On this episode of five minutes in church history, let's just go back into the recent past, to about 50 years ago or so, and the founding of the Jesus people are sometimes called the Jesus movement or sometimes called Jesus Freaks.

These folks began in 1968 in California.

This was the era of the hippie.

And these hippies descended upon Southern California.

And some churches there and some Christians there

decided they would reach out to these hippies

and bring them to Christ.

And so we have the beginning of the Jesus movement.

In 1971, Billy Graham was invited to be the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade.

And as he sat in his float and it made its way down towards the Rose Bowl, he noticed that

the streets were lined with literally hundreds of these long-haired youth holding up one finger, their index finger, pointed to heaven with the

one-way sign and that was the sign of the Jesus people.

Well this caught Billy Graham's attention and he wrote a book called The Jesus Generation.

That year it went through many printings and sold well over a half a million copies and

it put the Jesus people on the map of the media and on the map of the American church.

Well, what can we make of this phenomenon of the Jesus people?

Well, first we have to see that they had a huge impact on American Evangelicalism.

They both reflected trends in American Evangelicalism, and they also set some new trends.

They tended to be very Pentecostal. They focused very much on signs and

wonders and they were fixated on these supernatural experiences that they all

had and would share with each other. Secondly, they totally changed the look of the church.

These are not folks wearing suits and sitting in pews. These were tank top, short, flip-flop-Wearing kids who would sit cross-legged on the floor,

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