Posted on 02/24/2023 12:23:17 PM PST by Jim W N
In the 1970s, young Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney) is searching for all the right things in all the wrong places: until he meets Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), a charismatic hippie-street-preacher. Together with Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer), they open the doors of Smith's languishing church to an unexpected revival of radical and newfound love, leading to a JESUS REVOLUTION that changed the world.
Apparently, it's the story of Chuck Smith who founded Calvary Chapel. I didn't know the details about Chick, only that he began as a pastor of a sort of ho-hum church. Then something happened but I didn't know what it was. Apparently, he opened his church door to hippies - out with the old fuddy-duddies and in with the new unconditional love of Jesus for the undeserved.
A story of grace, really, even though Chuck's ministry never fully embraced the Gospel of the Grace of Christ as we know it today. But God bless Chuck and the many, many people who were saved and grew under his ministry.
A story I once heard was that early during this transition something happened that was like the story after Jesus’ resurrection when the disciples were in their fishing boat. The story is in John 21:5-7 Jesus was on the shore but they didn’t know it was Jesus. He called out to them, Children, do you have any meat?” Answer, “No.” Then he said, “Cast the net on the right side of the ship and you will find.” When they did so, immediately the net was so filled they couldn’t draw in the net. In the boat, John said to Peter, “It is the Lord.”
That same word came to Chuck Smith when he saw his “nets” filling up to overflowing with souls. He had been trying all the gimmicks and programs to fill his church. But when he simply trusted the Lord and launched out, what happened next he knew was of the Lord. Thank you Jesus.
I’m going tonight! Looking forward to seeing it :)
I’ll be disappointed if the movie’s background music doesn’t include some 2nd Chapter of Acts or early Petra. LOL
I didn't know the details about Chuck, only that he began as a pastor of a sort of ho-hum church.
Sorry 'bout that Chuck wherever you are...
Here’s a review that piqued my interest.
I will always remember sitting in a near front row seat of the now torn down Arlington Theater on Indy’s eastside, an old school moviehouse turned music hall that was in its final days when my wounded soul begrudgingly joined a friend for a Christian punk rock concert by a band known as The Altar Boys. I was an undeniable punk rocker myself at the time, a wheelchair user and social misfit with eight earrings, purple hair, and a lifetime full of wounds.
I was transformed.
For the first time, at least for the first time in a long time, I’d felt like God had genuinely met me where I was at and I had a revolutionary experience that continues in many ways to define my faith journey to this day. I had been looking for all the right things in all the wrong places. When I found the Christian punk community, I began to discover a love I had never imagined.
While it’s not necessary to have lived through the 70’s revival of radical and newfound love portrayed in Jon Erwin and Brent McCorkle’s Jesus Revolution, I can’t help but think the film will have a special place in the hearts of those who experienced this transformative time that would become known as the greatest spiritual awakening in American history. Jesus Revolution centers itself around a young Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney), a young man being raised by his struggling mother, Charlene (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), and himself looking for all the right things but in all the wrong places.
Laurie, whom we now know as the founding pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship, is portrayed here in his young adult years severely traumatized by his past yet seemingly open to another way of living. Descending on sunny Southern California alongside a sea of young people, Laurie and many others would seem to redefine truth through all means of liberation. When he inadvertently meets Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), a charismatic hippie/street preacher, and Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammer), whose struggling church’s doors are thrown wide open to the growing stream of hippies, free lovers, and wanderers who would come to define this Jesus Revolution, Laurie’s life is forever changed amidst this spiritual awakening grounded in rock and roll, radical love, an outstretched faith, and a revival that changes the world and that Time Magazine would come to dub a Jesus Revolution.
The latest film to come out of the Kingdom Story Company/Lionsgate exclusive partnership that has given us such crowdpleasers as I Can Only Imagine and I Still Believe, Jesus Revolution continues their commitment of bringing hope-filled, true, and inspiring content to the big screen. Co-director Jon Erwin, whose career I’ve followed since his Heartland Film Festival appearance in my hometown of Indianapolis with the 9/11 documentary The Cross and the Towers in 2006, has long had a remarkable ability for telling honest stories through a faith-based lens.
Working alongside Brent McCorkle, he does it once again with Jesus Revolution.
Jesus Revolution captures the exhilaration of a gospel that grew in the unlikeliest of places and yet it’s also a film that realistically portrays the interpersonal and societal traumas and dramas that fueled the need for a great awakening and a transformed contemporary church. Jesus Revolution is a genuinely entertaining film, both undeniably faith-based yet also determined to live into the film’s tagline that “When you open your heart, there’s room for everyone.” To this end, Jesus Revolution largely softens some of the tensions that would grow to exist between the film’s three central characters and the film ends well before it needs to tackle any of the more controversial aspects of Pastor Smith or Frisbee. In most ways, I must say, I actually love both of these decisions as it allows the focus to be maintained on the movement itself.
While largely set in the 70’s, Jesus Revolution seems ideally timed alongside a Hollywood increasingly embracing of faith-based cinema and headlines announcing the Asbury revival. With social tensions and an increasingly fractured church, the question “Could the time be right for another great awakening?” seems palpably in the cinematic air throughout Jesus Revolution. These are, undeniably, issues from the past that remain relevant today.
Joel Courtney (Super 8, The Kissing Booth) captures the layered complexities of Greg Laurie’s young adult years, emotionally riveting in his heartbreaking encounters with his mother and achingly vulnerable in his transformation once he experiences guidance, nurture, and tenderness. Jonathan Roumie’s turn as Lonnie Frisbee, who would join Pastor Chuck in helping to start Calvary Chapel and then later help plant the Vineyard movement, could have so easily been one-note but instead runs the gamut of emotions as a gifted and charismatic preacher who would eventually lean more heavily into the charismatic, pentecostal-like side of Christianity. Roumie, who portrays Jesus on The Chosen, is fiercely charismatic yet also shades Lonnie with personality quirks and humanity.
As Pastor Chuck, credited with starting the Calvary Chapel movement, Kelsey Grammer gives one of his best cinematic performances in years. Seemingly in awe of this hippie street preacher who his somewhat wayward daughter (a wonderful Ally Ioannides) brings into his life, Grammer brings vividly to life the struggles of a pastor trying to balance his church’s more elder, “giving” members with these spirited youths who bring something special if not particularly a boost in finances (at least initially). Grammer’s performance here is incredibly spirit-filled with wisdom and grace, insight and quiet charisma. Grammer reportedly replaced Jim Gaffigan in the role and he definitely makes it his own and turns it into something special.
Anna Grace Barlow is a scene-stealer as Cathe, the literal “other side of the tracks” girl Greg first encounters while traveling down the wrong road before the two discover faith and the seeds for their own radical love that begins to heal past hurts. Those hurts, vividly brought to life by Kimberly Williams-Paisley as Greg’s mother Charlene, are more implied than realized here but are fleshed out through the depth of Williams-Paisley’s performance that plays out honestly without ever skewing the film’s overall optimistic and hope-filled tone.
It’s that tone that turns Jesus Revolution into one of the best faith-based flicks in quite some time. Weaving together a remarkable soundtrack and luminous lensing by Akis Konstantakopoulos, Jesus Revolution carries with it a Cameron Crowe spirit that I thought of over and over and over again throughout the film. Much as is often true for Crowe, Jesus Revolution takes a wonderful ensemble and creates a seamless tapestry of people, places, and events that are beautiful to behold and impossible to forget.
Jesus Revolution will make you laugh. Jesus Revolution will make you cry. Jesus Revolution will make you want to build a longer table and be a better human. Jesus Revolution will call you out and, yes, Jesus Revolution will call you back.
With hope and kindness as its guide, Jesus Revolution tackles difficult issues and then whispers in our ears “Love one another.”
Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic
Our world desperately needs the Love of Jesus NOW!
The True Gospel of the Grace and Love of Jesus is about to explode on the world I believe.
Fasten your seatbelt...
I remember all of them. Lonnie Frisbee was a friend of Danny Lehmann( YWAM, Manoa Valley) and took him surfing in Santa Cruz once...ahh the 70’s.
I have friends who were surfers in Santa Cruz then. You know John Forse or Jack Muncey?
Went to Calvary Chapel in Anaheim in early 80s. Listened to Chucks radio broadcasts, he was an amazing teacher.
Lonnie Frisbee struggled with some sins. He supposedly died of AIDS. Smith compared him to Samson.
I don't know about this movie that's being released today, but the trailer included the famous announcement, "One giant leap for mankind." Truth is wherever it drops in or pops out, even or especially in the unlikeliest of places.
Well, you know what's set in stone at the Hub, the literal place of the Revolution, along with the lore about it being the zero marker stone for measuring distances.
Not long ago I tried to find a good older photo with both the Y and the S, but as the years have gone by, the Y has been almost completely... erased... by the passage of time, leaving only the S, along with the disembodied hand pointing down to the special stone pair at the head of the corner.
At first I was a bit frustrated -- you know, pics or it didn't happen -- because while I know it was a Y and have some personal photos without the sun's glare, if I couldn't locate a simple image from the Internet to have on hand, people might not believe it. I wouldn't expect anyone to simply take my word on the matter.
Then I realized the simple wisdom in the Y'S becoming just the letter S. The curse has erased by time:
The epithet may be abbreviated as "Y. S." in some English texts.An then there's the placement of the Holocaust Memorial, with the Union "Esther" House in between. Huge sign on that roof; can't miss it. Oy.
Everyone will learn to get along finally, by way of the revelation of epic fail.
"Behold, I have dreamed a dream more.." ~ Yosef HaTzaddik
The Seekers - Little Moses (Rare Early Stereo Recording)
Deuteronomy 34A stone as famous as it is elusive, being a minor tourist attraction easy to miss as it requires a slight detour off the marked trail. Then what happens is that folks miss The Point entirely.10 And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face,
11 In all the signs and the wonders, which the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land,
12 And in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.
"Φιλοσοφική λίθος" = 1737
The Seekers - This Little Light Of Mine
It all comes full circle in a big way. Tomorrow is MJD 60000, the big hidden fish of the alef-beit:
'ס
, having sneaked back into the waters through Arabic, disguised by a shin.
Ingenious.
Yes, a few nasty ones. I didn’t know about all that back then. Greg Laurie still had hair!
Not familiar but I knew a lot of guys by their first names. If you give me events, time and place I can usually dial it in. My family portraits are all over the walls of the surf museum. Either myself or a family member would probably know them.
Dunno but know they surfed Steamers Lane among others.
Did you ever make to a Mavericks event at Half Moon Bay? Those were pretty cool
Thank God Jim Gaffigan didn’t portray Smith. Gaffigan is a Leftist loon who HATES Trump, Republicans and Pro-Lifers.
Though he says he’s a devout Catholic Gaffigan posted dozens of the most wretched, mean-spirited tweets I have ever read against Republicans, conservatives and Trump supporters.
His TV shows were great, warm-hearted, family-oriented, but he was nasty and vituperative in his public comments against uys.
No. I’m old, we called in RADARS or just Pillar Point. Surfed it a couple times before it was on the map. You’d go out with a friend, no cord and get scared. It’s a very creepy place without back up.
I didn’t know they gave it a name until the 90’s.
Probably the reason I don’t know the names is I rarely surfed the Lane except for contests.
It does add to a compelling story. This gay guy leads a Spiritual Revolution.
I was doing a Christian retreat and our singer lost his voice. A black music leader took over and it went off. We were on a timetable so another leader asked if we should shut it down. I said “The Spirit is going to do what He will do. We need to stay out of the way”. So we were way behind and then a speaker talked way over his limit. Now we were really behind. The next speaker finished and I knew were were going to miss lunch. I pulled out my watch and we were 5 minutes early.
The Spirit is going to do what He will do. Best to get out of the way.
And who is to say the Lord didn’t use him? He was pretty open I suppose. All of us have sinned and fallen short. I remember Chuck and some of the first branches and there was a lot of love and little legalism.
Heck, I’ve been a believer ( grew up in church but baptized in 1972) for fifty years now and told a few folks I still cuss and one person said I am a poor witness. I do cuss, but in my car and alone ha ha but people make big things out of small stuff.
Lonnie was saved I know that. Lord bless you
I am saying He did use him, flaws and all. I’ve seen God use some people and we all knew they were bad but you have to get out of God’s way and follow anyway. We had one leader in our community that his own wife said “God is using him in a powerful way so I will stay until it is unbearable but it won’t be much longer”. She was right. He just sorta self-destructed after his time was over.
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