There’s really nothing like grace!

Grace explained the revival I was a part of, the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s.

It was the spiritual air we breathed.

Recently I spent a weekend in a church in Pennsylvania talking about grace in every forum they give me: book signing at the local book store, Campus Crusade for Christ “cru” meeting at the university, a group of young men from the church, a men’s retreat, and finally at the worship service of the church.

My message?

Grace, grace, grace, grace, grace.

Grace explained our revival. We were thirsty for it, and those who embraced us and discipled us gave it to us.

Grace explains Christianity. Paul told us not to be ashamed of it (Romans 1:6-7).

Grace saves us from ourselves. Under grace we’re not who we used to be, and we don’t have to live the way we used to live (Romans 6:14).

Grace is what the world needs.

Not our theories, our works, our hidden and driven little religious communities.

The world needs grace.

Let’s start giving it to them.

Grace is free to us because it cost God everything.

Two Years In Ephesus

In Acts 19:10 Luke reports that after two years of Paul’s teaching in Ephesus, “All who dwelt in Asia (Roman province we now call Asia Minor) heard the word of the Lord Jesus.”

It took Paul two years before the grace released through him reached “revival velocity” in Asia. People who don’t think we can do that again need to consider the truth that we have the same Spirit, same Bible, and same Great Commission as Paul and his coworkers had.

So, here’s a “what if” I want you to consider:

What If?

If you sense God leading you to make the radical changes that will give you the opportunity to see a revival, I urge you to think in terms of what you must do rather than what others should do. The question here is not, “What if the church embraced these seven simple revival truths?” but “What if I let them guide me toward revival?”

• What if you dedicated one hour of your life to preparing your story of what faith in Jesus means to you?
• What if you practiced that three-part story: my life before Jesus, when I believed in Jesus, and my life after Jesus—so that you could share it in about five minutes?
• What if you asked God to let you tell this story to just one person this week? And then another, and another, and another.
• What if, after a few months of this, you noticed that there were three or four people in your life that had just met Jesus, and they began asking you to tell them more about Him?

Questions: What if you just decided to tell your story about how Jesus has made a difference in your life? What are you afraid of?

From My Radical Heart

A few years ago, when this blog was born, motivation came from my memories of revival. True revival, like I experienced in the 60s when I met Christ in the Jesus Movement. Writing a new book answering the question, “Whatever happened to the Jesus Movement?” I couldn’t deny my disappointment with the state of the church today. Not my personal church, Church of the Open Door, but the church in general.

The answer to that question, “Whatever happened to the Jesus Movement” re-radicalized my heart. A growing dissatisfaction with the caricature of Christianity we’ve settled for moved me to see if there were others like me.

First I finished the book, Reborn to Be Wild, and then I started this little blog.

Jello Through a Straw

And then people started writing me to tell me how they felt about church. Pretty discouraging. Most feel like they’re stuck in church purgatory, that meaningless shadow of religious doings driven by guilt and shame and led by ego maniacs building their personal fiefdoms masquerading as visionaries who are cheered by the churchiest of people

Trying to express our worshipful service to Christ through the sick churches of America is like trying to blow Jello through a tiny straw. Keeping Sister Wheatcakes and Brother Blowhard happy is wearing us out.

A Better Option

I have an idea. Let’s tell Brother Blowhard and Sister Wheatcakes what they can do with their controlling church politics and fearful theories of separation. What if we just let them have their McChurches? What if we just walked away and refused to fight? What if we just started praying for revival and looking for churches that did stuff that really mattered? What if we just started telling people about Jesus and encouraging them to follow Him?

Questions:

What if we just threw our straws away and started pouring Living Water into the lives of the hurting, the disenfranchised, the needy, the lonely, the desperate, and the confused?

What if we did that?

What made the Jesus Movement move?

DISCIPLESHIP!

Recently I was discussing our revival–the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s–at a conference for church leaders when one of them asked, “What do you mean by ‘layered’ discipleship?” As I explained my personal conviction that healthier churches grow by connecting believers to one another on many different levels—maturing mentors with newer Christians, established leaders with emerging leaders, small supportive groups led my shepherding couples, and missional teams training one another, someone else asked a question I thought I would never hear from a pastor, “What is discipleship?”

I’m sure it was the Holy Spirit that kept me from saying, “What is discipleship? Are you seriously asking me that? It’s only the result of obeying the core command of our Lord Jesus to His church—make disciples of all nations! If you have to ask me to define discipleship, there’s not much I can do for you in the few minutes I have left.”

Not Growth!

Instead, I remembered how much pressure these leaders were under to “grow” their churches, how gaga the Christian community is over its megachurches, and how much we have bought into the bigger is better lie. So I turned him to the Lord’s final charge to the church in Matthew 28:18-20:

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

Discipleship Worked

If we want to get the Jesus Movement moving again, maybe we should try what Jesus said to do. His simple plans always work!

60s

I met Jesus during a revival–the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s. We didn’t know we were part of a revival. I suppose the ones His grace reaches in a revival never do.

All I know is that the love of Christ ran me down and overwhelmed me so that I had to tell others about my Savior. And I wasn’t alone, there were thousands of us.

You would think that the institutional church would have embraced us. They didn’t, and here’s part of the reason why–we were talking about something that went beyond mere moralism.

Being Good for Jesus

Most of the church people who resisted us had grown up listening to shaming sermons about being good for Jesus. Their God was for moral people and against sinners. They were caught up in a system that told them they were one of the good people, the moral people. If they gave money to the church, attended regularly, and managed their sin better than ordinary people, they were “good.”

But we came proclaiming a radical message of grace. We had no illusions about our goodness apart from the One who washed us from our sins in His own blood. Our lives pulled them toward the power to break the chains the of moralistic religiosity that enslaved them. Most stepped back from that threshold, and returned to their placid pews.

That’s just the way revival is. It doesn’t wait for those who must have all their theological loose ends tied up, who think that the grace of God is for other, “bad” people.

So if a revival hit the streets today, would you see it and embrace it? Or would you miss it and talk about its participants in self-assured sentences that expose the emptiness of your soul?

One of my most earnest prayers is that the Lord would not let me settle for less than all that He wants to give me by His grace. It’s the best way I know to guard my heart against the grace-killer of religious moralism.

Question: How about you? Do you fear settling as much as I do?

One of the key characteristics of revival is that the participants are surprised to be a part of it.

Throughout church history the ones who have fueled revival haven’t been the strategists and theologians. It’s been the ones who just couldn’t get over the fact that God loved them, that He actually wanted them and called them by name, that He didn’t care that they couldn’t hold life together…stunned by His grace.

Questions: Can you remember the day you realized that in spite of yourself, you were loved by Someone perfectly reliable and strong? Can you capture that feeling and hold it in your heart?

If so, you just may be ready for revival.

In my book, Reborn to Be Wild, I document the six lies we believed that derailed our revival–the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s.

We were reaching the most angry and radical generation in American history with the grace of God. The Spirit’s momentum and spontaneous spiritual joy of our movement were compelling.

Then, we “got religion,” went “churchy,” and started listening to those who wanted to capture our energy and tame us.

They succeeded; we failed.

In in a few years, our revival was over.

Do you remember the Jesus Movement? If not, have you too believed religious lies that stopped the momentum of either a personal or a community revival?

What stopped you? I bet it was one or more of the same lies that sidetracked us. Satan is effective, but he’s not creative. He just rolls out the same old lies and Christians of every generation buy in.

Christianity is all about releasing the selfless love of Christ from our lives, individually and corporately.

It’s not about getting more out of life by demanding; it’s about getting the most out of life by giving.

Selfless service isn’t easy; in fact it’s impossible apart from the life of Christ in us. The Jesus Movement connected some visionary leaders’ hearts to ours–the angry radicals of the 60s. Their supernatural compassion for the left out and left over pockets of our world was their spiritual and worshipful expression of their new identity in Christ.

Before you and I can talk about serving Christ and extending His grace to this world, we need to think about its source—our redeemed heart.

It’s time for church leaders stop using shame and manipulation to make people do what Christ says.

If we ever want to see revival again, we need to build communities of faith that know the joy of doing what Christ says because their redeemed hearts want to.

Oh yeah; that will take grace.

Question: You ready to risk it?

A Very Short Blurb to Get You Thinking About a New SpiritualRevolution!

I trusted Christ on a Sunday evening on the curb in front of our Young Life leader’s home.

The next Tuesday I was part of the “leadership team” of a local high school Young Life club.

I didn’t know the Bible had books, had barely memorized John 3:16, and hadn’t been to church yet.

Three weeks later I was leading that Young Life Club. I’m sure I spouted about 20 heresies a week, said some things that my Young Life leader wished I’d never said, and made a lot of churchy people mad.

But I did it; the Lord grew me; and a lot of kids came to Christ.

If you want to see revival, you have to take risks. Like trusting the Holy Spirit to work powerfully in brand new believers.

Question: Do you have a Jesus Movement memory like this?

Jesus!

In my recent book, Reborn to Be Wild, I remind the church that the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s was the last great revival in North America.

Often someone will ask me, “What do you mean ‘revival‘? How would you define revival?”

I’ll leave the technical definition to the theologians and church historians. My definition is more practical, from the perspective of one who lived it.

What strikes me about our revival was how deeply the Gospel penetrated our culture. Ours was the most angry and radical generation of American history, but everywhere you went, people were talking about Jesus.

That’s my simple definition of revival: A culture abuzz about Jesus!