
Love Affair (1982).

Increasingly troubled by a doctrinal permissiveness in the Anglican
Church, which was brought to a head by the ordination of women in the
church of England, Michael and Jeanne Harper joined the Orthodox
Church in March 1995. Harper was soon ordained as a priest and made
dean of a new Antiochian Orthodox Deanery for Great Britain. His
position on women's ordination is set out in Equal and Different
(1994); the story of his pilgrimage to Orthodoxy is told in The True
Light (1997), and in A Faith Fulfilled, Why Are Christians Across
Great Britain Embracing Orthodoxy? (1999).