It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill. . . . Let the thrill go . . . and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker . . . and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors open all around them.
C. S. Lewis
Today when you try to describe the Jesus Movement to a young person, he or she often visualizes it as an otherworldly experience, perhaps something like flying in a plane through a hurricane, or surfing an impossibly huge blue wave, or time-traveling to the days of the early church in the book of Acts.
It did feel like each of those things, and far more. Like all movements of the Holy Spirit, the Jesus Revolution was powerful, transformational, exciting, and emotional.
For some, the experience only lasted as long as a wave. It upended them, but gradually things returned to life as usual. Some slipped back into drugs and alcohol. Some decided that they’d been mistaken about Jesus, and perhaps a different faith, or no faith at all, was what they actually preferred. All these years later, some of them write blogs that sound suspiciously bitter for someone who is so over his or her encounter with Jesus.
Some people slipped into cults. As Jesus said in the New Testament, tares grow alongside the wheat. The imitation next to the genuine. Outwardly they might have resembled the Jesus Movement people, but in reality they had nothing to do with Jesus at all. Some cults ended up as autocratic communes that cruelly abused women and children. Others removed themselves to the hills, waiting for their version of Jesus to come. Others got stuck in a time warp, repeatedly trying to relive their high-water experiences of 1970.
So, for some, the Jesus Movement was a passing wave, or a fire that soon went out. It was a non-sustainable cultural anomaly. But for uncountable numbers of baby boomers, the Jesus Revolution was a pivot point, and everything was different afterward.
Many became pastors, lay leaders, missionaries, parachurch volunteers, and powerful influences for Jesus in their communities. Many went on to birth all kinds of strong, steady ministries to help people in need and bring glory to Jesus Christ. The sustainable legacy of the Jesus Revolution—something we can all learn from—is the lives of those for whom it wasn’t just a golden ’70s experience that passed, but an ongoing reality rooted in the Word of God and in a healthy local church.
That’s how it was for Greg. The center of the Jesus Revolution for him, circa 1970, was not starlight, rainbows, or a mystical spiritual circus. It was a decision: “Am I for Jesus or against Him?”
Then, having decided that he was for Jesus, the new life wasn’t static. It was a journey about learning how to grow up in Christ, about an ongoing revolution of being transformed by the renewal of his mind. It was about partnering with the Holy Spirit. It was all about grace. At the same time, it involved work. Daily life was now built on practices that were as ancient as they were revolutionary: worship, the study of the Bible, prayer, fellowship, and evangelism.
When he was a teenager, Greg saw some who’d come to faith in Jesus, their faces wet with tears. Yet a few weeks later, they’d dropped away. One girl said that she just couldn’t get that feeling back anymore. A guy said that his dog had gotten hit by a car, and if God had allowed that to happen, then he couldn’t follow Him. Another guy confessed that he missed weed and sex too much to try to walk the straight and narrow with Jesus.
Jesus had talked about how this would happen. If the Word of God was like seed, He said, then some who hear it are like rocky ground, where the seed just can’t take root. Others are like thorny ground, where the seed gets choked out by life’s worries, riches, and pleasures. And others are like good soil, where the seed takes root, grows, and produces a great harvest.1
C. S. Lewis observed that new believers can become discouraged, right at the doorstep of faith, if they seek only the initial emotional experience, not the ongoing reality of a maturing relationship with God. Speaking in the fictional voice of a devilish tempter in The Screwtape Letters, he wrote,
The Enemy [God] allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. . . . The Enemy takes this risk because He has a curious fantasy of making all these disgusting little human vermin into what He calls His “free” lovers and servants—“sons” is the word He uses. . . . Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to “do it on their own.” And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.2
Perhaps his early days of faith were easier for Greg in this respect because he wasn’t expecting a big rush of ongoing emotion to carry him onward in his new life. During his formative years, he’d been disappointed time and time again, and had learned that he probably wouldn’t experience a whole lot of warm and fuzzy feelings. He was a pretty fact-oriented person. And in his new life, he wanted to reach out to people like he had been. Cynical. Suspicious. Mad at the world. From broken homes. People who had dreamed the hippie dream of peace, love, and understanding, or some other mythology, and hadn’t found any of those things.
He was a spiritual sponge, poring over the pages of his new Bible and questioning people who had been reading it longer than he had. He also had access to a new, cutting-edge technology to help him with his learning curve: cassette tapes. He listened to hours and hours of sermons and Bible studies. He bought the books that Chuck Smith recommended, mostly the classic commentaries by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, C. H. Spurgeon, H. A. Ironside, W. H. Griffith Thomas, G. Campbell Morgan, and many more.
Aside from wondering why so many commentators used their initials rather than their full names, Greg loved studying their work. He was finding that his creative powers, formerly dulled by his dope use, were coming back in full force. He could concentrate. He’d never had any interest in school, but this was different. Studying the Bible was focusing himself on something that was alive and actually had the power to change him.
In addition, Greg was learning some other habits. Though his mother had been a hard worker in her day job, her use of alcohol had blunted her ability to instill a strong work ethic and other vigorous habits in her son. Greg felt like he’d been raised by wolves, with no cues or clues about healthy living. In Chuck Smith—and others—Greg saw the adult figure he’d unconsciously been looking for.
Out of the pulpit, Chuck wasn’t a big talker. He taught by doing. Greg learned the value of working hard, being on time, finishing projects, and taking the initiative. One day Chuck had just conducted a wedding, and then, during the reception, a pipe burst. Dirty water flooded the festivities. People were running around, wringing their hands. Chuck took off his suit jacket, folded it on a chair, and went to get some tools. Then he knelt in the flooded area, dealt with the faulty pipe, and fixed the leak.
Another man who had a huge effect on fatherless Greg was an unlikely character named Laverne Romaine. He was a former Marine drill sergeant with large glasses and a body shaped a little bit like a fire hydrant. He loved the church and loved the hippies, though their culture was the opposite of his crew-cut military background. “The world as I knew it has been encompassed by more hair than you can shake a stick at,” he’d say with a grin.
He saw himself as an Aaron to Chuck Smith’s Moses, meaning that his role was to support what Chuck was doing at Calvary Chapel. In his dry, no-nonsense way, he’d say things like:
An assistant pastor is there to support the senior pastor, full-on, full-out, without grumbling. . . . Whether the need is to clean toilets or to teach Bible studies, they are there to help. Who is an assistant supposed to help? Anyone. An assistant is not “on the clock.” He is not a member of a “pastor’s union.” As an assistant, you are not the senior pastor’s buddy. You are to leave after taking care of all the basic needs of the church and everything is done that needs to be done. This often will mean leaving the church grounds long after the senior pastor has gone home. You are to be a Timothy, someone who does not seek his own interests, but those of Jesus Christ.3
Understandably, no one called this guy Laverne. He was “Romaine,” a gruff but kindly presence, checking up on anyone and everyone to see how they were doing, if they were following Jesus or slipping back into old ways, or if they needed a hand. He coddled no one; he supported everyone.
In similar ways, Kay Smith modeled basic virtues for girls who had run away from home or had lacked training about living in a pure and purposeful way. For kids who’d been short on role models, the combination of sound Bible teaching, a loving community of believers, and the challenge to grow in new ways was irresistible.
As Greg finished his senior year of high school, he didn’t have the money or a strong desire to go to college. His main interest was to simply learn more and more of the Scriptures. He could do that by studying his heart out on his own, and spending more and more time learning from the pastors at Calvary Chapel.
After his graduation, Greg was eligible for the draft, and the Vietnam War was still sucking young men into the jungles of Southeast Asia. As a nonbeliever, he hadn’t been a draft card–burning ideologue. He was just a kid who didn’t understand what this seemingly endless war was even about, or why some of his friends had come home in coffins. He had no interest in participating.
But by the time he became eligible for the draft, he’d had a huge change of perspective about everything. He now knew he held dual citizenship. By birth, he was a citizen of the United States of America. By his new birth, his higher allegiance now was as a citizen of the kingdom of God. No longer a glib rebel, he’d sought counsel with Calvary pastors, prayed, and studied Romans 13 and other biblical passages. He spoke with Pastor Romaine, the former Marine; Romaine counseled him that the Bible directed Greg to submit to his civil government unless it was directly opposing or suppressing the gospel. So, instead of protesting or trying to get out of the draft, he figured that if God allowed him to be called up, then God must have a purpose to somehow use him in Vietnam.
This was a seismic shift in thinking for Greg. During his chaotic childhood, he’d had to protect himself, because no one else was going to look out for him. Self-preservation was the overarching goal. Now he belonged to Christ. God had a claim on his life and a plan for it. Figuring out what he, Greg, wanted was simply not the first priority anymore.
It was strange and liberating.
Greg ended up with a very high draft number. He wasn’t called up for military service.
Meanwhile, Greg had gotten a reputation around Calvary as a skilled cartoonist because of a tract he’d designed after he heard Chuck Smith preach about Jesus and a woman He met at a well. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus said, “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”4
The tract was called “Living Water.” Chuck Smith loved it so much he had five thousand copies printed. Those were gone in a week. Within a year, three hundred thousand copies had been printed. “Living Water” became a huge evangelism tool for the Calvary Chapel community.
Around this time, Greg met a guy named Kerne Erickson. Kerne was an artist too, but not self-taught like Greg. He’d been trained at the prestigious Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where the Disney people recruited much of their talent. Kerne told Greg that he was living with a couple of other Christian artists in a house in Santa Ana. They began each day with prayer and Bible study, and they all encouraged each other to produce art for the glory of God. Kerne invited Greg to move in with them.
That sounded like Christian nirvana to Greg.
He went home that night; his mom was there, but she’d been drinking, as usual. So he went to bed. The next day he told her that the time had come for him to move out, as they had different friends, interests, and goals.
To Greg’s surprise, tears welled up in his mother’s eyes. He hadn’t thought she would care if he came or went; after all, she never hugged him or seemed particularly glad to see him. He felt like a potted plant in her home.
He realized Charlene’s tears were a product of shock rather than sadness or love for Greg. Up until this point, she’d been the one who left. She’d left husband after husband, relationship after relationship. Maybe she couldn’t quite believe that the one man who had been with her for most of the past eighteen tumultuous years was moving on.
Greg gathered his few belongings. Back at the house with Kerne and the guys, his bedroom was a converted garage with a cot. He loved it, and he loved the life of being a “starving artist,” except for the starving part. No one had any money, and dinner was usually an exotic mixture of elbow macaroni, pickles, ketchup, and old ground beef when they could afford it.
Greg somehow acquired an exotic parrot during this time period and arranged an elaborate macramé perch hanging above his bed. It looked very artistic when the bright bird would pose on its perch. The only problem was that Greg ended up sleeping in feathers and occasional bird poop.
When he wasn’t plucking feathers off his jeans or designing Bible tracts or posters, Greg spent his time at Calvary Chapel. He’d do whatever odd jobs needed to be done and scope around for food. He’d study the Bible, talk with new Christians, evangelize on the street, answer the phones, run errands, and pray with people who were going through hard times. Watching Chuck Smith and the other pastors, he learned how to be available to the Holy Spirit and available to other people.
During that time period, one of Greg’s most cherished possessions was a surprise letter he’d gotten, care of Calvary Chapel.
It was scrawled in pencil on plain paper, and was accompanied by a grimy copy of the “Living Water” tract.
A while ago I was given a little booklet entitled “Living Water.” I read it and thought it was good but put it away with some letters and forgot about it. One day I found it again and started to read it. As I read I felt God was talking to me and I began to understand that I needed Him and I should follow Him. Now I am sending this booklet back to you with the hope that you will give it to someone who hasn’t quite found his way back to Christ yet.5
Greg would have loved the letter just for what it was. But when he looked at the envelope, the return address made it even more meaningful.
San Quentin State Prison.
Greg treasured that letter for a long time. It was a tangible reminder for him . . . not only of the spiritual prison God had freed him from, but the fact that God was using him, an eighteen-year-old knucklehead, to pass that spiritual freedom on to others.