Moving Beyond the Shock Absorber - Part 8
The Jesus Movement
Part eight of a 10-part series from an article by Stuart Crawshaw that appeared in The Briefing in 2008 titled: Moving beyond the shock absorber: The place of youth ministry—past, present and future
From humble beginnings
Most commentators position the origin of the Jesus Movement in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district with the opening of a street front mission called The Living Room. The first ‘Jesus People’ had grasped the scale of cultural change, seen church inaction and come up with a grassroots solution. Like Raikes, they emerged in the very heart of the cultural turmoil. The Sunday School started in city slums; the Jesus Movement started in the heart of the counterculture—just across the bay from the San Francisco university that had become the political centre of America’s youthful protest.
The Jesus Movement’s premise was that young baby boomers were less likely to listen to the gospel presented by their parents’ generation, and more likely to listen to a relevant message coming from their own generation in language, political terms and symbols they readily understood. The Jesus Movement created a Christian version of the prevailing youth culture, successfully replicating Christian versions of the commune, coffee houses, rock music, radio stations, newspapers, dress and language, and creating postmodern expressions in an easily recognizable form.
In this, they struck off in a new direction on their own. They capitalized on their society’s desire to get back to something lost in the industrial world. Paganism and eastern religions were popular then. Interestingly, there was also a resurgence of interest in Jesus and a more authentic first-century Christianity—all this while young people continued to reject the modern expressions of institutional Christianity. Jesus the man was the object of interest, not a set of man-made traditions and regulations.
So while the values of baby boomers were full of sex, drugs and rebellion, youth culture had left a window open that the Jesus People were able to climb through. Young people began to open Christian coffee houses and communes. In many ways, these were indistinguishable from the secular counterparts which had inspired them. By 1971, Time Magazine reported that there were over 800 communes across the USA.
Sharing the gospel on the street or in a coffee house stripped Christianity of its institutional baggage, and made the message more accessible. Rather than young people having to go to church to hear the gospel, the gospel was taken to them. The major way this message was shared was through the baby boomers’ own music: rock ‘n’ roll.
Larry Norman, the father of Christian rock, was one of the first of his generation to use that form of music to tell the gospel. Norman struck a chord, and became a new kind of preacher to his generation. His fusion of a traditional Christian message with rock music was extremely popular. Like the other Jesus People, Larry’s language was that of the contemporary generation. His music, and the music of the rest of the new Jesus rock industry, was promoted through festivals and concerts, recorded on vinyl and tapes, played on Christian radio stations, and performed by youth group leaders in their churches and youth groups
Growing and spreading
In his theory of cycles in youth ministry, Mark Senter predicted that a grassroots movement spreads because it has the ability to articulate the gospel into an emerging culture that does not understand previous expressions of Christianity. All the ingredients were now in place for the Jesus Movement to take off. They had a formula that was relevant and easily transportable. The American Jesus Movement spread around the world on the back of Jesus rock—music that gave the movement its enigmatic synergy of rebellion and piety.
Larry Norman and a number of other rock acts travelled to Australia. They helped to promote the movement here. There were coffee houses and communes around the country with names like ‘The House of the Purple Door’ and ‘The House of the Gentle Bunyip’. God’s Squad and the Christian Surfers Movement also started up at this time, their names blending the gospel with a hippie semiotic. Local artists also sprang up. Teenagers from church-based youth groups would visit the Jesus Movement coffee houses and attend regular concerts.
The Jesus Movement as the shock absorber
The Jesus Movement was a Christian version of hippie culture. It gave young Christians the opportunity to be a part of their generation and be a Christian too. This was the youth ministry shock absorber principle in action.
The huge impact of the Jesus Movement should not be underestimated. It was able to syncretize the politics of the new social movement, and adopt the semiotics of the hippie rock ‘n’ roll culture. It was large enough to capture the attention of the popular media. Even in Australia, Larry Norman was interviewed on national television. The movement also drew attention from the Christian church. However, like the Sunday School, at first it attracted much opposition, as many mainline Christian leaders worried about its populist appeal and charismatic emphasis.
The Jesus Movement’s success, however, did reinforce the long-held view that, in the secular age, relevance was the necessary ingredient in youth ministry. This cemented the attitude that young people were best able to reach their peers with the gospel because they spoke the same language and understood their cultural symbols. The bottom line was that the Jesus Movement succeeded in explaining the gospel to baby boomers when the old forms had failed. The shock absorber had initiated a new cycle in youth ministry.
The culture shock had hit the church, but the new grassroots youth ministry absorbed much of the shock by its speedy response. It was time now for the second part of the cycle: institutionalization.