Sandy Millar

John Alexander Kirkpatrick Millar (born 13 November 1939), known as Sandy Millar, is a retired Anglican bishop and the former vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) who served from 1985 to 2005 — the period during which HTB became the most influential charismatic Anglican church in Britain. Born into an upper-class Scottish family (his father was a major-general, his grandfather a professor of law, his great-grandfather Solicitor-General for Scotland), educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1962, MA 1966), he practiced as a barrister for 10 years before being ordained deacon in 1976 and priest in 1977. His conversion came at age 27 through what he described as a charismatic encounter with the Holy Spirit — an experience-centered faith that one researcher noted left him 'with far less allegiance to Anglican Evangelicalism as defined by Iwerne or even Stott.' As vicar of HTB, Millar made three fateful decisions that shaped British charismatic Christianity. First, from 1982 onward he developed a close friendship with John Wimber of the Vineyard movement — Millar later said 'He gave us the confidence to change.' He took groups of HTB members to Wimber's conferences in California annually (1982-1985) and adopted Wimber's signs-and-wonders theology wholesale. When Nicky Gumbel told Millar that a psychologist had described Wimber's Spirit ministry as 'a well-known form of mass hypnosis,' Millar dismissed the concern, replying: 'Not well-enough known.' Second, in July 1990, he co-sponsored (with David Pytches) two weeks of meetings at HTB featuring John Wimber and the Kansas City Prophets — Paul Cain and Bob Jones. He co-signed a public statement published in Renewal magazine (October 1990) declaring: 'We believe they are true servants of God, men of sound character, humility and evident integrity.' This was issued despite Clifford Hill of Prophecy Today having warned about Bob Jones' occult connections, and despite Ernie Gruen (a Kansas City charismatic pastor supported by 40+ local ministers) having charged Jones with prophesying through a familiar spirit. Paul Cain then prophesied that revival would 'surely come to Britain' in October 1990. A London Docklands Conference was arranged in expectation; Wimber brought his entire family from America. No revival materialized. The prophecy was false. This was partially acknowledged by Wimber at HTB in June 1991 — but neither Millar nor HTB publicly repented of endorsing false prophets. Both Paul Cain and Bob Jones were later exposed for serious moral failings — Cain for alcoholism and homosexual conduct (acknowledged 2004), Jones for sexual abuse. Third, in May 1994, when Eleanor Mumford brought the Toronto Blessing experience to HTB through Nicky Gumbel, Millar — though he was away at the Evangelical Alliance when it began and was telephoned with the news that 'the whole team was on the floor' — fully endorsed the movement. He personally travelled to Toronto two days later. HTB became the European hub for the Toronto Blessing, with the renewal reportedly spreading to over 7,000 churches in England within two years. Millar validated the physical manifestations by claiming: 'I went scurrying back to the Scriptures and scurrying back to church history and it's all happened before. It's all in the book and there's nothing that I saw — however strange or unusual — that I haven't since been able to read about in the Bible.' He himself later stated that 'Alpha in Prisons would not have started without the Toronto Blessing.' Jonathan Aitken recorded that one senior HTB member called this period 'the unhappy time when Sandy Millar and Nicky Gumbel went off the rails.' The Bishop of London maintained 'studiously polite neutrality.' Both Millar and Gumbel later tried to rebrand the phenomenon as a 'Kensington Blessing' rather than the Toronto Blessing. Under Millar's leadership, HTB developed a pioneering church planting strategy — transplanting scores (sometimes hundreds) of HTB members into dying Anglican churches, accompanied by HTB clergy. Millar wrote: 'Church planting is in our genetic code and if we forget it we shall wither and die' (2002). On 27 November 2005, he was consecrated as an assistant bishop in the Province of Uganda. He subsequently served as priest-in-charge of St Mark's, Tollington Park until his retirement in 2011. He mentored Justin Welby (later Archbishop of Canterbury) early in his ministry path. Lord Carey called him 'one of the great Christian leaders of our time.'