If you liked Eric Metaxas’ 2013 book 7 Men, you’re probably not gonna care for my current series, 7 Broken Men, about the fragile and unlikely people God has used to glorify himself. You can find my first post in the series here.
But if you are up for it, put on your old Larry Norman or Keith Green records. It’s time to hit the beaches of Southern California in the 1960s to meet the remarkable, but ultimately tragic hippie preacher, Lonnie Frisbee.
Maybe Lonnie Frisbee could have grown up to be a cult leader or serial killer if Jesus hadn’t got hold of him. His early life pretty much mirrored that of his contemporary and fellow Californian Charles Manson.
Frisbee grew up in an unstable home where he was exposed to the dark underbelly of 1960s Californian society. He was sexually assaulted as a child, introduced to drugs in his teens, and at 15 he had his first homosexual encounter, which ultimately ushered him into the Laguna Beach gay scene.
School didn’t take much of a priority, so by the time he was 18 and heading north to San Francisco with thousands of flower children for the Summer of Love in 1967, he could barely read and write.
Lonnie Frisbee was a hippie straight out of central casting – good-looking, wide-eyed, and mystical. He talked vaguely about becoming an artist or a dancer. But he wasn’t that good at either.
He was a bearded, long-haired dreamer. People said he looked like Jesus. He preferred to describe himself as a “nudist-vegetarian-hippie”. He tried his hand at hypnotism and dabbled in the occult. He talked incessantly about UFOs.
He was pretty much unemployable.
This mattered little in California in the late 60s and early 70s. Charles Manson, Hunter S Thompson and the Weather Underground all managed to exist with no visible means of support. And so did Lonnie Frisbee.
But things took a slightly different turn when Frisbee led a group of drug-addled friends on an LSD-fuelled pilgrimage into the desert outside Palm Springs. Things could’ve got real crazy (they did for Manson, in the same desert), but for a fateful trip he took to Tahquitz Canyon. Frisbee started reading the Gospel of John to everyone and before they knew he was baptizing his cadre of stoned hippies in the Tahquitz Falls.
An evangelist had been born!
At first the gospel according to Lonnie Frisbee included getting high, talking about flying saucers and reading the Bible, but he soon fell in with other Christians who directed him to a more conventional path.
After stints in Haight-Ashbury and Novato, Frisbee landed back in Costa Mesa, where he had grown up. Here he met a young woman, got married, joined Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel, and started to straighten up and fly right. Kind of.
The thing was, Lonnie was gay. And filled with the Holy Spirit.
He would walk the beaches during the day, converting young people seemingly at will. Then he would bring them back to the nightly church services for lashings of groovy Christian folk-music and intense Bible teaching. Afterwards he would dispense the Holy Spirit, leaving the room looking like a battlefield as young people hit the floor, began to shake and speak in tongues.
He was a freak. A Jesus freak. And soon he became a leading light of the so-called Jesus People, an organic movement of converted hippies, yippies and surfers that sprang out of Calvary Chapel. He went on to exercise direct influence over people like Chuck Smith Jnr, Greg Laurie, John Wimber, Mike McIntosh, Derek Prince and Bob Mumford.
In fact, whether it’s the charismatic movement, the Vineyard, the Shepherding Movement, the contemporary Christian music scene, or Calvary Chapel itself, Lonnie’s fingerprints were all over it.
He was no ordinary hippie anymore.
But he was no ordinary Christian evangelist either.
His marriage had broken down in 1973 and he had started having sexual liaisons with men again.
Frisbee was tortured by it all. He was clearly touched by the hand of God. But he believed his sexuality was a sin. He would speak openly about the challenge of keeping his desires under check, but the dissonance between his beliefs, the evidence of the Spirit’s presence in his life, and his sexual desires caused him overwhelming stress.
He was eventually asked to not be so open in public about his struggles with same sex attraction. Later still he became estranged from the very movements he helped launch. He was marginalized from the Jesus People and later written out of the histories of that period of Southern Californian Christianity.
He contracted AIDS in the 1990s and died in 1993.
Chuck Smith, his original pastor at Calvary Chapel, preached at Lonnie’s funeral and compared him to the wild, marauding brute, Samson, a man used by God despite his sinfulness. Lonnie’s closest friends took offense. He was no brute, they said. He was a fragile flower crushed by a church that couldn’t make room for him. I’m not sure Lonnie would have seen it that way.
Today, it’s reckoned that the “Jesus revolution” of 60s and 70s surpassed even the Great Awakening as the greatest ingathering of souls in American history. And dear, fragile, weird, little Lonnie Frisbee was right there at the beginning. Unremembered and unlauded, expunged from the histories of the very movements he was used by God to launch.
by Brugel Creative
55 thoughts on “7 Broken Men: Lonnie Frisbee”
Thanx. But as I know it, he is remembered nowadays very much. He became a hero for many. He is well known, better known than Chuck Smith. At least in modern societies. And in Europa.
He was hardly known at all until David Di Sabatino’s 2005 documentary. I admit he is better known in some circles these days because of that film. But I’m riffing off Metaxas’ ‘7 Men’ and it’s fair to say he’s not as well known as Chuck Colson or Pope John Paul II, both of whom were highlighted in that book.
ah . . . students planning to go in the ministry back in the 70’s were talking about Lonnie. It was like or more like . . . what about Lonnie. Now, I did not know who Lonnie was. I was a new christian. I had not been to Mecca yet. I had been to the old theater where Mike McIntosh was turning a tribe into a nation (or was that the spirit). Music was almost free back then. You go to a concert to hear all the great bands for free on Wednesdays. I heard Sweet Comfort for free. I did not know who they were. Most of my friends who WERE NOT introduced to Jesus through a denomination were mainly influenced by vineyard or calvary chapel. Most of my friends (who would talk to me about Jesus) came out of homes where they was no Jesus. In San Diego, it was back then Mike McIntosh starting up Calvary Chapel. It was pumping. He is still business. I don’t think it is pumping like it used to. He has a nice place. Back then, he had the old theater. Good luck trying to go to church on Sunday’s there. You will not find parking. It was full one service after another. Wednesdays was full. Lonnie was well enough known because almost everyone visted mecca back then. Mecca was Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa. You cannot talk about Mike McIntosh or Gregg Laurie without mentioning the sad story of Lonnie Frisbee back then. Lonnie influences their lives. If there was no Lonnie Frisbee, there would have maybe been no Jesus Movement. Now, this is the question that needs to be asked today. Was Lonnie moving the Jesus Movement or the Spirit? What is up with the Spirit today with all the wonderful things that we have to “do church with”. Why is the Spirit leaving the temple? Most of us are insisting the spirit is still in the temple. Think about the shekinah in the first temple and the shekinah in the second temple. The first was big deal. The second was in a prophet’s dream. What about the 3rd? The spirit left. The curtain tore. The Spirit showed up to build the 3rd temple on pentecost. Now, the spirit has to leave the temple and usher what is. The kingdom of God to accommodate the temple that is about to rise.
I started off chasing up links to Bethel Church, Westminster Theological College and the NAR…
My search led me to a vid about Lonnie Frisbee, which was quite interesting, especially as it said that Lonnie Frisbee was one if not the major influence on the Vineyard and Calvary Chapel, going on into the new theology as preached by Bill Johnson at Bethel Church and others.
I am old time born again evangelical Christian, and I believe it is by the love we have for one another that men will know we are Christians. John 13:35.
That doesn’t rule out the gifts of the Spirit, or healing or signs and wonders, but Biblically speaking it is those who do such things for the wrong reasons that get slated by our Lord.. Matthew 7:23.
That the Lord loved this man Lonnie I have no doubt. He was a victim of ‘the Me’ culture, ‘If it feels right do it’, etc. It would also seem that the enemy of our souls had a real hold on his life, and he never got to that place where the Holy Spirit was able to do an enduring work of sanctification in him. At the end of the day we must feel compassion and trust that the Lord knows the heart..
More important to me is this outburst of signs and wonders and releasing your ministry and attending schools of anointing etc.
I don’t get that. I don’t get the pounding music, the repetitive, inane choruses, that stir up the carnal man rather than the spiritual. The preaching that is focussed on signs and wonders rather than abiding in Christ etc.
It seems to me that something has gone seriously wrong.
Am I the only one?
No
No Sir, Mr. Keith, You are most certainly not the only one who is well aware that something(s) have gone very wrong indeed. You see, it was first Paul Cain who held sway over the august Charles W. “Chuck” Smith. Lonnie-boy, also holding sway over not the Jr. but the Sr. Smith. Also, in correction of another error in the above post; The “Jesus Movement” was not launched out of CC Santa Ana/CosMes, but emerged from a few different locations around the U.S. with no connection with the So. Cal. religious fiasco.
You’re not the only one feeling a disconnect between what you believe reverence and joy in the Lord should look like and what the showmanship of so called freedom loving Christians are espousing. Jesus did say let the tapes and the wheat grow together and the harvest will sort it out. I came to Jesus in 1972 in the Northern California Jesus movement called His Name Ministries. I witnessed a dead brother come back to life, a broken leg suddenly healed, a deaf boy picks up a phone and talks to his mother hearing her for the first time. I loved the message that whosoever will may come. I hung on that word whosoever as I have felt like a misfit all my life. I related with the lame Mephibosheth who was invited to the Kings’ table. My new life had its roots in those three years I spent in California before having to return to Canada. These days I find myself praying for my own children and grandchildren that they will sense that mystical call to follow Jesus. The salmon hear that call to return to their birth stream and I believe the human heart is not satisfied until it bears the image of the One that birthed it in the first place. Jesus said to a very religious man ‘you must be born again’. That man later on loaned Jesus the grave He would be buried in. The current church doesn’t value what Jesus valued. Paul was beside himself when he learned another Jesus was being preached in the early churches. 2000 years later the same spirit drawing hearts away from the Father heart of God is seeking to steal, kill and destroy the faith of many. One needs to be vigilant for these are desperate times and Jesus said many are called but few are chosen. Chosen not based on our merits but based on our response to what He has done for us. Other than opening your Bible daily and praying over what God reveals to you then writing those things down there are a few good helps to faith out there. I would recommend an old friend of mine now with the Lord who though dead is still teaching the truth that sets us free. On Vimeo search for Dr. Desmond Ford and begin any of his series teachings. Make notes as you will come back to them later. He founded a ministry called GNU for Good News Unlimited from. Australia. Get on their newsletter and be encouraged. Find some close friends with whom you can unburden your heart and share their burdens. Church is basically community and where 2 are gathered in Jesus’ name there He is with you!
Okay I checked this guy out ! Very very sketchy believer
He was a 7th day Adventist ! A horrible wayward denomination and probably apostate
Even though he departed out of it because of his crtique of their false doctrine of investigative judgment he still held into many of their false doctrines !
He still believed Ellen white was used of God!
She was as demonic and false as they come
A preacher must be filled with Stacey net knowing the core doctrines and sifting out wolves
Because of this his lack of discernment I would stay far away !
Again Jesus said only an adulterous generation seeks signs and wonders
Ellen G white was a signs and wonders preacher and also a woman that scriptures forbid a woman to lead especially men
This guy is weak at best
Hi, your not the only one. This movement is still going threw Bethel. I have heard strange things happening in that church. The real gospel gas been watered down and added too it. True conviction and real repentance is fading out in churches today. I don’t understand why a man as Lonnie be in bondage of sexuality and still preach and baptise. This kind of twisted Christianity is how I was raised by my dad. Taking me to church, and preaching and then abusing me for years. Still going to church and be just like Lonnie. I must say the devil is real and he had did a messy job at messing up the real character of Jesus.
you are right. I don’t know if you are wrong. I do know I cannot fully agree. I don know. Colson kicking off the Jesus Movement. Nah. Pope kicking off the Jesus Movement. nah. Lonnie kicking off the Jesus Movement. He was probably one of the important matches if not one of the most important. So Ironic. For me, Lonnie is a good measure of what the Spirit can do and who the Spirit will use. The Pope and Colson are not. Too much wealth and everything given to maybe artificially make a movement. I am not saying is the reason. Lonnie when I think about the thousands in the desert and people lining up to be baptised in the California beaches. Lonnie fits the most unlikely hero. He is the blind man who sees and will not be employed by the church. He will not be paid.
Nothing today compares to the anointed powerhouses that God used from 68 to 81 (poof gone)!
Any approachable or trendy churches like Bethel or the like (even tho distantly related)…..are almost exclusively the gold dust, dog barking types…….lol!
Gotta see it to believe it……….sounds like most here never saw it (real thing)…….best expressions I saw were poorly financed and you definitely had to leave comfortable Christianity/family/riches behind…….there was no gold dust or soaking back then……just deep deep conviction and repentance!
No, you are not alone.
No you are both the only one !
We must turn to the scriptures ! What does the Bible say about homosexuality and drugs!
It says a lot! The Bible says that sorcery is forbidden ! It’s witchcraft in the World of Satan and the demonic !
The Bible says no homosexual will ever heaven
Here we have 2 very clear issues drugs and homosexuality
This man was deluded ! He looked out into the ocean and saw lost souls ? Sounds like a bad acid trip !
He was converted and took little to no time to be taught in God’s word to grow and mature , but rather thrown into a leadership position !
All I can say absolutely NOTHING lined up with scripture and for God to make an exception does not line up with scripture either !
Satan comes in lying signs and wonders
Look at who was saved !John Wimber who is a Total apostate that was the leader in the signs and wonders movement and NAR!
Other known false leaders came out of Lonnie frisbee ! Look at Laurie who is extremely compromised lining up with false teachers and TBN a network loaded with wolves!
Look at these leaders now! Most are compromised and deceivers !
Calvary Chapels today are a mess laced with sexual perverts and corruption in the pulpit
By their fruits ! Rotten fruit and plastic fruit indeed !
I have no idea what Im supposed to take away from this
Nothing is one option :^)
Bethel is a cult, Calvary Chapel was just short of a cult. I was there, I saw it and lived it. Lonnie was gay and vilified because of it, it was not something he chose, it was his nature.
Calvary Chapel was full of hypocrites, and men preaching end times. There was nothing good about it.
Gay is always a choice and having a gay nature is not excused biblically
This would make God a liar!
Read 1John and see what it says about living in sin and sayin you know him while living in sin
It says that person is a liar and does not know Christ
Man how can you discern a man or leader when you are blind to God’s clear simple truth in scriptures
Because we are blind is because we do not love his word and then led by our own personal prejudices!
So false blind teachers thrive among ignorant Christians
Strange comment.
I was in Ministry with Lonnie Frisbee and started World Outreach Ministries with Lonnie. Spent many hours with him. I contributed financed and failed with Lonnie. I know most everything about Lonnie. For more info, I would recommend the three volume set by Roger Sachs on Lonnie’s life story. Not by might nor by power.
I am in book 2 on page 103 and 104. 117.
Thank you for chiming in, sir. I intended to buy those books, myself, some time ago. Thank you fir the reminder.
Okay I’m interested! What does the Bible say about sorcery which is drugs and the gay lifestyle?
Does it line up with scriptures? Lonnie was on an acid trip when he looked at the ocean !
Look at Calvary now ! Filled with sexual perverts in the pulpit !
Ben Courson Jon courson ‘s son has confessed to sleeping around with sisters in the church .! He is newly divorced and his dad protects him from consequences
Need we say more ? If so, please give me scriptural insights
Hello Brent my name is Richard Thomas and you said you new lonnie very well? is there a book about his life, l’m very curious about his life. l came out of the homosexual life stye 21 year ago and Jesus has been working on me ever since. l attend calvary church but now l’m on my own and living by faith and the lord is doing mighty things in my ministry my ministry is called “WOUNDED BUT SAVED” so l’m just interest in lonnie life. Could you get back to me thanks!
Got to love a God who will fill a social outcast with His Holy Spirit and use him to gather other outcasts. I” guessing Frisbee was filled with God”s love also which would have touched the hearts of those who would have felt rejected by the Church because of their hippie lifestyle. It” sad he isn’t as well known as other influential Christian as his willingness to serve God whilst also being open about his struggles would give many hope especially those from the gay community. Sin is sin, whether we struggle with homosexuality or gossip, it’s the same thing in God” eyes. Unlike churches who push out those that do not fit into the ” good Christian costume” God”s unconditional love and His willingness to work with us through our sinful nature in order to bring about our best heals, mends and empowers us to overcome our flesh. Maybe Frisbee didn’t overcome his homosexuality but God was able to turn him from someone who could not function in society to someone who transformed society. If that’s not a testament to God” grace, glory and power I am not sure what is. Thanks for honoring this broken man”s testimony Mike.
I am just learning about Lonnie Frisbee. I watched a preaching he did at the Vinyard later in his life. He moved me. Then I watched Vinyard preacher Wilbur, talking about the Mothers day 1980 time the LORD told him to let Lonnie preach. Very together and funny and real. But listening to Lonnie himself, though edgy was moving to my soul. I love Jesus so much but I don’t love the church. I feel like an outcast but I want more of Jesus.
Boy o boy ! Vineyard movement with wimber says it all
Lonnie converted leaders and taught them to be twice the sons of hell he was!
Do you not know Wimber is the leader in the destruction of true Christianity !
Do you not know the vineyard movement was and still is a cult ?
Is it any wonder why? Lonnie was deceived and deceived many by his deadly life style
And look what came out of it !! CULTS
Lonnie is another Jim Jones and did take many with him Bu leading them to a spirit that is not from God
I was at a Sunday night service at Canyon High School in Anaheim Hills in 1981 when after the service people were gathered around in groups fellowshipping. All of a sudden This handsome
Young man came to my group and went around holding his hand over our heads. When he came to me I can’t remember if he said anything but I remember I felt electricity coming from his hand as he passed it over my head. Later I found out that was Lonnie Frisbee. I was 36 at the time and he was 31. I’ve never forgotten my one and only encounter with him.
And Satan will come with lying signs and wonders
Experience is not the test ! Many deceivers do have electrical powers and manifestations
This is not biblical testing !
Doctrine and fruit is
He was gay!!!!!!!
And was a lcd tripper !
This is a total disqualifier
The number 1 reason Christians are deceived is because they do not study their bibles but leave others to meditate for them !
That means Bible illiterate Christians are wide open to deceivers like Lonnie
Hello the dude died of aids sleeping with infected men while preaching!
And still today blind believers are making excuses for a homosexual preacher
Holy moly !!!
Is being excluded from church because you’re gay the same thing as brokenness?
This much-needed re-telling of Lonnie Frisbee’s story has a beautiful way of allowing readers to draw their own conclusions about where the “brokenness” is evident. But the word “brokenness” has a long history of use within ex-gay organisations, particularly those who promote the theory of a “reparative drive”.
These have conflated homosexual orientation with brokenness. Those of us who have been there in that movement are going to see that connection every time we see the word “broken”.
We’re all broken by sin. But the fact that Frisbee was gay is not a sign of his “brokenness”. This is where I see brokeness in this story: Frisbee might be alive today if “family values” and “moral majority” activism in the U.S. hadn’t held back AIDS research for decades.
Frisbee was a man of God who was trampled by a broken church.
I agree we’re all broken and that’s the context it was meant in. I wasn’t aware broken was a term used in exgay ministries. It’s a rare thing for people in Christian leadership to admit any of their struggles- usually issues surface in some sordid way and there may be a public apology then a resignation. I think Frisbee was brave and authentic in admitting his struggles. You’re spot on that the church failed him.
I thought I was clear in referring to Frisbee’s extremely unsafe upbringing, his sexual assault as a child, his drug use, and his dissonance about being gay and an evangelical/charismatic leader.
My feeling was that the exact nature of his “brokenness” is left open in the post.
I was just feeding back one way it might come over to a reader who’s context is the reparative therapy movement. Certainly, the childhood trauma followed by adult “same sex attraction” fits that narrative of “brokenness”.
Words have their baggage…
Lonnie suffered because it’s taken the church way too long to understand inner healing and it’s value. We have come a long way and learned so much. It’s part of the “do what Jesus did”. I’m confident God’s grace made up for the what Lonnie went through and he’s in heaven interceding for those who struggle here and now.
Kathy
I don’t think anyone intercedes in heaven for us but Jesus. That’s a catholic teaching. I just lost my husband of 54 years on December 3rd and when I was talking to his sister who is a Roman Catholic she said:”We lit a candle for him and he is praying for us.” I told her the same thing. Only Jesus prays for us from heaven. There is no Biblical reference that I know of, of people who have died and gone to heaven praying for us.
Frisbee was not a man of God but a wannabe !
Big difference!
Really appreciating this series, stoked for the next five. More than brokenness, faults or human fragility – I see the Grace of God at work in the lives of those He loves. So encouraging. Thanks Mike.
I’m really enjoying this series Mike. When I saw the tagline for this one, I wondered if the story of Lonnie Frisbee didn’t in some way lend itself to Harold Robbin’s “Spellbinder” novel. It may well have. As the central figure was a hardened ex Military dope smoking street preacher that enjoyed the company of his disciples. It was also quite possibly a commentary on the commercialization of the American Church. Anyhow great article. God can use the most broken of us, we only have to allow him to move through us, is what I think you’re pointing us too.
That explains why Calvin’s theology lacks a real concept of Gods love or grace.
“The fundamental conflict between Calvinism and Arminianism is not sovereignty but God’s character. If Calvinism is true, God is the author of sin, evil, innocent suffering and hell. That is to say, if Calvinism is true God is not all-loving and perfectly good. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” “God so loved the world.” Calvinists must explain this as meaning that God loves “all kinds of people,” not everyone. Or that “God loves all people in some ways but only some people [the elect] in all ways.” Arminians believe these interpretations distort the clear message of the Bible about God’s love. If Calvinism is true, John Wesley said, God’s love is “such a love as makes the blood run cold.” It is indistinguishable from hate—for a large portion of humanity created in his own likeness and image.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/03/whats-wrong-with-calvinism/
Quite unfair to suggest that Lonnie was expunged by the Vineyard. He is well recognised as the broken vehicle God used in the history of the movement, very much lauded, remembered AND appreciated in all his quirkiness, simple faith and incredible anointing.
After reading all these posts, I am uncomfortable with the frequent use of the word “broken” in relation to Lonnie Frisbee. Struggling with sex-related issues does not make one broken. It’s just sex people! Not such a big deal, unless a person is struggling with actual sex addiction, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Also, even a history of childhood sexual abuse does not necessarily make one broken. I have many friends who at one time of another confided to me that they were sexually abused as children, in most cases by a family member, or other trusted authority figure. I wouldn’t describe a single one of these friends as “broken.” Did they suffer? Yes, most definitely. Are they broken? No, absolutely not. I don’t like the idea that a rare and complex character such as Frisbee should be labelled as broken. Did he see himself that way?
Well this is true, many have come from dysfunctional families and gone on to make some kind of success of living. Lonnie eventually found himself in the limelight, and not many folk cope well with that constant pressure to ‘perform’.
You sure about that brother !
It’s not what the Bible teaches !
He is not expunged as a broken disobedient believer living in gay sin!
But a saved believer ! And one ready to teach !?
I would say not because that is the simile reading in God’s word
A teacher is not to be a novice and has control over his life 1Tim
1john a person living in sin does not know God and is a liar !
Homosexuality is an abomination and a blasphemy to God the Bible clearly teaches !!
Homosexuality is a sin of perversion and is highlighted among the worst of sins !
No ! Lonnie was a fake because he was deceived !
Your Hard
MUST SEE http://www.lonniefrisbee.com/ David Di Sabatino documentary
Lonnie might have been dyslexic. Some people don’t pay attention in school but are good readers and writers. Being Dyslexic might have added to teenage problems to get into drugs as well.
God loved Lonnie Frisbee, called and anointed him, knowing full well the damage, the struggles and the outcome, which was mostly hugely positive, although troubling to religious people in some ways. I also love Lonnie Frisbee, even though I never met him personally. I can feel his damage, his longings and struggles, and passion for souls. I have spent time with Tilson and Melodi Shumate, who knew and ministered with Lonnie. A few weeks ago, I took a hike up into Tahquitz Canyon, all the way to that same waterfall, to meditate and pray, and ask that God would have mercy on this younger generation as He did back in 1967. Whoever God raises up will not be perfect, and I hope the church can work with this person to see more souls come to the Christ who uses imperfect people to accomplish perfect things.
Lonnie wasn’t “gay.” He stated very directly to his biographer Roger Sachs that he had only heterosexual proclivities until he was serially sexually abused by an adult male in his early teens and that nurture-damaged him creating a disorderedness in his sexuality. Lonnie says the abuse “marked” him spiritually in a way that those oppressed by homosexual predatory spirits could sense. He wasn’t a genetically programmed homosexual living a homosexual lifestyle as is falsely asserted by people who want that lie to be true for whatever reason. The truth was that Lonnie was a heterosexual who was severely abused repeatedly starting at age 15 and he suffered live-long material disorderedness to his sexuality as a result. That’s what he said and I believe him.
Brother it may all be true and I believe it !
However friend that makes him a prime candidate for counseling ! Not teaching and leading God’s people and preaching as a hypocrite!
He needed to be taught not the other way around !
Wow how blind do we turn our heads to protect our own views even in spite of God’s clear teachings
Brother please meditate on 1John the epistle then tell others what you read
It will defy your testimony of this man excusing him because he turned out gay and dying of aids !
Why is it ok for so many to write articles and submit false documentaries, when their resources are drawn from rumors?
I don’t believe any of these resources are from people who were close to Lonnie and actually really knew him.
Lonnie was a teenage tv star because of his dancing. He was on tv everyday, that is why he didn’t go to high school. It was chartered. He was never in a “Laguna beach gay scene,” nor did he have homosexual tendencies. He was even married. He was educated and got accepted through a scholarship to SF school of arts.
He was the greatest revivalist in America!
Chuck Smith and Calvary church had a 50 person average attendance before he came. The Lord used him to bring in thousands. Not to mention revival in other countries, like Sweden. He ushered the moving of the Holy Spirit into the Vineyard Movement. And because of him, Vineyard went to a global denomination (from his non prof)
Read my friend Roger Sachs’ books. It is the only memoirs and accounts from Lonnie himself.
Excuse me!! Hello the guy died of AIDS! He was divorced and he kept it in the closet as long as he could
He died of aids!! No one needs to be close to him
A dancer ? Okay most male dancers are gay !
Why are you defending a deceiver that led many leaders ti be cult leaders themselves! John Wimber bring one off them a wolf in sheep’s clothing
He didn’t do well in disciplining if he turned out wolves mam
The Bible tells us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We cannot take it for granted. The Bible also talks about the man who sweeps his house clean, and then goes back and 7 worse demons come in. Though Christ is quick to forgive if we REPENT, our sins will have consequences. What we describe as “stumbling” can set off a domino effect that hurts many people in our circle.
Lonnie frisbee – like many free style evangelists -should have been in the pew learning not in the pulpit. I get sin and fallenness, have struggled with them my whole life. But this is nonsense. So glad I left evangelicalism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism, etc. Jesus is Lord and worthy to be praised. Sadly, TV has been an effective tool to discredit Christianity to the lost by such people as Lonnie frisbee.
I have been studying Lonnie’s life for the past twelve years. Working on a screenplay to develop into a motion picture. Lonnie did not own the title of being GAY! He struggled with it….as many christians struggle with pornography, drugs, alcohol, pride, lust, and many other addictions. I have interviewed his ex-wife – Connie. She told me that Lonnie told her what the hippie was in the Jesus movement God was going to use the LGBT in the next great movement of God. Lonnie told her that. But there was no word for LGBT in the nineties. God told Lonnie that He was going to use the homosexual. They would be touched by God’s power and become redeemed. Not perfect…but forgiven. Lonnie wasn’t perfect but He followed God with all his heart. In fact, he is quoted as saying, “They didn’t (the church leaders) didn’t really want me….they wanted my anointing.”
I’m not trying to glorify Lonnie. My story is to show that God uses the foolish things to confound the wise. That Lonnie was molested at eight years old by a 17 year old boy babysitter. He tried to tell his mother and stepfather in 1957 and THEY DIDN’T BELIEVE HIM! How many people have been molested! It’s an epidemic. Let’s not judge him and others similar. God is going to “Show up and Show off for the Greatest Show on Earth”. Let’s not judge the lost but love them. Pride is far worse a sin than being Gay. That’s why Jesus called them “White washed buildings full of dead man’s bones. But as in Ezekiel 37 God is going to breathe upon those bones and bring forth another movement greater than the Jesus Movement. It’s here now! Let us embrace those who don’t fit into our mold of what a christian should look like. And like the prodigal son let us run and embrace them into the light of the love of Jesus. They will. be transformed into a new man under love….not judgment.
When is a thief no longer a thief? When he’s in jail? Not really…they steal from each other in jail. A thief is no longer a thief … when he’s something else. We must be born again to leave the old behind. If any man or woman be in Christ they are a new creature or in my case a new Croatian (I’m Croatian) Lonnie seems to have lived a dual life. The old and the new. There was a civil war raging in his chest and he eventually became of it. God once spoke through a donkey and Samson used the jawbone of an ass to slay many. Jesus asked about John the Baptist…what did you go out to see? A reed shaken by the wind?
Lonnie was indeed fragile, as we all are, yet the wind got a hold of him for a season.
I never met Lonnie….I was saved at a Keith Green concert in Oregon in July of 78…..there were many people out there like Lonnie……..left over from Hippie movement (they were loving, encouraging) and we all worshiped the Lord (a lot), every night if we could!
Years later, I met a guy named Danny C., he worked for several years in Shilo ministry with Lonnie. I have never heard anyone speak of Lonnie like this. First off I believe he was married at the time, never was there any sign for Danny C that Lonnie was gay (guess he has a handle on it, this was like 73-75). He said Lonnie was very proud how God used him (prideful), Danny said “one of the worst he’d ever seen”…..yet God used him mightily……Danny traveled to South America with Lonnie for revivals and Lonnie and his ministry “partied a lot(drinking), I kid you not!…..Danny and Lonnie had a big falling out over this. never to associate again!
Why God used Lonnie in such power…….my guess is this “Lonnie had an approach to God that was pure and passionate……..even fierce”
See, thing is, we forget our envy or anger, or like Lonnie = pride, gossip and false witness or just Christian politic’s with its jealousy!
Also, though never having been around gay men (I met some in early 90’s in this case with their wives, 2 had walked away from gay sex and the other would return to it on and off), I got to know these people…..yes, unrestrained sex will hinder you greatly in obedience to God…gay or otherwise.
These were some really cool saints……the one who went back and forth was a power house(I knew him real well), from ages of 16 – 50 he had turned cities upside down(could write a book on this guy), no doubt thousands came to Christ from his testimony……in downtown Portland Oregon they knew him as Larry-Man…..ministers would come across the region to ask how he commanded such conversion…..this, coming out of the move of the Spirit in the seventies……it wasn’t uncommon for me to know people like this…..God uses Men/Woman from the deepest reigns of the heart, were talking pure motives when in His presence…..even tho we can make huge mistakes!
How can he be “gay” if he was having sex with his wife and only his wife until she cheated on him while he was on an extended missions trip because she got lonely?
How about he was raped at eight by a neighbor and beaten regularly by father before he split and then a series of men who beat on him that resulted in some real personality disorderedness?
Lonnie wasn’t “gay” and wrote in his three-volume autobiography he wasn’t. He said he was lost and experimenting in his youth and later, after being booted from two ministries he helped grow into world-wide ministries because their leaders (Chuck and John who themselves split with each other), became embittered and went back to being a wanderer for a decade or so.
The Bible speaks directly to “homosexual behavior” or “homosexual acts.” A “homosexual”, from a scriptural perspective, is someone that chooses to engage in homosexual acts. Homosexuality as an “identity” is a modern non-biblical construction. Modernists (and post-modernists) began to assert that homosexual behavior is genetically based (e.g. a genetic flaw in the human genome) and then fabricated an identity around this immoral behavior.