God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America

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God's Forever Family @ Amazon.comI came of age in the late 1970s. Amy Grant’s song “1974” was for me closer to January 1977, but the sentiment was the same. My spiritual life up to that point reflected the influence of the Jesus People Movement (JPM) that began in the late 1960s and eventually faded away by 1979. The Lutheran Church I was raised in channeled some of the movement and had even begun to change its musical styles for youth before the JPM hit, incorporating folk-styled worship songs that emerged from Roman Catholic youth revivals that erupted post-Vatican II.

So when Christianity Today magazine named God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America by Larry Eskridge its book of the year, I snapped it up and immediately started reading. A historical overview of the  Jesus People Movement, the book traces the movement’s rise among Haight-Ashbury hippies in San Francisco circa 1968, covers the establishment of countercultural Christianity across the country, looks at Christian communes, notes predatory pseudo-Christian cults that arose alongside the movement, discusses the genesis of Contemporary Christian Music, and concludes with how the JPM changed the American Church.

For Christians who came of age in the late 1960s and 1970s, I’d call it a must read. You might even see people you know discussed in the book. (I know I was surprised to see a pastor of a church I formerly attended named in the acknowledgments as a contributor of material and background info.) The story Eskridge lays out for readers has a bittersweet taste for those of us who recall those innocent days and wish the best parts of that JPM mentality had not gone missing from the modern American Church.

For those too young to remember the 1970s, God’s Forever Family serves as a history to explain why the Church today looks and acts like it does, for good and for ill. I even learned a few things.  I did not know the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship graciously bankrolled many of the most influential JPM ministries, or that Pat Robertson had a hand in establishing and legitimizing Christian rock music. The history depicted in God’s Forever Family will help make sense of contemporary evangelicalism and may de-vilify Christian leaders and their ministries that started with good intentions but somehow went off course or moved the entire Church in a direction that has not best served the Lord. In the pages of this book, we see how good intentions sometimes lead to less than ideal outcomes.

I won’t offer a review of the book other than to say I wish author Eskridge had delved deeper into more of the issues closest to my heart. But as an overview, it’s essential reading, covering a tumultuous era, the movement it spawned, and the impact it still has today. The JPM has been forgotten in recent years, so a contemporary revisit is most welcome.

The best Christian book published in 2013? Whether it is or not, you would do well to read it.

The Surefire Way to Fix the Church’s Every Problem

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Covered with Band-AidsApparently, my solutions suck.

One of the first things you learn about tackling intractable problems: People will hate your ideas for fixes. Not merely disagree with, but full-on hate.

You would think that when we bring difficult topics into the sphere of the Christian community the hate would go away. Well, maybe a little. What you get as a replacement is this: “Your fix will never work.”

Christians can be some of the most pessimistic and nihilistic people when faced with nasty issues. Anyone who even tries to speak to a tough issue has that idea chastised. It’s one reason why so much of the American Church is adrift.

What makes me more upset than having unusual ideas shot down by perpetual naysayers is that God never set up His Kingdom to be dominated by a loose collection of wandering idea people. Yet that is the model we Americans endorse.

Wakeup call: This mentality of a Moses-like character who emerges onto the national Christian scene to lead us in the way we should go is just a big pipe dream. Sure, now and then some Christian with a great agent lands a great book deal and writes a great book we talk about for two months before we forget what the hubbub was about. That’s not the way the King expects the Kingdom to work, though. Looking to any one human being for solutions won’t work.

I know it’s hypocritical of my entire post to say this, but here’s the only answer:

Every local church needs to sit down as a whole church—leaders, non-leaders, the elderly, the teens, whoever the church deems a communing member—and present to the assembly the problems facing the church and its local area. Then the whole church works together as One Body to seek, find, and present answers.

I don’t care what the problem is. I don’t care how difficult it might seem. Each local church needs to convene as a whole church and get solutions.

Of course, within a Christian context, this means operating as the Body of Christ plugged into the Head.

God gave each of us gifts, both innate talents and spiritual gifts. The entire Church model presented in the New Testament depends on that Body model Christ left us. If we do not operate as a Body, we do not operate as intended. If we reduce the Church to nothing more than a loose affiliation of individuals, then we should not be surprised when we achieve no results or cannot deliver solutions.

If we truly believe our own teachings, then it’s about time that each local church gets its leaders focused on what the problems are that face the church and put those problems before the whole church.

I don’t believe there is a problem too hard for the Lord to fix if we Christians in our local churches meet as a body (and THE Body) to hash them out, so long as we let the Spirit guide us.

I’m fed up with excuses for why such and such never gets fixed, aren’t you?

Last week, at another site, I took the author of an article to task for thinking too small. When I proposed a solution, the naysayers came out in droves.

But you know what? I don’t care if my offering is outrageous on the surface. Many solutions that eventually work start off outrageous. No, I don’t have proof such and such will work; all I know is that no one has made the attempt.

And if my answer is outrageous and left untried, how many other believers in a local church may have equally outrageous answers to tough problems that everyone beefs about but no one ever attempts to fix?

Why are we not brainstorming outrageous answers as a local church? Why do we always look to our leaders for solutions if that leader is the “foot” part of the Body or that one is a “nose,” but we need an “eye” solution? Wouldn’t the “eye”-gifted people possibly have better insight?

And why is it that we have no confidence that the Holy Spirit can speak spiritual answers through the bohemian single mom who just became a believer a couple weeks ago? Why is it the Holy Spirit can’t speak through the shifty-looking teen guy? How is it that the people in the seats have zero ability to cast light upon a dark issue, only the “experts”?

When we discredit what might be spoken through a “nonstandard vessel,” we’re not just discrediting the vessel; we’re discrediting our Lord’s ability to use whomever He so pleases.

I believe a surefire fix exists for problems the Church keeps saying can’t be fixed. Or if not a total fix, then a good bulkhead for keeping the worst of that problem at bay. We just don’t trust the Lord to work through other believers the way He said He would.

The Lie Remains the Same

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Due to an overwhelming number of tasks on the old to-do list at year’s end, I called a halt to interacting on Facebook, that great time suck. I said goodbye to birthday congrats for people I hadn’t seen in 30 years, bid adieu to keeping up with other people’s holiday plans, and articulated a hearty aloha to commenting on someone’s else post that got my goat. And there were plenty of goat-getting updates to note.

Too many.

Now returned from exile, it seems to me that Facebook is awash with the kind of commentary guaranteed not only to get one’s goat, but raise hackles, rub the wrong way, get dander up,  make to see red, and stand hair on end. Everyone seems angry on the Internet, especially on Facebook.

But it’s the way people respond to the things that make them angry that should alarm a thinking person. Everyone and his brother must add their two cents, and it might as well be counterfeit coinage.

In nearly every conversation regarding culture, societal shifts, current events, politics, or religion, you see the following:

Does the Bible really say…?

People should be free to do what they want, so….

Over and over and over. And in almost every case, those two are used to justify something antithetical to orthodox Christian theology or to godly, righteous living.

I wonder if the people who resort to using that question and that statement recognize their source:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
—Genesis 3:1-5 ESV

That supposedly clever line of reasoning some guy used to justify his immorality or someone else’s is old, old stuff. Back to the beginning kinds of justification and argument—just with contemporary wording to fit the spirit of the age.

Did God actually say…? Well, yes, He actually did. And your argument that He meant it in some other way that no one in 2000 years of Christian history has ever proffered as true should tell you something about the wrongness of your interpretation.

But then…

…And you will be like God…. You will be self-determining. You will be free to decide what is right and wrong. You will do whatever the heck you want to do, and no one will tell you otherwise because you told God to take a hike and enthroned yourself on His plush chair. You.

Red-eyed snakeEngaging the conversation in 2014 means a near-constant return to the Garden. Any time some postmodern Socrates chips away at traditional morality or invokes an alternate interpretation of truth, you can hear hissing between the words.

The part that no one who resorts to the old lies ever thinks through is this:

You will not surely die.

Actually, you will. And you’ll start that dying long before you get to the genuine finale. And then you’ll get a nasty, nasty surprise.

At least it will be a surprise to you. To some who weren’t spouting lies, it’s no surprise at all. They know that people who argue Satan’s way get to meet the originator in person.

Meanwhile, people who know better than to quote evil keep seeing the same old lies everywhere they turn.

If it weren’t so sad, it would be boring.