Meet Ed Underwood

By Ronald E. Keener

Ed Underwood, Senior Pastor:  Church of the Open Door, Glendora, CA

Ed Underwood graduated from a California high school in 1968 and he says “we were a radical, angry and alienated generation. The country was deeply divided — unpopular war, campus unrest, racial riots. My friends and I were worrying about our draft notice, medicating with a lot of booze or drugs, and basically living for today. Our buddies were dying in Vietnam and our girlfriends were burning their bras. Everything was up for grabs socially, and we were recklessly bent on changing things.”

Today, 60 years old and pastor of a 700-person church — he doesn’t attend pastors’ conferences because they are more about “how you can grow a big-deal, together church” — he shepherds Church of the Open Door in Glendora, CA. As a youth he was in the Jesus Movement in the late 60s and early 70s and writes about it in Reborn to be Wild: Reviving Our Radical Pursuit of Jesus (David C. Cook, 2010).

Was there any one person or one event that started the Jesus Movement?

I’m not enough of an expert on the social phenomenon to speak accurately. My Jesus Movement experience came from the inside. It was simply how I came to Christ. People who know a lot more about the roots of the Jesus Movement than I, say it all began in 1967 with the opening of a small storefront evangelical mission led by street people called the Living Room in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district — an epicenter of 60s unrest. After this, independent centers began to spring up on the West Coast: the Jesus People Army in Seattle, his Place nightclub on Sunset Strip in Hollywood, and Christian Liberation World Front at UC Berkeley.

You ask the question in the book, “How did spiritual revolutionaries became tame evangelicals?” What’s the answer?

We let mainstream Christianity and churchianity tame us. We tried to settle into irrelevant churches and “be good little Christians” and we morphed into the same irrelevant, cloistered communities. I think we also bought into some of the same lies the First Century church bought into that sidetracked them. Especially the lie that we needed more than Jesus. Tragically, we allowed the “mores” to divide us.

In what ways did you “have a front seat to the raw power of God — true revival on a scale that has not occurred since in America, but we settled for the safety of the tame Christianity of the suburbs.”

You have to remember that we met Christ on the street, not in churches. We knew nothing about how to establish a Christian home, so we began to safeguard our families. We grew up in messes and we wanted to protect our children from the mess. But in too many instances, we decided to run from the world rather than overwhelming the world with the grace of Jesus the same way we had been overwhelmed.

So, we settled into tamer versions of the Christian life and lost our radical edge. I found an amazing number of Jesus Movement radicals who sincerely tried to protect their children from this world through solely Christian education or homeschooling but lost their children to the world as soon as they left home.

Is that the problem with most movements — people “settle” and get tired of the sacrifices?

I don’t think our redeemed heart ever gets tired of the sacrifices of following Jesus. I feel the culpable ones are the leaders, the ones who explain away the hard sayings of Jesus to build their little kingdoms. Just last week a couple told me that their former pastor, a “growth at all costs” guy, explained his uneasiness with just teaching the Bible by saying, “We live in an affluent community, and a lot of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to rich people.”

I’m not convinced that God’s people need to be driven toward sacrifice or protected from it. I believe grace invites sacrifice and the new life in us deeply desires to follow Jesus in radical ways. We’ve sold the average Christian short, in my opinion, and consulted too many “experts” on the spiritual life. Jesus is the expert and his simple words are the Way.

“We’re anything but wild today. Somewhere along the way, we got sidetracked,” you wrote. What does that experience say to anyone looking today for a new revival?

Here’s what I think happens. Revival, or at least a mighty movement of God, breaks out somewhere. The people in the middle of it don’t know it’s a revival, they’re just meeting Jesus and having amazing experiences of his power and provision. Religious or church “experts” who have always wanted to make 
something like this happen, are attracted to the raw power of God being demonstrated in these lives.

These “experts,” somewhat like the entitled bureaucrats of government, are convinced that they can “help” this revival along with all of their theories and techniques that have never worked. So, they grab these lives, analyze them, teach them stuff that doesn’t matter, and take credit for the whole deal.

The innocence of the ones in the revival is betrayed by these people who have never been able to make something like this occur. You have to keep in mind that there’s a lot of arrogance in church leadership. Many church or missions leaders believe that they would be successful if people would just do what they say. They may not admit it, but scratch and sniff, dude. That’s really what they’re so bitter over.

So, here come these excited and effective Jesus Freaks or this new movement of the Holy Spirit and they’re all over it, with an attitude and an agenda.

I think that’s my message to those who are a part of something fresh and exciting today. Don’t let frustrated spiritual bureaucrats, theorists, and hall monitors capture your energy. They may know a lot and speak at big gatherings of “I know a lot about how church should run” meetings, but they can’t explain you. You’re living what they always thought they were supposed to be in charge of. Be wary of anyone who speaks down to you or you feel has an agenda to control you.

What would a new revival, getting started today, look like if you saw one?

Wow, I don’t think anyone can know the specifics but God. What I can be sure of is that, like every revival in church history, it will center on the person of Christ and embrace his simple commands to his people. Here’s what we know about God — he’s always up to something, but it’s never what we think he’s doing. There are so many voices telling us where we need to concentrate our energies, where the “next big thing” is going to happen.

There’s the “10-40 window” that we just have to penetrate if God’s going to reach the world; this book on how to reach this type of person or that book on how many campuses your church needs to penetrate a culture. Really? Think about it, who would have predicted that a revival would erupt on the beaches of Southern California in the 60s and spread from epicenters like UCLA, USC, Berkeley, and Hollywood?

Wonder who was writing about the “hippie window” and the potential on the radical campuses of the 60s.

All this to say, I don’t know. But when it does happen, it will be radically simple and jarringly surprising to the theorists. God delights in surprising and befuddling religious experts.

How did you guys look at Billy Graham in those days?

Oh man, Billy Graham was a stud. He stood with us. When he endorsed and then participated in Expo ‘72 we were in awe of this guy — a friend of presidents who got us. We loved him. Still do.

Chuck Smith was a mentor to many young people and young pastors. Where was he in this movement?

Chuck Smith was right in the middle of it. He was one of the few who embraced us because he rightly viewed it as a movement of the Holy Spirit. I’ve never met Chuck and wasn’t touched by his ministry. My corner of the Jesus Movement was more oriented toward Bill Bright, Hal Lindsey, Ray Stedman, Young Life and Campus Crusade. But I’ve met so many who have been influenced by Pastor Smith’s teaching.

The Jesus Movement, you wrote, was a “revolution that happened on the streets, but it was a revolution of the heart.” What did it feel like, how did it fulfill you?

It felt like a rescue, because it was. It felt like being cared for, because it was. And it felt like everything that God was doing in the world was focused on our little group. We knew nothing of world missions, the landscape of Christianity in America, denominations, or church history. Every day was a tremendously exciting day to walk with Jesus and make as big a difference for Him as possible.

I remember driving along the freeway in my ‘69 GTO one evening talking with Jesus and telling Him, “Now, everything means something. I’m doing stuff for you. I’m not just going to school or working in the mountains. I’m here for you, and you’re here with me. Wow, Jesus. This is amazing. Why do you love me so much? Are you sure you want to do all of this with me?”

It was a heady trip and I want that same excitement and sense of eternal significance for others. That’s one of the primary reasons I wrote the book.

How might one equate Jesus Movement followers with the disciples that Jesus gathered to himself?

Like the untamed Galileans from the north, we were the untamed dudes from SoCal. Like them, we were more interested in Jesus than religion, already asking questions and feeling dissatisfied (many of them were followers of the weirdo in the desert — John).

Like the Galilean disciples (the only Judean disciple didn’t work out too well), we were looking for something real and pretty desperate. And, like the Galilean disciples, we were knuckleheads growing in Christ together.

But also, like them, we followed the Master. My sense of the revivals I’ve read about and studied is that it’s usually some outsiders coming to faith that God uses to pump new life into his people that spills out of their lives and communities into revival.

“Most of the existing church cultures we walked into had reverted back to the ‘want to’ hopelessness and irrelevancy of the Pharisees.” What do you mean by that?

Any system of religious works-righteousness appeals to our “I want to be holy and think I can” flesh. It doesn’t work. Christianity is grace-righteousness. It doesn’t appeal to the strengths of our flesh, but appeals to our redeemed from hopelessness heart. It teaches us our resources in Christ and encourages us to live from who we are in Him in a healthy community. We were experiencing the latter, healthy version in our Jesus Movement gatherings. And then we went to church and it was “dress-up, button-down, put on your loafers, and get to work for Jesus. Be good, don’t do this … ” That’s what I mean by “want to” spirituality — systems of works righteousness that ignore our new power in Christ.

What can we do to be part of a “new” revival like the Jesus Movement today? Is it wrong to try to replicate the original one?

Last question first. Yes, it’s wrong. God’s always doing something fresh. This was one of my fears in writing Reborn to Be Wild — that it would turn into a “remember the good old days” book. That’s what God did then, but I do feel we can learn from our revival. I honestly believe that if we re-embraced the simple truths of Jesus, follow him radically, and beg him for it, we could see a revival, not our revival, but a revival again.

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Movement leaders then who still lead

Our good friends, Brock and Bodie Thoene, who have sold millions of books, came to Christ in the same Young Life clubs we did. Greg Laurie is a Jesus Movement dude with mega-influence today. Chuck Smith’s impact through Calvary Chapels and Christian radio is enormous.

Hal Lindsey, Josh McDowell, and others are still teaching the Bible on a wide scale. Campus Crusade for Christ is still going strong and many pastors, parachurch leaders, and missionaries on the field today came out of our revival.

I’ve reconnected with a lot of Jesus Movement musicians who, although they were burned terribly by the church and maintain a low profile today, still walk with Jesus as fervent followers.    —EU
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Church of the open door today

Church of the Open Door was the megachurch of its day, and tons of great ministry came out of those years. Missionaries were sent around the world. Many worldwide ministries were launched or conceived at Church of the Open Door: Thru the Bible Radio, Navigators, Overseas Crusades, Wycliffe Bible Translators. Biola University and Talbot Seminary shared leaders like R. A. Torrey and Louis Talbot. It was amazing: A 4,000 seat-auditorium in downtown LA that filled up every Sunday morning and evening, and during J. Vernon McGee’s ministry, again on Thursday evening.

The church went through really difficult times before Judy and I came here in 1996. A move to Glendora, a church split, a fallen pastor, and general malaise had left us a shell of our former self. The big-church, radio-preacher, program-driven model was simply not going to work, and most of the leaders got that. There was real desperation. Fewer than 200 people gathering on this huge 43 acre campus with all these missionaries on the field. It’s really miraculous that we survived.

We seized the opportunity to focus on disciplemaking and community-building. Today disciplemaking and community-building permeate every aspect and ministry of our church. Every leader is a team builder and discipler. We’re intentional about unity.

The youth and adult ministries are simply expressions of that — disciplemaking and community-building. Through personal discipleship, small groups, leadership by teams, environments of grace, truth-telling, and protective love, these ministries grow deep enough to launch believers into their own world as ambassadors for Christ.   — Ed Underwood

“I’m asking God to use this book to show those of us from the Jesus Movement generation how to finish what we started.”
— Ed Underwood, about Reborn to be Wild (David C. Cook, 2010)