[Passage: 1 Cor 9: 1 – 27, preached Sunday morning, 04 Jan, 2009]

IN 1971, I turned 25. I was married, we had a baby on the way. I was working in a Council’s Engineering department, and was doing a degree at night. I remember quite a bit of that year.

One thing stands out. A June issue of Time magazine was very eye–catching. The cover picture was a psychedelic image of Jesus. He was on the cover, because he was news.
In 1966, Time had an issue with a black cover, and the headline, Is God dead? Some theologians were saying that the concept of God was no longer useful. And, suddenly, in 1971, Jesus was the name on everyone’s lips: they called it The Jesus Revolution.

I am telling you about this because if you are too young to remember that, or if you didn’t really follow that kind of news, I want you to know that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a great outbreak of gospel preaching. The Christian Church might have lived through some bleak years in the 20th Century, but it wasn’t all bad news.

Here are names and ideas from the time:
Jack Sparks
Christian World Liberation Front
Larry Norman
David “Mo” Berg
Arthur Blessitt
And, on the tail of this movement, John Wimber.

Jack Sparks had a doctorate and an academic career, but took a detour to lead a movement to proclaim the gospel at the University of Califormia. He and his team worked at the Berkeley campus, in the centre of the Hippy movement and of political radicalism.
The movement he led was known as The Christian World Liberation Front, and they published a newspaper named Right On! to help spread the Gospel.
Then there was Larry Norman, the son of a Pentecostal preacher, and the first person to combine rock ‘n roll music and the gospel message. He also invented the One Way – Jesus sign. Several of his songs became well–known, like Sing that sweet, sweet song of salvation and I wish we’d all been ready.

Larry Norman died last year, sadly.

Of course, every movement has its evil twin. Another prominent name from that time was David “Mo” Berg, who was disfellowshipped from several other ministries before he led his own group known as the Children of God or the Family of Love. This organisation combined some elements of the gospel with drugs and sexual and emotional abuse. They caused lots of problems for genuine gospel preachers.

Arthur Blessitt was an evangelist who walked around the US dragging a large wooden cross, which he stood up wherever he planned to preach. He was effective at getting people converted and sending them into Christian fellowships wherever he went to.

John Wimber, a rock musician with The Righteous Brothers, was converted, studied theology and led a movement which combined mainstream theology with an appreciation for the Holy Spirit’s power.
His movement eventually became the Vineyard churches. We sing some of their music.

I have told you about this, because I want us to understand how the power of the gospel breaks out when people are determined to make Jesus known. I want you to know that there is hope.

And Paul shows us some keys to how it is done.

Keep in mind what I said last week, specially about how I believe that megachurches are the wrong model. I would love us to be a big church, but I would be even happier if we were a really effective church, even if we didn’t grow much.
I want to tell you today about the Christian World Liberation Front.

Pat and Fred had been university friends. They were married to Carrie and Jane.
They were fairly new graduates.
Pat was politically conservative, and he was troubled by the radicalism on US campuses in the late 1960s. He talked to Fred about it. All four decided that they should bring a Christian voice into the mixture.
They didn’t know where to start, so they asked one of their University lecturers, Jack Sparks. Jack agreed that Christians should be involved.
“The unrest among students is there because things aren’t right,”
he said.
“That doesn”t mean they have the answer, but they know we’re in trouble.”
Sparks laid it on the line to his friends. He said,
“It looks to me as if we, who are Christians, have avoided being where things get violent, and have avoided interacting with people who are leaders in trying to make change happen. We really should be where the action is. *”

I want you to understand the times when these things were happening.
In 1963, President Kennedy was killed.
In 1967, The Six Day War between Israel and her Arab neighbours broke out.
In January 1968, the Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive against US and allied soldiers in Vietnam, killing hundreds, and beginning the end of the US involvement in Vietnam.
In April 1968, Martin Luther King was killed
In May 1968, there were such violent student demonstrations in France and Germany that the French Government collapsed.
In June 1968, Bobby Kennedy was killed
In March 1969, Nixon began the secret bombing campaign against Cambodia. Children in Cambodia and Laos are still maimed and killed daily by unexploded bombs and landmines, some of which are buried just below the surface.
The Hippy movement was in full swing. People were heading to Canada from the US to avoid conscription.

Here in Australia we had had conscription lotteries where your birthday was pulled out of a hat and you had to go into the army. When I was 20, not too many people thought that was a fair system.
I still don’t.

Because of the unrest, conservative people grew even more conservative.

It was a time when short back and sides was the mark of a good Christian. It was a time when men wore their suits to church every Sunday. It was a time when Christians deplored the war, but kept well away from protests in case someone might think they were allied with the Communists.
And business and Government loved the conservatives and supported them, because it was conservatives and Christians who would not rock the boat. That is always good for business.
That is the kind of society people in the US and Australia were protesting against.

And the problem that Pat, Carrie, Fred, Jane, Jack and Esther had to confront.

How would short back-and-sides Christians, how would Ned Flanders with a crew cut, say anything meaningful to people who would spit in the face of a Christian and say, “You are a representative of the people who oppress my nation. I hate you, and, when the revolution comes, we will kill you.” How do you bring the love of God into that situation?

Well, these six went to the rallies and listened. They talked to people, and began to understand them. They watched how different leftist groups operated. They also watched as they fought among themselves.
They learnt what the people they wanted to reach responded to. Did they read leaflets? Sometimes the Christian leaflet and the political leaflets had the same title, and pointed to the same problems in society, but the Christians had a different solution: not violence, but peaceful change.
The Christians saw how the students had questions and accusations, but few answers.
And they also began to see how some people were manipulating situations, not to get justice done, but to be able to claim numbers for their side.

All the time, they sought to understand.

But the time came when listening and asking questions and handing out a couple of thousand leaflets wasn’t enough.

And this was where this passage became dominant in their thinking.
They had rights. Jack Sparks had been a university lecturer. They all had respectable jobs, were all married, had homes and cars and everything you and I consider part of normal life.
What did Paul say about these things?

4 Don’t we have the right to food and drink? 5 Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas? 6 Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living?
7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense?

They had rights, but they decided to live like the students so that they could reach students.

It’s what Paul wrote,
I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Pat, Fred, Jack and their wives became as students to the students so as to win the students. They left their jobs. They gave up their business suits. They let their hair grow. They even grew beards.
Did you know that my beard had its 41st birthday in December? I stopped shaving it off just before Christmas 1968, so that I had the Christmas holidays to get it established.
When I applied for a job in 1969 at Holroyd Council as an Engineering Surveyor, they were happy that I could do the job, but they debated for over an hour whether to employ someone who had a beard. They thought I might bring marijuana or heroin into the place.
Fred, Jack, Pat and their wives — and a growing band of supporters — faced exactly that kind of suspicion. It was even worse in the US. The people at the church I went to had no problems with my beard, but church people in California told them they were getting too close to the hippies, and stopped inviting them to speak at their services.

It shows you how superficial the churches had become, and it might help you understand why these students had no time for Christians. They wanted real depth, not surface stuff that meant nothing.

These six leaders ­— that’s all they were — called themselves the Christian World Liberation Front. They set out to be an answer to groups like the Third World Liberation Front.
They gave up their jobs and relied on donations to keep them going. They had to learn to pray for the finances they needed.
But they not only handed out leaflets by the thousands at rallies, they even began producing a free newspaper, Right On!

I have had experience with small publications, going back to our High School magazine. It was a hassle then. You didn’t have computerised desktop publishing. It was mostly letterpress. Every line of the page had to be cast in metal and clamped into a press. Every photograph had to be etched onto a metal plate with acids to make it printable.
It took days to get a newspaper ready for printing. But they found the money and they stayed up at nights and printed a newspaper with articles on your rights if you are arrested, and how to avoid injuries if there is a riot. There were stories on basic health care and first aid. There were articles about rallies and what the results were.

They became like those they wanted to reach, because that is always God’s way.
Jesus became like us to reach us.
Love means you don’t reject a person, even if you don’t participate in his sin. And rejecting a person’s interests and style is still rejection.

As I said, just like Paul, they had rights. They could have done what was comfortable to themselves. But they chose to do what was uncomfortable, because they were determined to reach people who had no hope apart from the good news of Jesus.

When I first attended church, I deliberately wore my loudest tie, my sharpest trousers — the green tartan with the slit pockets — and my luminous green socks. I was sure those Christians would send me packing and I’d never have to go again.
I got a surprise. They accepted me. They welcomed me. And they were my friends.
People often choose to look a certain way as a challenge to others: will you accept me as I am?
Paul accepted people.
The Christian World Liberation Front accepted people.

I hope we constantly check ourselves and make sure we accept people, too.

Paul wrote to the Philippians:
PHILIPPIANS 2:5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death —
even death on a cross!
9 Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus became one of us so he could win us.
He went as far as a cross. How far will we go in his name, so that we can reach those who are separated from him, and demonstrate in our own lives the love of God?

* Sparks, Jack, God’s Forever Family, The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1974, p 13, 14
Other references in this sermon are from the same source.