It was a time like no other.

When my generation was in grammar school, America was great, Abraham Lincoln was perfect, George Washington lied only once and that’s so he could teach us all a lesson about telling the truth. We got our first television when I was five and my favorite car, a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 when I was ten. It was a time of peace and prosperity — the time to ask questions based on this new media that open up a world beyond our own back yard. As a result, when we came of age we were full of questions, but there was time to ask them and time to look for answers. We were a generation with the luxury of experimenting with drugs, sex and rock and roll. We hitchhiked around the country, some from evangelical families traveled to Switzerland to learn about existential philosophy and to put their faith to intellectual scrutiny. We bought Eurail passes and traveled all over Europe with nothing but a backpack and a few dollars. It’s as if we took four or five years off and said, “What the heck, let’s explore, and learn, and experience new things, and see what we can figure out about life.”

But then dark times of uncertainty caught us unawares. There was the war in Vietnam and many of our friends had to be wrenched from this idyllic scene and literally thrown into the jungle without a chance to absorb anything. There were some caught in the civil rights struggles and student unrest at home, and others caught in a generation gap. And then it was a decade of assassinations — JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy — fully eroding our naive faith in government.

But then there was the music — a huge explosion of creativity. There was fun music, falling in and out of love music, psychedelic drug music, tear the place down music, and protest music, and finally, in the midst of all this creativity, there was Jesus Music. And the music brought the message, and many were ready to hear it because we had been inundated with questions and searches, and the time to ponder it all. So when Jesus came along, we were ready to listen. And early on, the message was delivered in the streets because that’s where everyone was. We played the music in the streets and proclaimed the message in the streets. It was a street level movement.

It was a time like no other — a window open to the soul of a generation — and many heard and were transformed. The spiritual revolution matched the events of the time. and the Holy Spirit used this angst as a catalyst for spiritual survival. That’s why so many responded, and for about four years, from 1968 to 1972, the was a great harvest of souls. But sooner or later our generation was going to have to grow up, get jobs, get married, raise a family, pay a mortgage, and get caught up in what Joni Mitchell called “the carousel of time.”

So what was this all about — this Jesus Movement? Was it just a bubble in time, to be forgotten after moving on? Or was it an opening, a deepening, a cosmic connection, a time of clarity?  Surely, many people began their spiritual journey during those days as street Christians, but we can’t stay street Christians. We are all in the marketplace now. The place is different, the means is different but the message is the same. And what we learned in those moments of clarity is what we need now — reliance on the Spirit, which creates urgency, humility, boldness, love, and justice.

We can’t return, we can only look

Behind from where we came – Joni Mitchell

No, we can’t return, but we can look back and learn and bring forward what translates to today. It was a time like no other, but wake up, because there is no other time like now.

Introducing our new podcast, Between the Answers 

Beginning September 18 through mid-October, the daily “Between the Answers” Podcast will look back to the pioneers of a historical phenomenon: the Jesus Movement, examine why it transformed into a broader social and political force over time, and ask questions about the Movement’s original message and its transformative power today. Our premise lies in the questions we need to ask between the answers. 

Join John & Marti for today’s podcast, “A Verse, A Question, and Evangelism in the Air” by clicking on the logo: