Pentecost, Revitalization, and the Last Great Revival
It was 1967, the year of the Summer of Love and the hippy movement was in full swing. Four years earlier, JFK had been assassinated. Protests were raging against the Vietnam War. The Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – the garish myriad of personalities of the album artwork a snapshot of the social upheaval of the era.
In the thick of this, the seed of the Jesus People Movement was beginning to germinate. The “turn on, tune in, drop out” counterculture was discovering a new way to live as many hippies began to embrace the gospel.
Jesus People
The Jesus People Movement has been dubbed “the last great American revival” by Larry Eskridge, instructor in history, Wheaton College. The unconventional ways of these new believers antagonized many in the church. They kept long hair, followed eccentric fashion and showed dissatisfaction with middle-class Christianity.
Hundreds of independent communal homes, coffeehouses and Christian “fellowships” sprang up from San Diego in the south of California to Santa Barbara in the north between 1969 and the early 1970s.
Further down the coast in Costa Mesa, Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel exploded with growth. Five hundred new converts were baptized each month at Pirate’s Cove on the Pacific coast, as the church embraced a wave of hairy, hippy youth turning to Jesus.
Controversial Changes
One of the practices that attracted youth to the Jesus People was their enthusiastic use of folk, pop and rock music. While many conservative churches had traditionally frowned on “worldly entertainments,” the Jesus freaks embraced their generation’s musical tastes and helped birth the Contemporary Christian Music industry.
The rock-fueled enthusiasm of the Jesus People triggered controversial changes in worship styles and music. As the years passed, hymns, choirs and organs were increasingly replaced in many churches with “praise choruses,” “worship bands,” electric guitars, and worship wars.
The two largest Christian groups to emerge in late 20th-century America, the Calvary Chapel “fellowship of churches” and the Vineyard denomination, trace their roots to the Jesus People movement.
The Jesus People of 50 years ago are the aging Boomers in today’s conservative Christian churches.
Pentecost, Revitalization and Revival
History reminds us that God has been reviving His church in North America about every 50-60 years. Each revival had unique qualities. Will we see revitalization in our generation? The better question is: Are we ready?
Pentecost teaches us not to fear the new or idolize the familiar, and that the divine power of Pentecost is the love of Jesus revealed in the Cross.
Are we ready for a revitalization in which God blesses the use of digital spaces, leaders from the margins, emotional intelligence, and encounters with power?
Will thousands of new communal homes, small groups, micro churches, and missional outposts take their place alongside Sunday-centric, facility-focused ministries?
Will we put aside our dogmatic declarations of what the church should or shouldn’t be, in order to experience God’s next?
Could we see revitalization occur on the margins among the least likely to embrace faith in Jesus?
Will leaders develop cultural humility to find language that connects with irreligious people and leads to redemptive opportunities?
6. Will our methodologies and values be more precious to us than doing whatever it takes to lead people, who are far from God, to Jesus?
We will see revitalization in our generation.
Are you ready?