“Leadership rose from among the new believers.” – Number 9 of 14 Characteristics of the Jesus Movement

Marti Fischer, my wife, has the spiritual gifts of a leader. To some that is somewhat of an issue in that they believe women should not be in leadership positions in the church. However, the sheer evidence of Marti’s gifts and abilities would indicate that the Holy Spirit must be confused on this issue, to give her obvious gifts and the desire to lead, and then tell her not to use them. And since I can’t imagine the Holy Spirit confused, I must assume it’s us that has this wrong. If she wasn’t supposed to lead, no one told her that. That was the thing about the Jesus Movement, it rewrote the book on a few things.

Within weeks of getting saved, Marti, a flight attendant with United Airlines, was starting the Fellowship of Christian Airline Personnel in Los Angeles, a program that has now been adopted in every domicile in the world, teaching a Bible study of 90 flight attendants, and lining up banquet halls in local airport hotels for fellow airline personnel or anyone else who wanted to come, where she scheduled singers and speakers like Hal Lindsey, Barry McGuire and Larry Norman to speak and sing, bringing the gospel to a thousand people at a time. Hundreds of the people who attended these meetings came to the Lord. Marti still can’t tell you just how this happened. She put up homemade flyers around the airport, and people came.

No one told her she couldn’t do any of this, nor did she ask. She just did it. Many people think the Jesus Movement was all about hippies and rock bands on the street, but what Marti was presiding over was just as important as everything else going on, and she just picked up the ball and ran with it.

When God moves, people move too. This happens just as much today as it did then. We need not wait for some official okay when the Holy Spirit is running the show. Marti was not even operating out of a certain body when all this was going on. She had just been saved, for heaven’s sake. She didn’t know any of the “rules.”God had given her the great commission as her personal assignment (Matthew 28:19-20) and that called for her to make disciples of all the nations, and she took that to mean exactly what it said — that she herself was supposed to do this. She even bargained with the Lord, saying, “If I bring you the airlines, will you give me the world?” She’s still working on that one, but nothing has changed. That’s why the vision of the Catch, to introduce the Gospel of Welcome — Grace Turned Outward — to Everyone, Everywhere, is not just hyperbole. The “Everyone, Everywhere” was with us from the beginning, the creation of our founding Board of Directors. It’s what we’re here for. And that’s why we are calling on the younger generations to help us fulfill this vision. We’re looking at a new frontier, and we’re looking for leaders to come out of the ranks of the Millennials and Gen Z just like they did fifty years ago. Just ask Marti.