Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and told his followers to do the same. The call to mission has always been at the heart of the church’s identity.
When the first crop of new believers came to faith during the Jesus Movement of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, many of them discovered that the churches they began attending didn’t have a category for them. Many socially-conservative church members were scandalized by the hippie dress and the sex-drugs-rock-`n-roll lifestyles the Jesus People brought with them. Jesus People were just as freaked by the suits and ties, organ music, and unwritten rules in many of these churches. It’s hard nowadays to imagine how radical long hair once was.
Some churches doubled down. You can click here to get a sense of the logic once widely in the church about long hair on dudes. (And you’ll discover that some are still fighting this battle today, usually using the King James Version of the Bible to make their claims.)
It wasn’t just the hair. [Read more]
