C. Peter Wagner

Charles Peter Wagner (August 15, 1930 – October 21, 2016) was an American missionary, writer, teacher and founder of several Independent Charismatic Christian organizations. He is known for leading and building the New Apostolic Reformation, a network in the Apostolic-Prophetic movement. In his earlier years, Wagner was known as a key leader of the Church Growth Movement and later for his writings on spiritual warfare.

Wagner was born in 1930 in New York City.

Wagner was trained at Fuller Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Fuller's School of World Missions. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in social ethics in 1977. He was ordained by the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference.

Wagner served as a missionary in Bolivia under the South American Mission and Andes Evangelical Mission (now SIM International), the latter of which he eventually became the general director of, from 1956 to 1971. He then served for 30 years as Professor of Church Growth at the Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Missions until his retirement in 2001. During his time at Fuller, Peter was largely recognized as the leading authority on the Church Growth Movement after his mentor and the founder of the movement, Donald McGavran, passed the succession to him. The acceptance of Peter's teachings on church growth by churches across the world was due in part to the use of Fuller Theological Seminary as a platform to spread the message. Together, both McGavran and Wagner led the Fuller Evangelistic Association to continue to spread the message of church growth.

He authored 80 books and was the founding president of Global Harvest Ministries from 1993 to 2011 and founder and chancellor emeritus of Wagner Leadership Institute (now Wagner University), an unaccredited institution which trains revivalists and reformers to bring about a global movement of transformation. He also founded Reformation Prayer Network, International Coalition of Apostles, Eagles' Vision Apostolic Team, and the Hamilton Group and served as vice president of Global Spheres, Inc.

He died in 2016 at the age of 86.

Wagner wrote about spiritual warfare, in books including Confronting the Powers: How the New Testament Church Experienced the Power of Strategic-Level Spiritual Warfare and Engaging the Enemy. New Apostolic Reformation prophet Cindy Jacobs was a main influence on this aspect of Wagner's theology. In Confronting the Powers, Wagner breaks down spiritual warfare as having three levels: "Ground Level: Person-to-person, praying for each other's personal needs. Occult Level: deals with demonic forces released through activities related to Satanism, witchcraft, astrology and many other forms of structured occultism. Strategic-Level or Cosmic-Level: To bind and bring down spiritual principalities and powers that rule over governments."

Wagner's method of accomplishing strategic-level spiritual warfare involves six steps: