(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
11. Young people showed up gifted and ready to go.
In the early 1970s I was working with high school kids at a church in Palo Alto, California when the Jesus Movement started. In a matter of weeks, our attendance went from 30 to 300. And they didn’t come to youth group to socialize or play volleyball. They came with their Bibles and wanted to study the word. There was a huge hunger for spiritual things.
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for Today
10. There was a very literal interpretation of Scripture.
I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you. (Psalms 119:11)
Stop and think about this. God has communicated with us. Have you ever stopped to consider how remarkable this is? That the God of the universe has had His words written down, and ensured that they would be passed on down to us today? That you and I can hold in our hands the very words of God? Now whether we hold them on our phone or as a book called the Holy Bible, it’s the same thing.
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.
Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for Today
10. There was a very literal interpretation of Scripture
It was a beautiful spring day in Palo Alto, California in 1970, and the First Annual Sweet Jesus Roll Away the Stone or Rock Concert was underway. An audience of around 4,000 filled the outdoor Frost Amphitheater at Stanford University with an air of celebration and a little bit of curiosity as to what these Jesus Freaks had cooked up. The smell of pot in the air and the bras flying as flags of feminine freedom indicated this was far from what you would call a Christian audience. After some music from Love Song, Wilson McKinley, and the Salt Company, Ron Ritchie, one of the pastors at the nearby Peninsula Bible Church got up and taught the Bible from 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality …”
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for Today
9. It shook Christianity to its roots (which is the meaning of “radical”).
At the beginning of the 1970s, a small group of musicians shook Christianity to its roots. They burst on the scene seemingly unknown to each other yet all with the same message. The message was about Jesus and how His gospel related to the deep, unresolved needs of their generation for love, meaning, community, peace and justice. These “Jesus Freaks” melded the freedom of the 60s and the Jesus of the Gospels into a new way of looking at Christianity.
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for today
8. It was urgent.
For whatever the reason, be it the soon-expected return of Christ, or simply the passion of getting the gospel out to as many people as possible, there was an overall sense of urgency during the Jesus Movement that filled the air and colored everything. Maybe it was a sense that we were experiencing a wave of the Spirit and we had to make the most of it while the opportunity was there. I think everyone knew this newfound popularity of Jesus and openness to the gospel wasn’t going to last. For a couple of years there, it almost seemed like everything was on hold. We were suspended in time and space. For a while, the world stopped spinning and the only thing that mattered was the state of your soul. Time to get right with God.
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for today
7. It got the attention of the wider culture and was initially perceived curiously as something outside institutional church structures.
Millennials, to a large extent, are not attending church. Church has become too distant and too much of a slick production. Millennials do not like “slick;” they appreciate honesty and sincerity more. They are also isolated and lonely and the idea of attending a church where they could disappear and no one would notice is not what they are after. They do not want to be part of a nameless, faceless crowd in the dark with the spotlight on someone else; they want to be seen and counted. The church today is not meeting their needs.
(Click here for a video of John reading today’s Catch.)
Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for today
6. There was no one in control.
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. John 3:8
No one was in charge of the Jesus Movement. No committee. No pastor. No central organization.
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for today
5. It was believed to be the end times and that the return of Christ was imminent.
Two men walking up a hill
One disappears and one’s left standing still
I wish we’d all been ready
Larry Norman
Larry Norman; Love Song; Barry McGuire; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Peter, Paul & Mary; Bob Dylan and many others were all singing about it. Hal Lindsey wrote a best-selling book about it. Preachers were preaching on it. The return of Christ was foremost on everyone’s mind in 1970. It’s part of what made the gospel feel even more critical at that time. The return of Christ put a time limit on the message. “There isn’t much time; better get right with God.”
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
Series: Characteristics of the Jesus Movement for today
4. It happened simultaneously everywhere
Where did the Jesus Movement start? That’s easy: Everywhere.
This is a key component of the Jesus Movement. It’s what proves that it was driven not by any person, place, organization or event, but by the Holy Spirit. Many movements begin in one place and spread out from there. Not the case with the Jesus Movement. If you traveled anywhere during the late ‘60s to early ‘70s, you would find a vast spiritual hunger at work. People everywhere wanted to know about Jesus. You might think you were bringing some new message of Jesus and the gospel to some new area, only to find it was already there and going strong on its own. Whether on the street, or in people’s homes, or in communes or in established churches that welcomed long hair and jeans, it was happening simultaneously everywhere. It was in the air, or as Dylan sang, it was “blowin’ in the wind.”
(Click here for a video of John reading this Catch.)
My daughter lives in a house in the mountains of Oahu, Hawaii, minutes up the hill from the most popular surfing spots on the North Shore. The houses up here all sit on roomy lots where everyone seems to own chickens. So much so that at any hour of the night you can hear roosters crowing — what seems like a cacophony of them, near and far away.
John Fischer The Catch 