The Dawn of the Jesus Movement

"Two thousand smiling faces
A thousand glistening eyes
Shining through the darkness of Satan's viscous lies.
Reflecting Jesus kindness and witnessing His love
That all might see salvation, grace from our Lord above."  Skip Temple, 1971

Earlier this week I drove by a church, a Clear River fellowship, in Dawnville, Georgia.  Dawnville isn't a town exactly, but more of a community with a Dalton address. We have very good friends in the area and I have driven that road dozens of times. The fellowship is either very new or more likely I had just never noticed it.  And I couldn't help but wonder if the good folk of Dawnville had any idea where their church had come from.

The Jesus Movement officially arrived in Enterprise, Alabama in the fall of 1971 when Kim Pierce, Pat Hatcher and Skip Temple wound up at the Enterprise State Junior College.  Fresh from the official Jesus Movement  in Southern California, through their presence and their music they brought a rather radical Christian element to our small college and our town. A movement of the Spirit, or of Something was already in progress in Enterprise. We drove our parents, Sunday School teachers and deacons crazy with our blazing fire and enthusiasm. We had no name for what we were feeling and experiencing. What started in one church with one group of young people spread like wildfire to area churches and even surrounding cities. Besides remaining active in our respective churches of all denominations, we got together informally for prayer vigils, campfire fellowships and formally in hymn sings and youth rallies. The love we felt for Jesus and for each other was no less than that of the first Christian explosion related in the book of Acts. They didn't know for sure what was going on either.

In the fall of 1971 because of Kim, Pat and Skip we had a name for it. We were a part of a much larger phenomenon in progress across the country from the west coast called The Jesus Movement,. Chuck Smith organized the Calvary Chapel in 1965 as an alternative to traditional church. The theology was a combination of fundamentalism and charismatic euphoria.  It was perfect for the Haight-Ashbury hippie culture looking  for a place to coalesce in the late 60s around  a healthy and yet equally exciting alternative to psychedelic drugs and unbridled sex. They found that place in a personal relationship with Jesus and the Calvary Chapel. in Costa Mesa, California.

Calvary Chapel grew, as churches tend to do, and became a loosely organized denomination called Vineyard churches.  Vineyard churches, the first to offer "Christian contemporary music", can be found all over the United States and the world. The Vineyard Fellowship split about ten years ago over issues about women in ministry.. The new denomination, Clear River, interpreted the words of the Apostle Paul  that women should not have places of seniority over men, To each his own.

In 1970 Chuck Girard encouraged several of his musician friends to leave their respective bands to form the very first Jesus band--Love Song.  I don't know how I found that music. It's not like I had Spotify or YouTube. I guess the music found me. This Jesus music found me about a year before Kim, Pat and Skip found the Enterprise State Junior College.   . You are reading this because some years ago there was a conception and a birth which became you. You are listening to contemporary Christian music because in the late 1960s it was born in the hearts of a few who were full of a new Spirit, a new joy and a new personal destination, Surfers don't make the wave, they just catch it,

Two years after our Jesus friends came to Enterprise, I was living in Birmingham, Alabama and a music  student at Samford University.  Gone were the late night prayer meetings, the hymn sings, the youth rallies, the spontaneous and meaningful foot washings among friends.  Gone were the charismatic utterances at the House of Prayer and Praise.  Instead of arriving in musical heaven, I felt that I was in the valley of the shadow of death. I sought out a visiting chapel speaker from Pearly, England.  I talked and cried a bit of my spiritual loneliness and desolation.  He listened, smiled and asked, "David, have you ever wondered why God placed those angels with the flaming swords at the gate of the Garden of Eden so that Adam and Eve couldn't go back in?"  "No, I haven't"  "He didn't do it to punish them. He did it because there was something better.  He did it so that they and their descendants would go toward life and freedom in Jesus Christ.  You don't have to go back David. Go forward. God has something even  better for you than what  you experienced in Enterprise,  Just keep going forward and you'll find it.

On June 21st 1971, two days after my eighteenth birthday, the cover of Time Magazine was a hip sketch of Jesus Christ and the title The Jesus Revolution.  The article brought the Jesus Movement into the living rooms and the consciousness of  America. Two months later Kim, Pat and Skip, for reasons I don't know, enrolled at my junior college.   To this day, I miss all that. Unlike my physical birth,, I remember that birth. Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born of water and of the Spirit." When that water broke, my entire spiritual lifetime spilled out.

This Sunday when the good people of Dawnville, Georgia gather at their Clear River fellowship, if they feel Something from somewhere else, I doubt they'll know from whence it comes. But if Dr. Frank Cook of Pearly, England was preaching, he would say, "You feel that?  Do you know why? You don't need to know because He knows. And He knows you."

But this morning while listening to this beautiful Jesus music, well "contemporary Christian music", I'm so glad that I know the story. I'm glad that I'm a part of the story.  And for that I'm deeply grateful. Thanks Hillcrest Baptist Church. Thanks First United Methodist. Thanks Kim, Pat, and Skip. Thanks Enterprise State Junior College for letting them sing,. Thanks Chuck Girard,  Larry Norman, The Second Chapter of Acts, Phil Keaggy, Keith Green and many more who redefined "special music" for a generation lost in space. Over the years the Jesus Movement fractured and faded, but its impact reverberates today in the hearts, voices and instruments of the worship teams of America. Contemporary? Depends on how you define it.

How fitting that this distinctively contemporary music I've been listening to for about an hour and a half just now cycled to a beautiful traditional arrangement of the Doxology, originally published in 1709,  and recently recorded on a modern synthesizer. I can't think of a better way to bring my morning thoughts and feelings to a close."Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below.  Praise Him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen."