The Rise And Fall Of A Prophet

Preface

You may ask me why I have written this book. Let me first tell you what was not my motivation. I have not written The Rise And Fall Of A Prophet in order to bash Jeff Jansen, or to expose my husband of twenty-eight years. Many people have drawn the conclusion that Jeff was off, or that Jeff was a false prophet.

Put his name into any search engine, and you will find both positive and negative results but sadly, the negative ones far outweigh the positive. Many have forgotten the glory years.

Countless people have contacted me to ask, What really happened? God directed me to keep the answer to that question to myself, until He released me. I truly believe that this attempt to tell the whole truth was led by the Lord and comes in His timing, and that the Holy Spirit guided me in the journey of writing this book.

One of the reasons I wrote it was to memorialize the Jeff Jansen that I married, the Jeff that I knew loved the Lord with all his heart, and the Jeff that had such amazing faith that He saw amazing miracles, signs, and wonders in our ministry over a period of years.

Sometimes, not finishing well can make people forget all the good a person did during their ministry or life. I don't want people to only remember the negative. You may have come to a conclusion based on what you may have heard and assumed, but there is so much more that no one has really known about Jeff, up to this point.

Although there were a lot of people who witnessed his downward spiral, and observed particular events and incidents, I was the one closest to him, and other than God, the only one who has always known the entire truth.

In this book, I am giving you the entire truth. I have tried, to the best of my ability, to explain what happened, as things unfolded and began to unravel.

If I can save one person who might succumb to the same fate that Jeff fell victim to, then this book is worth it. I want the reader and the general public to know that Jeff did not just choose to do the things he did. Many of you may have been extremely disillusioned by Jeff, and perhaps by many other recognized ministers who have fallen, for one reason or another.

Someone needs to talk about it. You need to hear the real truth and realize that as human beings, we are all vulnerable. We need to learn from the mistakes of others and minister from the wisdom we gain.

Jan Jansen

Chapter One

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Jan's Early Spiritual Life

Jeff Jansen and I did not have a glamorous beginning. Most people assume we met in church or in a glory meeting. The truth is that I was taking two-step lessons.

I've always enjoyed dance, and it was a pleasant break from my otherwise quiet life as a home health nurse.

I loved my work, and the people I was able to serve as a nurse, but there was one question my patients frequently asked, and that I always struggled to answer.

Jan, you are always so kind and caring. You must be a Christian, aren't you?

I wanted to say yes, but in all honesty, I didn't know. It had been a long season of seeking the living, loving God I had heard about. The Lord was drawing me to Him, but I couldn't seem to find Him, no matter where I looked. I had visited many different churches of different denominations, but something was always missing or wrong.

Raised in a strict, legalistic church, I never saw evidence of a loving God until much later. As a child, going to church was not a positive experience; it was a duty. My mom taught me that attending every possible church service was my salvation. While there were good things I gained from my childhood church, like learning about faithfulness and community, I was repulsed by their elitist ways.

My mother would not allow me to visit the local Presbyterian Church with my best friend. According to her, that would put me in danger of Hell. Our denomination believed we were the only ones that would make it to Heaven. Everyone else was in error. As a result, I rebelled from church for most of my young life.

In my early twenties, when the minister cried out from the pulpit, All Baptists are going to Hell! I finally had enough. I couldn't imagine a God who would cast people into Hell for choosing, or simply growing up in the wrong denomination.

I said to myself, If this is God, I want nothing to do with Him. I walked out that day.

Still, the Lord is faithful to get our attention. It wasn't long before someone told me about Christ Church in Nashville, Tennessee. A large Pentecostal church, they believed in speaking in tongues and other gifts of the Spirit. By that time, my son from a former marriage was in his teens. I took him with me to visit Christ Church.

They had an amazing choir! But my soul was thirsty for more. I would sit in the balcony of the church and weep from deep longing.

Jeff and Jan Meet

Typical of his age, my son was spending a lot of time with his friends. I worked hard during the day, but often at night I would find myself feeling alone. I started going to country dance halls with friends, dancing my cares away. We would go out on a Friday or Saturday night, and sometimes Sunday afternoons for dancing lessons. We had regular dance partners, and I had become a surprisingly skilled two-stepper.

The day after Thanksgiving 1993, my friend Kathy and I were bored, and headed to one of our favorite dance halls called Rodeos. I had become weary of what I saw in these places. We went to dance, but they were still bars, and the atmosphere was wearing on me. I was determined that this Friday night at Rodeos would be my last.

That's when I saw him.

Standing there at the pool table, my eyes were drawn to him. Wiry-looking but handsome, this man seemed to have a mysterious light shining down on him. It was as if he were being spotlighted for me. Shaking it off, I turned away. Kathy and I were having a hard time finding anyone we wanted to dance with, so we agreed to leave for Southfork, another dance club a few miles away. I put the cute man who drew my gaze out of my mind, writing the whole mysterious light thing off as nonsense.

We arrived at Southfork and I moved toward the dance floor, scoping out the best choices for safe dance partners. Suddenly, a man appeared close to my side. I didn't want to look, but he was persistent, continuing to linger beside me. It was the man in the spotlight I saw at Rodeos!

He had two hoop earrings in one ear. It was the nineties, and this was not common at that time, except among men who were in rock bands, or the artsy types. Surprising myself, I blurted out exactly what I was thinking.

You must be a musician!

His response was friendly. What makes you think that? he asked, smiling.

Well... you have two earrings in one ear. I stammered, in embarrassment. He simply laughed.

I saw you at Rodeos. You seemed to have a light shining on you.

It was a bold thing to say. I didn't know this man, yet I felt surprisingly at ease. His response was confident.

I would hope I have light. After all, I am a Christian.

A Christian, and there I was, standing in a dance hall bar with a beer in my hand. A surge of conviction shot through me. As much as I wanted to, I could not honestly say I was living a Christian life. In my years of searching, I still hadn't figured out how to get there.

I scrambled for something I could say that was true. Finally, I thought of something. I blurted out, I go to church!

Something about him felt really comfortable to me. I told him about Christ Church in Nashville. He had been attending New Song Church in Franklin. He had barely finished his sentence when one of my favorite songs came on and I dragged him onto the dance floor.

He had five left feet and no clue what he was doing. For a minute, he was a real trooper, trying to keep up. Eventually, however, clumsiness and embarrassment took over, and he left the dance floor.

Honestly, it was something of a relief. Still, the mysterious light I'd seen on him earlier intrigued me. I didn't yet know what conviction meant, but I was feeling it, and it made me want to leave. I wanted to get away from that uncomfortable feeling.

I didn't see him again until later that evening. Once again, he seemed to appear out of nowhere, asking me to join him in a slow dance.

I thought, Why not? He's cute.

I was drawn to the way he smelled, sort of woodsy and appealing. So many of the other men I danced with smelled like cheap, dollar store cologne, which was not attractive. But he smelled good to me. I couldn't help but giggle at myself.

The music was loud, but we tried to carry on a conversation anyway. Newly divorced, he had just returned to Tennessee from his hometown in Little Chute, Wisconsin, where he had retreated to be with family and friends after his wife had an affair and divorced him.

I have four children. They were with their mother, so I had to come back here to be with them, he said.

His words caught me off-guard. I stopped dancing and stared at him in disbelief. Was he joking?

Four children? There is no way you have four children!

This man looked no older than twenty-five. He had a youthful appearance and an innocence about him that was rarely seen in those places. Flipping out his wallet, he showed me pictures of all four of his kids; a girl, twin boys, and a younger son. I was positive he was joking.

Those are your nephews and niece!

No, they are definitely my children.

He had been married for nine years. I told him about my fourteen-year-old son, who was staying with friends that night.

When we finished our dance, I told him that I needed to go home. I'd had enough of the bar scene. Besides, I wasn't looking for a man, and in my mind I didn't need one.

As I moved toward the exit, he caught me by the arm and handed me a scrap of paper with his phone number scribbled on it and a brief note.

I enjoyed our dance. If you ever want to call...

This man was different from all the other men I had encountered recently. I could feel the corners of my mouth about to break into a slight spontaneous smile. I took the paper and left the bar.

For the next several hours, I had flashbacks of meeting this man, and our dance. I wanted to continue our conversation, but I was not in the habit of pursuing or calling men.

After all, I had never had difficulty getting dates, although lately most ended up as disappointing, or even disastrous. The desire to call him lingered, but I firmly put it away.

The next morning, I greeted my son as he walked in the door after spending the night at a friend's house.

How was your evening, son?

In a typical teenage tone, he responded, Fine, Mom. Why wouldn't it be? Why do you ask?

I got started on my normal Saturday routine of cleaning my house. It wasn't long before a phone call interrupted my cleaning. Kathy, my friend who had gone to the bar with me the night before, had a situation.

I have a date tonight who wants to go dancing, but he will only go if he has a date for his friend.

I was adamant. Kathy, I am finished with those places! Kathy begged relentlessly for the next fifteen minutes. Please Jan, do it for me. Just this one last time.

Alright, fine, just for you Kathy, but I won't go again. I was going to get my life right, whatever it took.

The man she set me up with was handsome and kind. We danced several dances, but it wasn't long before he also wanted to get out of there. We left and went somewhere to talk. He seemed to need to vent.

It turned that out he was fresh out of rehab for a cocaine addiction. He was a nice guy, but I was not interested in investing myself in a man with a recent history of serious addiction. I got home early and went to bed.

Getting To Know You

The next morning as I prepared for church, I felt a powerful urge, almost a prodding, to call the man I met on Friday night at Southfork. I couldn't help arguing with myself. It was completely out of character for me.

I'm not going to call him! Why should I?

I didn't know it yet, but that prodding was from God. Shaking my head at myself, I felt the words tumble out of my mouth as if I were led by some invisible force.

Okay, I'll do it.

He answered immediately. This was long before the day of cell phones, so he must have been right next to the phone.

The conversation went on for hours. Neither of us wanted to stop talking, even though we each had plans to go to church.

Little did I know, Jeff had returned to Southfork the night after we first met, looking for me. When he saw me with another man, he thought I had a boyfriend. He left the bar and wrote me off, assuming he didn't stand a chance.

Our lives were very different. Jeff had been a worship leader at his church in Wisconsin for eight years. It seemed he had lived a life of purpose. He had been in ministry for years. I was just living life, dealing with work, my teenage son, and a new house I had just purchased a few weeks before.

Jeff revealed to me that he had been a wild teenager, experimenting with drugs and drinking. None of this was shocking to me. I was no different in my youth. Both of us grew up in the 60s and 70s and it was not uncommon. We laughed at how many of us were hippies, or thought we were.

Jeff grew up Catholic, but had become saved in a Catholic Renewal movement. Even though Jeff felt the Lord calling him, he continued to party and drink. Walking home one night from a party at a friend's house, he heard the voice of God tell him, I love you, Jeff, no matter what you do. He did not comprehend the immensity of what God had before him.

In Jeff's words, he was too much of a handful for his parents. His father, being a police chief, had no tolerance for that kind of behavior. Jeff never told me specifically what led up to it, but he eventually moved in with another family in the neighborhood.

Living with his neighbors was good for Jeff. They were Christians and showed him an aspect of Christianity he had not experienced growing up in the Catholic Church. In time, Jeff and two of the brothers from this family began meeting in a small building to worship.

Although the location of the building was unusual, being on the grounds of a local cemetery, it was nearby and most of all, available. They gathered and just worshiped with no agenda. They also read the Bible and shared the Word of the Lord.

Jeff picked up a guitar and taught himself to play. He was a natural. Soon, he was leading worship on his guitar. When Jeff and the brothers invited others to join them, it wasn't long until their gatherings outgrew the little building in the graveyard.

That tiny, humble fellowship grew to eventually become a 3,000 member church. One of the brothers was the pastor and Jeff was the worship leader. During that time, Jeff met his first wife, and they served faithfully in the church for eight years.

Children came quickly. Their oldest child, a daughter, was a year old when the identical twin boys were born. When their youngest child was born, their daughter was still only two.

I marveled, Four children aged two and under! Wow!

I worked hard to support them, and church was our life, he told me.

Jeff had worked at the Rawhide Boys Ranch counseling troubled teen boys. He talked little about the pastor who had taken him in during his youth and later led the enormous church alongside him, but he mentioned his unhappiness with the direction the church had taken. According to Jeff, it had become a counseling church, and that didn't feel like a good fit for him. So, he and his wife made a bold decision, choosing to move their family to Nashville.

It was Jeff's heart to pursue a career as a Christian worship artist and hopefully get a record contract. Back then, cassette tapes and vinyl records were the standard. Jeff recorded one album. He gave me a cassette tape shortly after we met. It was a beautiful recording.

For a while, things were looking up for Jeff's music career. 4-Him, one of the most popular Contemporary Christian bands of the nineties, recorded a song he wrote with his writing partner called Wrecking Ball.

Things didn't go as Jeff had hoped, and it wasn't long before his first marriage ended. As promising as his music career had seemed, the strain of an unexpected divorce led him to lose heart in pursuing a music career. In the past, worshiping the Lord alone with his guitar had helped him heal. He just seemed tired, at this point.

I learned all of this and more in that first phone call. Finally, we agreed to meet in person for our first date.

I invited Jeff to my new house. Moments before Jeff was to arrive, the closet pole in my bedroom collapsed as I attempted to retrieve my outfit for the evening. All of my clothes completely spilled out all over the floor. Our first date was spent with Jeff gallantly repairing the damage.

I feel like I'm not prepared. My closet pole just broke and all my clothes have just spilled out onto the floor!

I can fix that.

You can?

Sure, no problem.

He did, and I was grateful that he was willing to.

We had no agenda for our time together. The evening ended with a walk in the cool November air. We walked around the neighborhood until we discovered a wooden bridge in front of a neighbor's house. Stepping onto the bridge, Jeff gave me a sweet and simple first kiss.

Inseparable

Jeff and I bonded quickly. It was as if we had known each other forever. After this night, we were practically inseparable. He would come over after work and stay with me until bedtime. Our kids quickly became acquainted, and his children grew to accept my presence in their lives.

Jeff was one of the humblest people I had ever met. His first love was Jesus, but I had rapidly become his new love. We had both experienced painful hurts from past relationships, so it took both of us a while to say I love you. He would draw me close, look into my eyes and say, You're moving deep inside of me. That was his way of letting me know our relationship mattered to him.

We spent a lot of time during the first six months of our courtship taking walks, or sitting on the sofa getting to know each other. Jeff often spoke about his ministry years at the church in Wisconsin.

He truly enjoyed being a worship leader, but it had been difficult to support a wife and four children at such a young age. Most of their lives revolved around church, and were spent either at church gatherings or, at times, with the families of church members.

He told me of the first time he ever encountered the Lord. When he was around sixteen or seventeen, he was simply lying on his bed, in his room. He looked up to see an ethereal hand writing on his wall. The words would touch his heart and his life in ways he could not even express. The message was simply, I love you, Jeff. My eyes welled up with tears as I heard this.

I grew up in a broken home and was often alone. Jeff had a large and extended family. He spoke fondly of time spent with his aunts and uncles, grandparents, and especially one of his grandmothers. She died when Jeff was just a boy, and he was very fond of her. She called him Jeffy Boy.

He also mentioned one of his grandfathers, who owned a bar where he would hang out.

When Jeff first moved to Tennessee, he had a pronounced northern intonation that he called a Yooper accent.

We laughed as I said, Please, demonstrate!

Jan, when I first moved here, I didn't understand a word these Southerners said, but your accent is not too much. Your voice is charming.

The Tennessee weather was also much different from the weather of Jeff's Wisconsin childhood. One of Jeff's favorite winter activities was sledding. There was a special sledding hill he and his family always visited, and he could not wait to show it to me. He remembered excitedly, When I was young, there was always snow on the ground.

Jeff was enthusiastic about how he loved the snow in Wisconsin, and how it was an important part of his memories.

The Proposal

The more time we spent together, the closer we became. We didn't talk of marriage, but we both knew that was where our relationship was heading. One of my home health clients owned a cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and invited me to use it. I thought it would be fun to take all our children there as a family, to see what that might look like someday.

Our families blended beautifully. We had a wonderful time. As we sat alone in the hot tub, Jeff surprised me.

Jan, will you marry me?

I was not expecting this! It was a Hallmark moment, for sure. Hearing a noise, we looked over to the cabin. All our children were peeking through the window and giggling.

I didn't hesitate in my response. Yes, I will marry you!

Chapter Two

EARLY SPIRITUAL FOUNDATIONS

The Vineyard

Jeff and I agreed that our first commitment as a couple was to find a church where we could take our children and worship together.

With his earlier experience co-pastoring a church, he was far more knowledgeable and mature than I was spiritually. I had been in seeking mode when I met Jeff.

I persuaded Jeff to visit Christ Church, which was the large Pentecostal church I had been attending in Nashville, but it was too big for him. He didn't feel at home in a mega-church.

As we talked about the kind of church we were looking for, I had a flash of memory. Before I met Jeff, a friendly couple, who stopped to help me with my car trouble, told me about a small new church they were going to called the Vineyard.

I had never heard of the Vineyard or its founder, John Wimber, but Jeff was very familiar, as I told him about it. He told me about the Vineyard Movement and a time when Lonnie Frisbee, a great contributor to the Vineyard movement, had called him out in a meeting and prophesied over him. Jeff was excited to find the church. I still had the phone numbers of the couple, Rhonda and Val, and called to tell them we were coming.

The Vineyard differed from any church I had ever experienced. It was very free. Not knowing its history and origins, I would have called it a hippie church. Being a former hippie myself, I felt safe and accepted. Nobody cared where you came from, what you wore, or called you a sinner. Nothing negative was said about both of us being divorced. I simply felt loved.

Jerry and Cindy Bryant pastored this newly birthed church, meeting in a small space on Sunday afternoons. I had never had a pastor before, only ministers who stood up and preached. We spent quality time with Jerry and Cindy, quickly becoming friends with them. Jeff and I felt confident calling them our pastors. We felt we could trust and rely on them.

I was learning, and pressing into this amazing new walk of faith I had found. I had not fully committed my life to the Lord at this point. I didn't consider myself to be born again, not that I even entirely understood what that meant, but the Holy Spirit was drawing me in.

Jeff had years of experience walking with the Lord. As for me, I had experienced the Holy Spirit at my Sunday visits to Christ Church, but I did not fully grasp it all. It made me feel good that Jeff didn't seem to care that I knew little, beyond what I learned in the church I grew up in, but I was hungry.

Born Again

One Sunday, the Vineyard was hosting a South African prophet. I didn't know what a prophet was.

The church I attended as a child did not adhere to the Old Testament, and rarely taught from it. I knew there were prophets in the Bible, but I didn't know there were prophets in this day and time.

This South African pastor ministered differently than anyone I had ever seen or heard. It was common in the Vineyard stream, but foreign to me. We lined up across the front of the sanctuary for him to pray over all of us, one at a time. I did not know what would happen, but reluctantly agreed.

As he approached me, he looked at me as if he were reading me. His words deeply touched my heart and soul. He told me God saw my life, my mistakes, and shortcomings, and loved me anyway.

This man saw clearly into my past, and His words were life to me. He seemed to know me on a level only Jesus could know.

That was the moment I committed myself to Jesus Christ, as my Lord and Savior. It had begun!

Jeff also got amazing words from this man that resonated deep within him.

The Vineyard Church was the first church where I truly felt the love of Jesus. Shortly after we started attending, Pastors Jerry and Cindy traveled to Toronto, Canada, after a powerful wind of the Holy Spirit came to the Vineyard church there. Many thousands were flocking to the Toronto Blessing to experience the presence of God.

This was all new to me. There was no question that after they returned from Toronto, the presence of God was tangible. They seemed to have come back bringing the glory with them. God was showing up in power in our church.

I was slain in the Spirit for the first time, my body shaking violently. It wasn't an uncomfortable shaking. It was wonderful. I never wanted it to stop. My body shook for hours, even after the service that Sunday. Through that experience, I was born again and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Our children were also slain in the Spirit. It was clear they were not faking it. My son was rolling on the floor, laughing hysterically as if something was tickling him. Having recently made some bad choices and been in trouble at school, he needed this touch of God. He had even been sent to an alternative school for troubled kids.

When he got up, he told me that he had seen red, glowing, terrifying eyes looking at him. He said God had taken the scary eyes away. Then God, Himself, was tickling him. Through the joy he experienced, he too was born again and filled with the Spirit of God.

My son took his newfound joy into real life and got out of trouble. He went back into a regular school the next year. He went from being a struggling student, contemplating running away from home, to an exuberant A and B student who was leading his classmates to Christ. He even started a Christian car club called Eternity. They would drive through the streets telling people of Jesus. My son has been a radical evangelist ever since.

Jeff's youngest son, who was seven, fell out in the Spirit and when he got up, he wept intensely for about ten minutes. After he stopped crying, pure joy rested on him. He needed to release some pain that was in his heart.

Home Meetings

By now it was evident that the Lord knew what He was doing when He placed me in the home I bought, shortly before meeting Jeff. It was the first house I had ever owned. I told my realtor I wanted a Western cedar, Southwestern-style home with a wrap-around porch (my taste at the time), but she replied, Such a house doesn't exist in this region. There's nothing like that out there.

She was shocked when she discovered exactly what I was looking for. For me, it was a dream come true. God had a purpose for that house. Jeff and I were engaged, with plans to marry in a few months. It would become a place for my soon-to- be growing