Greg Laurie
speaker
159 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Greg Laurie’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So we kind of came for Lonnie, but this older man walks out. I had a problem with older figures, authority figures, because all of the adults in my life I didn't respect. And then I was always being sent to the principal's office for misbehaving in class. So I just had a chip on my shoulder for all adults. Like, there's nothing you can tell me.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, actually, to illustrate that, during my mother's wild adventures, I lived with my grandparents for a time. She sent me to military school on two separate occasions where, like, I lived on campus. We were cadets. We wore our little uniforms. We had barracks. We had a house mother. And it's funny. I hated it, but I flourished there. Because if you mess up, you get disciplined.
And we're talking corporal discipline. They had something notoriously known as the cheese paddle, which was a large paddle with holes drilled in it. And they'd swat you with that thing. And suddenly I went from delinquent kid to honor roll and good grades. And so when I was pulled out of military school and went back to public school and realized how much I could get away with,
I returned to my old ways again. So it shows when absolutes were in my life, I would respond. I needed that. But this is different, though, because that was a very strong authoritarian thing. But I think in many ways, it was actually kind of good for me at the time.
Kelsey Grammer plays Chuck Smith. Right. In the film. And I think Chuck came out on one service, and I looked at him, and, ugh, an adult. I don't want to listen to an adult. You know, it's going to be boring. And he opened the Bible up, and he began to speak in such an understandable way. So he's like a father, but a benevolent father, but strong.
And so he was someone—I'd never met anyone like this before, apart from Oscar Laurie, who adopted me. what I needed, a father figure to help me and to be a model for me. And sometimes it's not just in theology, it's just in the practical things of life. You know, he was kind of a salt of the earth guy, hardworking guy. Like for him, a day off was actually building things.
So he was like a classic dad. I think they call them trad dads now, you know, but kind of like, wow, this is what I've never seen this before. How interesting, you know?
Yeah.
Maybe because there was one bright spot there. So looping back to him again. So I got married and I'm a young pastor. I've started my own church now that grew out of a little Bible study of young people. I never intended on becoming a pastor. I kind of thought I might be called to be an evangelist and travel around and speak to people. But a little Bible study was developing. So
This was in that church to begin with? No, this is another church about 45 minutes away in a community called Riverside that I went and established this little Bible study.
Young, very young. So we were all young kids, and I had no intention of starting a church. You know, today we have what we call startup churches. They pop up all over the place, not unusual to see. Back in 1973 or 4, you didn't really see startup churches. They were traditional churches that had been there for a long time, and then the pastor would die or retire, and someone new would come. Right.
But you didn't see, oh, we're starting a brand new church. And especially a church of young people and especially a bunch of hippie kids. You know, you could quickly dismiss it as almost cultic. But one of the good things that Chuck Smith did for us is he got us studying. He got us into great books. books, and we built our library, and we built our messages on the Bible.
It's called expository Bible teaching, where you go through chapters of the Bible and let the Bible speak for itself as opposed to imposing your view on the text. Let the Bible be the Bible. It's alive, it's powerful, and it impacts people. So coming back to Oscar, so I thought... I would like to see him again. So I was speaking in New York City, and I reached out to him.
I found him through the Bar Association. A lady that went to our church worked for the Bar Association. I didn't even know if he was alive. This is before Google, right? And so we found his office, and I called it, and I said, hello, is Oscar Lurie there? And the secretary said, no, he's at lunch. who is calling. I said, Greg Laurie. She said, how do you spell your last name?
I said, well, the same way he spells his. This is his son calling. He calls me a half hour later. He says, Greg, it's so good to hear from you. And I said, Dad, I'm going to be in New Year. I don't know if I called him Dad at that point because that... Maybe it was a bridge too far at that moment. I just said, I'm going to be in New York City. I'm going to be speaking.
Maybe we could have lunch because he'd remarried, had a new family, and I didn't want to interrupt his life. And he said, no, Greg, come and spend the weekend with us. We want to see you. So I went there with my wife. That's a good thing to have happen. Right. So I went with my wife and our oldest son, Christopher. So the first night we caught up. And I told him what happened to me in my life.
And he said, I tried to get custody of you. But even though your mother was living this crazy life, she fought me and would not let me get custody. Because I would have lived a very different life if I lived with him. So we had dinner the next night. And his wife, Barbara, made a great Italian meal. She said, Greg, tell us how you became a Christian and a minister. So I started telling my story.
And my dad, he's an attorney. And he's sitting at the other end of the table. He says his hands up to his face the whole time like this. I felt like I was in a courtroom. I was giving my testimony, and I wasn't doing a very good job because he was not reacting in any way, just staring at me. This isn't going well. Barbara's very emotional, reacting. This is wonderful.
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