Reckless Mercy: A Trophy of God's Grace

by Carl Tuttle, Carol Wimber (Foreword)

My world came crashing down around me in 1997. It was entirely my fault. While it was an utterly devastating experience, followed by equally devastating years of slow rebuilding, I also realize that it was a beautiful act of God's reckless mercy toward me that brought me to such a place. At age 11, I walked into a church gathering for the first time and immediately felt the welcoming embrace of a new family of faith that could fill the holes that my natural family could not. Among the many emissaries of God's mercy to me was John Wimber. I was in my early twenties when an accidental revival put a guitar in my hands, song on my lips, and birthed what would eventually become the Vineyard Movement. As I continued to grow in worship abilities, song writing, and leadership, I also grew in mounting shame. I didn't deserve the recognition I was receiving. I certainly didn't deserve to work alongside John Wimber and participate in the overwhelming grace God was pouring onto the Vineyard. I felt like a fraud, and the only way I knew how to deal with that shame was to mask my insecurity with a veneer of confidence and charisma. In 1995, when I was asked to take over the role as senior pastor of Anaheim Vineyard, my wife, Sonja, and I somehow deluded ourselves into believing that this tremendous addition of stress would be good for our disintegrating marriage. I convinced myself that being in this position would miraculously relieve me of my shame and I would finally feel at home in my own skin. A sudden onslaught of anxiety attacks proved those hopes to be false. I spiraled downward, at times indulging in unhealthy behaviors to escape the stress. My marriage continued to disintegrate, and eventually Sonja and I divorced. The narrative I had spent years constructing, the façade of control, shattered into a million pieces. Years of heartbreak, exile, and loneliness followed. Through that painful journey, I discovered that Jesus is enough.

180 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 29, 2017

Reviews

[Jeff McLain · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 2015, I was invited to attend an event featuring Carl Tuttle. Carl was speaking at Sanctuary, a local Vineyard Church in Lancaster, PA. Unfortunately, my schedule did not allow me to make the event, but thankfully, I was able to join with Carl Tuttle and some others at Mick's All American Pub, after the worship gathering. It was a refreshing and memorable night for me.

Allow me to offer an introduction to who Carl Tuttle is. Carl has been a well-known pastor and worship leader for decades. He also has been known for equipping worship leaders and pastors. However, his claim to fame is probably around the many worship songs and modern hymns he composed, which include, ‘Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna to the King of Kings’ and ‘Open your eyes, see the Glory of the King.’ Several songs composed by Carl have been recorded, charted, and even appear in modern hymn collections. Carl’s story starts as a kid in a rough situation in southern California. It was there that he became a follower of Jesus after encountering some individuals from a Southern California Quaker Church during the mid-1960s. Specifically, his journey to faith was the result of a relationship with and an invitation from John Wimber, a musical guru who had worked with artists such as the Righteous Brothers. By the mid-1970s, a small group of those Quakers and other individuals started meeting in the house of Carl Tuttle’s sister. Carl Tuttle quickly emerged as the worship leader of this group, and as the group grew under the leadership of John Wimber, this group would become one of the earliest and most important foundations of what would become the Vineyard Church movement. It was here that God’s heart was pursued intimately and intentionally. Throughout the next twenty years, the Vineyard Church movement spread out across the globe with much of this same DNA – a desire to touch the heart of the Father with intentionality and intimacy. In this movement, Carl Tuttle would evolve from worship leader to church planter, to pastor and right-hand man of John Wimber. As Wimber began to release ministry, he then named Carl Tuttle as his replacement as Pastor at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship of Anaheim.

If you are not aware, my journey brought me into the Vineyard Church movement in 2003, through the Lancaster Vineyard Church. I had intentionally de-churched myself some years prior, after some experiences of disillusionment, and was skeptical of anything to do with the church. The Vineyard Church movement looked, acted, and smelled different for me. So, after attending our introductory membership classes, I found myself to be intrigued and interested in researching the crazy stories and humble beginnings of the Vineyard Church movement. I went on to read any book I could find on the movement. I studied theologians that shaped its theology, and I quizzed anyone who could share with me some firsthand accounts of those beginning years. Early on in this journey, I encountered the name, songs, impact, and story of Carl Tuttle. While completely different people, his story always resonated deeply with my own. However, at best I always had second-hand information. As a side note, my experience in the Vineyard Church movement has been one of the most forming, discipling and shaping experiences in both my life and faith. Though I am currently not in a Vineyard Church, you can see why I jumped at this chance to meet and converse with Carl Tuttle.

Let me share that I still hold fond memories from that night of meeting and conversing with Carl Tuttle. I still celebrate the encouragements that I received that night from Carl Tuttle. Carl was extremely humble and transparently honest about his personal story and struggles. That night, I encountered his gentle spirit that readily encourages others. As we conversed, Carl gave glimpses to us about the book he was authoring on his journey, a book in which he was calling, Reckless Mercy.

Now, his book, Reckless Mercy is readily available. In this book authored by Carl, I find him even more open and transparent about his story and struggles. While this book is short and simple, and perhaps far from exhaustive, it is a humbling but amazing, informative and challenging look into the early years of Carl Tuttle’s life as well as the Vineyard Church movement. Unfortunately, what too many know of Carl Tuttle is not his music or his faith, his encouragement or his equipping, but rather the fall from grace in which he experienced as the pressures of life, ministry, and his marriage came crashing down simultaneously. Many inside and outside of the movement watched in judgment, horror, and confusion. However, Carl’s story is one in which shows how God redeems our broken, bruised, battered, and banged up realities for the glory of the Kingdom of God. In His reckless mercy, God took the story of Carl from broken to beautiful. This book captures the ways God has continued to chase after Carl and love on him in some dark and troubling years. In doing so, Reckless Mercy serves as a contagious, courageous and consistent reminder of God’s deep and compassionate mercy for us, despite however our brokenness tries to define us.

Let me say that I highly recommend this book. In addition to posting a few reviews online, I have personally recommended this book to many. Historians will enjoy seeing the Vineyard Church movement’s history through the eyes of Carl Tuttle. Church leaders will resonate with how life, ministry, and the throes of life can unhealthily weigh on us. Those who struggle with anxiety, insecurity, and identity will resonate with Carl’s struggles, and they will be encouraged by his redemption. I think all readers will be amazed and encouraged by the way that God created a way for this banished servant to both be returned to and reconciled with his people. I love this story of Carl’s journey, and how God took him out of the desert, physically and spiritually, and placed him back into the movement that not only changed his life but the movement he helped shape. I think God is up to something in the Vineyard Church movement, and I find that hope encouraged in Carol Wimber’s introduction to this book.

In Reckless Mercy, Carl Tuttle writes, “My world came crashing down around me in 1997. It was entirely my fault. While it was an utterly devastating experience, followed by equally devastating years of slow rebuilding, I also realize that it was a beautiful act of God’s reckless mercy toward me that brought me to such a place.” While we are quick to say, “Jesus is enough,” Carl’s book will encourage and challenge us to understand that in new ways. Reckless Mercy will encourage and challenge us to rediscover what defines us. I think Carl’s story will encourage and challenge us to rediscover Jesus. This book helped me to see that the best chapters of our story are yet to be written. Perhaps even the best chapters in the stories of Carl Tuttle and the Vineyard Church movement are also yet to be written.

Once I started reading Reckless Mercy, I couldn’t put it down. I highly recommend this read. I found myself laughing, crying, and constantly amazed through this book. More importantly, I reflected as this story brought out encouragements and challenges to my journey. I am confident this book will bring out these same emotions, encouragements, and challenges in you if you are willing to pause, to listen, seek, and to be reshaped. The “Broken shards of a life can be reassembled into a story of love and mercy that needs to be told,” writes Carl Tuttle. God’s mercy is reckless because it pursues after us even when our lives and situations seem unredeemable. God brought Carl back to the movement in which he had been seemingly banished from years before, what might he do for you?

[Michael Craft · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Pastor Carl's journey through his life was painful to hear about. I felt the anguish, the anger, the shame, the guilt, the abandonment, the eventual welcoming reconciliation from friends and the greatness of God's wonderful grace and forgiveness flowing through his story. He was so brutally honest about himself and his failures. Tears came to my eyes more than once as I have experienced abandonment much like him. Thank you so much Carl for opening up your heart--the dark corners and the ones filled with God's healing light. I am blessed.

[Nick Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew who Carl Tuttle was... he's the songwriter who put "Hosanna" (among other songs) on the map. But I was totally oblivious to his "scandal" in the late 1990s that stripped him of his position of pastor at the Anaheim Vineyard. I didn't even know he was a pastor at all.

The book is really a "Behind the Music" episode for Worship Leaders. A person somehow gets a big break, writes songs that somehow become used worldwide. And then through a series of bad decisions (including ignoring his family, having a bitter temper), he loses everything he once had. And at the end, there's a reconciliation of sorts.

What I enjoyed was his insight and humility in the early chapters, where he discusses his perspective of everything the Vineyard was in those early years. In my opinion, every worship leader owes it to themselves to look at this time with objective eyes and learn lessons for themselves about this period. The unique thing about this time was they had no lyrics. No songbooks, no hymnals, no overhead projection. They wrote simple songs, because that was all people could embrace. From this, came Tuttle's (and Wimber's, and Daniels, and Espinosa's) best work.

What was lacking was a third person narrative about Tuttle's downfall. Suffice it to say, I suspect that his most embarrassing anecdotes were left on the editing room floor. And I write this not because I want to snoop, not because I want to gossip and glory in someone's downfall, but because it takes a certain humility in order to take the arrows of pain that he inflicted in others. Because he wrote it, there will always be this nagging suspicion that there is more.

As for the worship from 1977 to 1982, I want a book written solely on that period. I want to know the level of enthusiastic singing the congregation had. I want a book on how they stumbled into the intimacy of love songs to Jesus as the approach for music, building upon the Maranatha songs that Calvary Chapel had been crafting. I want to know the effect of Bob Dylan's conversion had on that church (as it was the church he attended when he began his born again phase). I want to know more about their time there.

[Rich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Carl lived the life I wanted! I was captivated by the Vineyard in the 1980s when I visited Aneheim and attended the Claremont Vineyard. As a Catholic boy and prodigal, I’d never seen the Kingdom in that old Federated Group warehouse building off of West Cerritos. Wow! Worship to melt your heat and the open operatation of word of knowledge and prophecy. 3000 in that warehouse I would never be the same!

I talked to John briefly some weeks later and want more of this revival movement within my 20 year old bright future! I would have killed to be in Carl’s world!

Now at 55 it’s not only John and Carol and Lonnie and Kenn that have impacted me. It’s Carl’s remarkable candid story that has called us all to live with and embrace our gifts and broken parts together. No compartmentalization since God wants worship in Truth! This is bible honesty, not Christian Church American culture.

I was emboldened take responsibility for my junk. It changed my marriage.

May loved brother Bill Hibels find this courageous book. And may Christians be the lights who will be pure enough to give our fallen politicians and Hollywood elite hope when God brings a flood of light to our culture. These leaders can trust Carl and find his Recklass Mercy too!

Only complaint? Carl has yet to accept my Facebook friend request so I can tell him!

~ Richie

[Bryan Lee Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Read for Present and Former Vineyard People

I could hear Carl’s voice as I read his book. it is was like he was sitting across the table telling me the story. But he leaves little clues about the Vineyard in the early days and glosses over the fact that the Vineyard was the wild West in the beginning relying too heavily on the subjective feelings of individuals, like the Prophetic phase. It was no way to operate an organization that actually determined the lives of people. I believe today’s Vineyard has matured. Carl seems oblivious about organizational development. It is unfortunate that he left Southlands Church as it actually had a structure to train, development and nurture leaders. I find Reckless Mercy a good read, especially for those who experienced the Vineyard back then. Carl is inspirational, loved and vulnerable but not a model to be followed.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, honest and challenging.

I appreciate Carl's honesty that allows God's amazing grace to shine through. As you read, be prepared to be challenged in your spiritual life.