Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down with the senior pastor of the Harvest Christian Fellowship, Greg Laurie. They discuss the true story behind the hit film “The Jesus Revolution,” Laurie’s relationship with hippie-preacher and counter-culture icon Lonnie Frisbee, how he found faith in the most unlikely of places, and the past 50 years of building his world-renowned ministry. Greg Laurie is the senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship with campuses in California and Hawaii. He began his pastoral ministry at the age of 19 by leading a Bible study of 30 people. Since then, God has transformed that small group into a church of some 15,000 people. Today, Harvest is one of the largest churches in America and consistently ranks among the most influential churches in the country. In 1990, Laurie began holding large-scale public evangelistic events called Harvest Crusades. Since that time, more than 9.8 million people have participated in these events in person or online around the United States. In 2012, Laurie launched Harvest America, a nationwide event using the internet to simulcast live HD video to thousands of locations across the country. With an unprecedented 306,000 Americans in live attendance, Harvest America ranks among the largest presentations of the gospel in United States history. Harvest Crusades have also been held internationally in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. More importantly, some 531,889 people have made professions of faith through these outreaches. In 2020 and in partnership with Kingdom Story Company, Laurie premiered his first-ever cinematic crusade, “A Rush of Hope,” viewed by over 2 million people in its opening weekend. Laurie is the featured speaker of the nationally syndicated radio program, A New Beginning, which is broadcast on more than 1,200 radio outlets around the world. Laurie’s weekly television program, “Harvest + Greg Laurie,” is carried on major TV networks such as Lifetime, Fox Business, Newsmax, Daystar, KCAL 9 Los Angeles, and the Trinity Broadcasting Network. This episode was filmed on November 4th, 2024 | Links | For Greg Laurie: On X https://x.com/greglaurie?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor On Instagram https://www.instagram.com/greglaurie/?hl=en On YouTube https://www.youtube.com/greglaurie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Full Episode
Hello, everybody.
I had the opportunity today to sit down with Greg Laurie, and many of you will be familiar with Mr. Laurie as a consequence of the movie Jesus Revolution, which is really the place where he came to
where I came to know about him. And so I reached out to Mr. Lorry to find out more about the underlying story. So he started a ministry as a reluctant convert, let's say in the hangover decade of the 1970s, ministering to disaffected young people and himself in a manner that had quite a revolutionary impact.
He started with a very small church of about 30 people and grew that into a massive organization in a short time, which meant that he hit the target squarely in some relatively mysterious manner. And so I wanted to find out how he did that. I wanted to hear the background story. And so we talked about the development of his interest in
the religious which had made itself manifest in a variety of ways including some experimentation with hallucinogens. We talked about his fragmented family background that probably partly gave him the craving for something authoritative and genuine. We talked about the the state of the world of youth in the 1970s after the hedonistic utopianism of the 1960s had collapsed. We talked about the
meaning of the story of Abraham, which is a archetypal story of individual development and the emergence of the spirit of the benevolent father in that story and the parallels between that and his own life and his own quest and his own ministry.
And then we talked about the broader significance of the longing for a grounding meaning that characterized the 1970s and that also characterizes young people, especially young men, but not only young men now. And so we weaved that all together quite successfully. And that's what you're in store for if you participate in this podcast. So I think, Mr. Lurie, I think we'll talk today.
Yes, call me Greg, it's good. Greg is good. I think we'll start today with this description, a discussion of a recent New York Times article. And you know something's going on in the religious side of the world if the New York Times deigns to report on it.
Mm-hmm.
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