Revolution

There were those in Jesus' time who questioned the legitimacy of His ministry. They did not believe He had been sent from God; rather, quite the contrary. But, what He has done has survived for over 2000 years, and faithful servants have continued to obey Him, preach His Word, and do His work. 2nd Timothy chapter 2 states:
19 Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: "The Lord knows those who are His," and, "Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity."
20 But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.
21 Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.

So, there are opportunities to do good work for the Kingdom of God.  We can determine whether or not we will be faithful to His call and build on the foundation of the Church that has been laid throughout the years. We can make sure to surround ourselves with the right teaching, the right influences, and follow the right direction. We can be thankful for how we have seen God work in the past, and be expectant of how He will use His people in the future. 

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The apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 3 illustrated how the body of Christ is called to work together to lift up Jesus. He wrote:
8 Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.
9 For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, you are God's building.
10 According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it.
11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

I ascended the stairs and walked through the door to a rather nondescript suite of offices situated on the second floor above the plasma donation center, where college students could go to acquire some spending money. I had a different idea - I wanted to work in Christian radio.

The year was 1978.  I was a sophomore at the University of Tennessee. The previous summer, I had made a discovery that changed my life. Some of my friends in the youth group that I had joined during my senior year had opened a door to me to truly see a new world.  I had experienced Christian radio, and the impact was life-changing. 

So walking up those stairs and entering the door asking for a job was a continuation of that progression. That door opened a whole new world of possibility for my life.  And, I discovered what was taking place in Christian music at that time.

It was a time of rapid growth - new artists were appearing on the scene with great regularity. I learned about what was going on in California with the Jesus Movement, I discovered Maranatha! Music, that was on the cutting edge of what God was doing musically.  

1978 wasn't too far removed from the roots of that movement around 10 years before. The station where I worked aired a program called The Word for Today, with Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa.  This was rich, it was real, and I was glad to be exposing our Knoxville listeners to the new wave of what was called Contemporary Christian Music. 

The movie, The Jesus Music, was a documentary released by Jon and Andy Erwin a couple of years ago that included this birth of a movement. They have followed that up with a motion picture, Jesus Revolution, which is a dramatic portrayal of the origins of that movement and its impact on a young man named Greg Laurie.  The Los Angeles Times stated this in a story about the Jesus Music movie:

“There’s just something so pure about where it all started,” says co-director Jon Erwin. “There wasn’t really an industry or an agenda behind it. Just a bunch of hippie kids that experienced something and gathered in masses to sing their songs.”

Though “The Jesus Music” moves far beyond Costa Mesa to tackle issues of race, morality, sin and redemption, its opening canto beams light on a long-gone music community 50 miles south of Laurel Canyon. There, during the same period Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Frank Zappa and the Byrds were becoming famous, a half-dozen Calvary Chapel bands united in 1971 to create “The Everlastin’ Living Jesus Music Concert.”

Released on Chuck Smith’s new Maranatha! Music label and costing about $4,000 to produce, the album went on to sell more than 200,000 copies. Fifty years later, “The Everlastin’ Living Jesus Music Concert” is considered the Big Bang of contemporary Christian music — a collection of folk-inspired soft rock that, as it eased its way onto youth-group turntables across the country, cast a spell over Jesus-loving, mostly white baby boomers amid a generational shift.

“When I first heard that Maranatha record, I couldn’t get enough of it,” Christian singer Michael W. Smith says in “The Jesus Music.” “This thing called ‘Jesus Music,’ which exploded in Southern California, somehow found its way [to] my hometown, and it changed my life.”

One of the musical leaders of the movement was Chuck Girard. His website relates:

In his early twenties Chuck became disillusioned with life, and like so many of his generation began experimenting with drugs. This led to a five-year search for God through LSD, eastern religion, and a committed “hippie” lifestyle.

His search ended in 1970 at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa when he found true spiritual reality through accepting Jesus Christ as his Savior. Girard was already in a group call LOVE SONG, and along with the conversions of the band members came the radical change in their message. Previously playing clubs, preaching “peace and love”, and LSD as the way to find God, they now had a new message, and with this change helped blaze the path for the beginnings of what would become known as “The Jesus Movement” and Contemporary Christian Music. Chuck played with LOVE SONG for the next three years before launching solo with his first self-titled album CHUCK GIRARD that produced his most renowned song “Sometimes Alleluia”...

That seed inspired a whole new generation of Christian musicians, impacted Michael W. Smith about a decade later, and continues to impact musicians today - the producers of Jesus Revolution posted a video with positive comments from Rebecca St. James, Jeremy Camp, and...Bart Millard, himself a subject of an Erwin Brothers film, as well as Jeremy.  Bart wrote this on Facebook:

I finally had the chance to see @jesusrevolutionmovie and I’m at a loss for words. Other than “The Passion of The Christ,” I have never seen a movie blatantly share the gospel with such beauty! I’m telling you…every movie @kingdomstorycompany has made so far: “I Can Only Imagine, I still Believe, The Jesus Music, American underdog” along with many more, they have all made a path for the gospel to be shared like I have NEVER seen before.

I would hope that, if Jesus tarries, the current wave that seems to be occurring would be looked back upon 10, 20, 50 years from now and say this is when America, when our world, returned to God. I started in Christian radio about 10 years after the beginning of the Jesus Movement of the late 60's and early 70's - I had no idea it was going on during that time period.  But, I later recognized the effects.  Asbury started a wave, and only God knows where it's going - we just have to be faithful to continue to pray and call out to Him. 

We can also be devoted to build on the strong foundation of Christ. When we see God at work, we can be faithful to partner with Him, as Henry Blackaby has taught. God is calling us to draw close to Him, and when we fellowship with the Father, we can get a greater sense of what He wants to do through us. He gives us mission and purpose, and we can rejoice at how we have seen Him work.