SUMMER OF LOVE 2007:
San Francisco, July 19 – August 18
“THE NEW JESUS MOVEMENT . . . REDEEMING THE DREAM”
by Michael Brodeur
Pastor, Promised Land Fellowship, San Francisco, CA

Forty years ago, a cultural revolution known as the “Hippie Movement” began in the city of San Francisco and swept across the U.S. and the Western world. 1967 became known as the “Summer of Love.” Thousands of young people who are now part of the “Boomer Generation” flocked to the city to be part of a counter-culture characterized by love and peace, as well as drugs, sex, and rock and roll. The air was filled with a utopian idealism that gave birth to the anti-war movement, an increased interest in Eastern philosophy, student sit-ins, and love-ins. Yet it didn’t take long for the idealism to turn to cynicism with the deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, and Jim Morrison, and the introduction of “hard” drugs such as heroin and cocaine. The quintessential experience of the Woodstock Festival was followed by the murders at Altamont. Peace and love soon degenerated into various expressions of pride, selfishness, and hedonism, and the Hippie dream was shattered.

It was during this season that God answered with a true counter-culture movement that became known as the “Jesus Movement.” Thousands of young people came to Christ, and many of the Hippies found true peace and love in a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. These young people became known as “Jesus People” or “Jesus Freaks.” The Jesus Movement began to wane in 1976, but not before an army of young people had given their lives to Christ and begun to live for the Kingdom of God.

The same pattern is unfolding today.

A New Global Youth Culture

A fresh wind of the Spirit is blowing throughout the land. Some prophets and prognosticators are proclaiming the promise of a massive global harvest. Sociological and spiritual indicators suggest that over a billion souls could come to Christ in the next ten years!

While both the Hippie Movement and the Jesus Movement of the 1960s were confined primarily to Western culture, a new youth movement is underway that has spilled beyond the banks of Western culture and is beginning to affect every nation on earth. Many youth sub-cultures are converging into a flood of shared, mutual expression: blue hair and dreadlocks, body piercings and tattoos, leather and bandanas. There are all-night dance parties, commonly called “Raves,” powered by a new breed of designer drugs. There are young neo-Hippies following new psychedelic bands around the U.S. Punks, Goths, Squatters, and Gangsters are all “branded” by their own style of clothes, hair, music, and mindset.

The emergence of technology and the Internet have caused the earth to become increasingly small. MTV is playing in India; a Grateful Dead song is playing on a boom-box in Kazakhstan; Japanese Hippies are touring the Haight-Ashbury; Rasta and World-beat are changing the music scene. A new “generation gap” is growing between a Hindu college student and his father, and an Islamic girl and her mother. Increasingly, young Israeli men and women are spending the year after their mandatory military service touring the East to party—and to seek God.

In 2001, my family and I traveled to Thailand for three weeks as part of a team to reach the emerging global youth culture. Although I was raised by hippie parents in the midst of the San Francisco Counter-culuture and had spent many years in ministry among “alternative” youth, I was totally unprepared for the magnitude of what we encountered! After several hours on a ferry, we ended up on a remote island called Ko Pha Gnan where over ten thousand young people from dozens of nations had gathered on a tropical beach to celebrate a monthly event called the “Full Moon Festival.” In recent years, our church has regularly sent teams to India, Nepal, Israel, Europe, South Africa, and Latin America and they all have encountered similar situations, with similar numbers of young people. We have also had teams that have traveled throughout the United States, following the American “travelers” who follow the rock bands—all in pursuit of utopia. I have also personally been to the Burning Man Festival and the National Rainbow Gathering , with tens of thousands of counter-culture people and have come to the conclusion that these kinds of events represent a mere tip of the iceberg. This is a generation on a search for authenticity. Jesus is the real thing.

The stage is now set for a New Jesus Movement.

The Post-Modern Mindset

The greatest challenge to this New Jesus Movement is the emergence of what sociologists have termed the “post-modern mindset.” The Hippie Movement was experienced by a generation that was raised with a strong sense of right and wrong. Although the lines became blurred, the Hippies eventually returned to a more traditional mindset. In contrast, the youth of the emerging generation have been raised in the absence of absolutes and clear definitions of right and wrong. Relativism and New Age values have permeated the culture and created an environment hostile to Christian beliefs. Post-modernism is more than simply a reaction against the traditional thinking of the past—it is an entirely new way of viewing truth. This could be the greatest challenge to evangelism that the Church has ever known.

However, our God is a redeemer and loves challenges. He is able to break into the darkest of cultures and reveal the light and truth of the Gospel. He is able to take the very things that the enemy means for evil and turn them to good.

There is no doubt that the new youth movement of this new millennium will be exponentially greater in size and scope than that of its counter-culture predecessor of the 1960s. In the same way, the New Jesus Movement that follows will be greater by far than the one which has gone before.

I believe that God is poised to reveal Himself to this emerging generation. We need to be prepared.

“Redeeming the Dream”

A unique opportunity of the moment is that we have the ability to prepare our hearts—and our churches and ministries—by creating an inter-generational partnership. During a 3-week period of “Summer of Love 2007” activities, we will be calling all “Boomers” and all believers to step up to the plate as mentors, in accordance with Malachi (quote Scriptural passage re: turning the hearts of the fathers to the sons) and _______ (quote a complementary Scripture for non-Boomers). Thus the generations can be together this time, instead of apart like last time.