Awakening a new generation

Chris Cartwright recounts the story of the Jesus Revolution in California and is excited that many are sensing God is beginning to do something fresh among young people in our day.

On 21 June 1971, the iconic cover of Time Magazine pictured a psychedelic portrait of a ‘hippie’ style Jesus with the title ‘The Jesus Revolution’. The article inside unpacked the unlikely story of what had happened in the latter part of the 1960s as a generation of young people across America came to faith in Jesus Christ against all the signs and all the predictions. The writer told America: “Jesus is alive and well and living in the radical spiritual fervour of a growing number of young Americans who have proclaimed an extraordinary religious revolution in his name. Their message: ‘The Bible is true, miracles happen, God really did so love the world that he gave it his only begotten Son.’”

Now, six decades later, Hollywood has brought that story to the Big Screen. The Jesus Revolution movie tells the story of a small church pastor, Chuck Smith, played by actor Kelsey Grammer (of Frasier fame) and his encounter with some young people including a young evangelist called Lonnie Frisbee. Much to the opposition of some of his remaining members, Chuck Smith opens the church to this strange and wild group of new followers of Jesus and watches God do extraordinary things. Calvary Chapel along with countless other new churches and ministries were birthed over the next few years as the Jesus people were used to release what has been described as the greatest spiritual awakening in American history.

As the story of this one church develops, the movie pans out to reveal that what we are seeing is part of a much bigger move of God, reaching a generation of young people with the gospel. It began around 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, the epicentre of hippie counterculture. From there, according to one historian, ‘it spread like wildfire in Southern California and across America’. Soon the Jesus Movement spread to other nations, affecting almost every stream and denomination and bringing with it renewed commitment to worldwide evangelism, a passion for worship and a restored emphasis on the ministry, presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

To the church of the day they had seemed the hardest generation to reach. They had marked themselves out by distancing themselves from their parents’ generation, questioning and kicking back at their values, protesting against their authorities, institutions and ideologies. But God began to move. The presence and power of Jesus, the work and activity of the Holy Spirit poured out on a generation of lost, discontented, searching, spiritually hungry young people.

Time Magazine commented: “It is a startling development for a generation that has been constantly accused of tripping out or opting out with sex, drugs and violence. Now, embracing the most persistent symbol of purity, selflessness and brotherly love in the history of Western man, they are afire with a Pentecostal passion for sharing their new vision with others. Fresh-faced, wide-eyed young girls and earnest young men badger businessmen and shoppers on Hollywood Boulevard, near the Lincoln Memorial, in Dallas, in Detroit and in Wichita, ‘witnessing’ for Christ with breathless exhortations.”

Church historians now estimate that up to 30 million people came to Christ as a result. It truly was a Great Awakening.

Don’t take this as my unreserved endorsement, but I am both excited and curious about the timing of the movie release. Many are sensing God is beginning to do something fresh among young people in our day. Beyond the headline data and trends of these last few really hard and challenging years for reaching and discipling young people, the Holy Spirit is stirring a yearning and longing in our hearts for a Great Awakening amongst this generation. The much talked about Gen Zs, Gen Ys and their already identified Generation Alpha, are forming and being formed in a vastly different landscape to that of even 20 years ago. There may be much that older generations find hard to understand or accept, but already they are showing something startling to the world. Yearning for identity, desperate for authenticity, searching for connection, fighting for justice and desperate for hope they will not be satisfied easily.

Like that Jesus people generation, it is unlikely that older generations will get to call all the shots to control or organise how it happens. But we may, by God’s grace, have the wonderful – if challenging – opportunity to encourage, recognise and release what God is doing. This generation deserves a church that will be willing to hold fast to faith like the father in the parable of the ‘prodigal’ for them to be reached by Christ and for Christ. And a church that will be willing to love them home.

How do we get ourselves ready for what God wants to do? Firstly, let’s pray for it and begin to believe for it. Secondly, let’s have our eyes wide open to see. Then, let’s give ourselves to enabling every young person of faith to grow strong and mature in Christ and help them to reach and win their generation – and give ourselves to that tirelessly and without fear.

A bigger story is emerging; a greater cause for this generation that so wants to make a difference, that so wants justice and meaning and purpose and value and dignity. A new generation of Jesus people.

This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.

Enjoy this article? Don't forget to share