Justin Timberlake and the seeds of the LOGOS

Justin Martyr once described Plato as a “Christian” who had some intuitive pre-revelation of the divine LOGOS in Christ (McDermott, 2007:93). He reasoned that if Christ is the Logos who lights up the whole world, then there must be “seeds” of ultimate divine reason or the LOGOS of God scattered in many non-Jewish or non-Christian cultures (of course, this was before there actually existed a “Christian” culture, properly speaking – at the time there was only a growing Christian subculture within Hellenistic and Roman paganism).

Nearly ten years ago, in August of 2001—a very traumatic year as you might remember-I stopped over at my friend Steve Humble’s house to speak at his church. Steve treated me to my first exposure to the FIRST LOVE videos that document the testimonies of most of pioneers of early “Jesus” movement music. Worship, music and testimonies from such musicians as Honeytree, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Chuck Girard and Love Song, Terry Clark, Randy Matthews and Randy Stonehill, and Keith Green posthumously were deeply inspiring and helped me to reconnect with my own “first love” in the months around my visit to Steve. I had listened many of those albums back in the early to mid-seventies. Long Song was the very first Christian worship band I had every been exposed to. At that time John Meadows had an afro and was organizing live Christian rock concerts in Ohio. I attended the one he did with Andre Crouch. (Ok … hang with here, I am going to make point in a moment).

Over the last ten years, I watched the FIRST LOVE videos probably a dozen times, not only for the worship, and the encouragement about loving Jesus, but also with a weeping longing to see the divine initiative of the Spirit again in a new generation that is very lost.

I also used the video’s analytically, as a way of getting at primary oral histories of the beginnings of the Jesus movement (I didn’t realize that was what I was doing until I got into the methods class in the history department).

Here are a couple of facts about the pioneers of the Jesus movement:

LOVE SONG wrote a lot of their much of their best “spiritual” music of devotion to God and Jesus BEFORE they became Christians. After they were initially baptized, they went out and got “high” to celebrate.

Keith Green was writing devotional music to God BEFORE he was a Christian, while he was still a secular Jew. In the interview, Melody Green reads from his journal about his passion for God months before his official conversion.

The same kind of testimony is shared repeatedly by artist after artist. Only three of the pioneers out of nearly twenty, were raised as Christians, and they were not the prime movers of the early Jesus movement music.

Conclusion: Most of the impetus for the Jesus movement came through the activity of the Spirit working through marginalized secular young people who were desperate. After they were already tracking along with the Spirit, they became involved with Calvary Chapel or The FourSquare church and some with the discipleship movement, and others later with the Vineyard. A separate discussion would be to look at the fruit of these "church" movements today and to ask oneself if the discipling they received was a good thing or not so good.

My point:

If another "Jesus" movement is ever to come to those young people born after 1982 (and there is some sociological support for this generation to be a strong and activist generation: See Strauss and Howe, 1992), it will not likely originate within the church. It will originate with the initiative of the Spirit OUTSIDE the walls among hurting, lost and desperate kids.

check out this Youtube video by a rapper named T.I. and Justin Timberlake



I discern the activity and the LOGOS of the Spirit speaking through their song, “Dead and Gone” amidst some really bad words by our evangelical baby boomer sensitivities. I think the Spirit is already moving in the hip hop generation in a similar fashion to what He did in 1968-1971 in the hippie movement. The question is, do we have the “ears to hear” through young people who may be as offensive to us, as the long-haired hippies were offensive to our parents generation? (I was one of them). Are they doctrinally correct? Highly unlikely. Is the Spirit moving in them? I really think so. You may disagree with me.

Second question: If this is true, how will we disciple them? (assuming they give us an opportunity). Will we raise up some new Calvary Chapels? Or can we do better than that? Even more important, how can we connect with those rappers and gangsters (vampire and tribal people?) in whom the Spirit is already at work so that we EVEN HAVE A CHANCE to offer some discipleship? Hint: it won’t happen at church on Sunday morning.

What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable.

What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable.

"Religulous" Review on Dan Kimball's blog

There is a great review of Bill Maher’s humorous new documentary film about religion, called “Religulous” on Dan Kimball’s blog. I would encourage Christians who are reformationally re-thinking Evangelical faith to go see the film and to read Kimballs review. Below is a brief portion of the the review.

vintage faith

“…Bill Maher is trying to show how "religion" in general is messed up and even very damaging (which it can be). He tries to make his point in a very, very humorous way. But it also was very predictable in what it covered. I have either listened to or read most of the arguments he made in the film, so what was in the film itself wasn't really new information...

…Although it was a humorous film, and although it raised great questions which need to be asked - it only showed a very one-sided perspective. Thus, to me it was a poor film journalistically as it misrepresented Christianity by only showing the extremes of it...

… A somewhat tender moment in the film actually was in the beginning when he was interviewing some attending a truck stop chapel. As he left he thanked them for "not being Christian, but being Christ-like". That was the best moment in the film to me. Maybe one day someone will make a movie called "Jesusology" or something and it will be a film done as professionally as this one in quality.”

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