Lost Boy, Part 2: Pastor Greg Recounts His Start in Ministry

Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here. You're listening to the Greg Laurie Podcast and my objective is to deliver, hopefully, compelling practical insights in faith, culture, and current events from a biblical perspective. To find out more about our ministry, just go to our website, harvest.org.

So thanks for joining me for this podcast. pastor Greg's recollection from a radio interview nearly 20 years ago for me, please provide me with that Bible. And I didn't tell anybody about it. And I called my grandmother and I told her, Mama Stella, guess what? I've become a Christian and asked Jesus Christ in my life. And the first thing she said was, Well, I want to buy you a Bible.

Do you know a Bible that you'd like to get? And I said, Oh, God answered my prayer. And so the Lord used my grandmother to to answer that first prayer and that, you know, and I still use a Schofield Bible to this day. And so, but that was, you know, I was just excited because I wanted to tell her because that was a part of it. It helped to plant the seed that was harvested much later. Pastor Greg's aunt, Willie, Willie Jordan, it was so exciting that Charlene's son had come to Jesus.

And what was almost more wonderful than that was the fact that his feet didn't seem to hit the ground. He was off and running and telling other people about Jesus. And, you know, I wanted to reach my mother. And so I remember one day I went home and she'd had a couple of drinks and I decided to just blast her with both barrels of my newly acquired gospel gun. And then I just like told her, you know, you're this is sin and you got to stop doing it.

You go to hell. And I remember that conversation not going well at all. She was an amazing person evading the subject, you know, and she was very pleasant and she was a very nice person.

And we we had nice conversations, but it only went to a certain depth. And I think my mom, she probably thought, oh, this is great. You know, I spend my whole life trying to get away from my parents. And I raised my son in a home where there's no, you know, church and there's no Bible. And now my own son is trying to preach to me. And so it's kind of humorous. When you look back, you realize my mom, she was cornered.

There was no getting away for her. Well, let me ask you something. When you counsel new believers now, what do you tell them? Thinking back about your experience, what do you tell new believers about whether they should go back right away and share Christ with their old unsaved friends? Or do you counsel them more like they need to separate from them until they grow a little bit in their faith?

Well, what I counsel people to do is to get grounded. And thankfully, the Lord brought a guy into my life. His name was Mark. And see, I was having a hard time connecting with the Christians. I didn't really know anybody all that well. And they had a language I didn't understand. You know, they talked about, you know, things like the body and the blood of Christ and sanctification and discipleship.

What do these words mean? It was like I was learning a whole new language. It was a whole new world. You know, I had no real foundation in these things. But my life was beginning to change.

But I was having a hard time connecting the dots. And a guy comes along named Mark. Never met him before. He said, Hi, my name is Mark. I saw that you went forward the other day at school and prayed to receive Christ. I'm kind of defensive.

Yeah. And he says, Well, you know, I want to help you. And, well, what do you mean? He goes, I want to take you to church. What church?

Where? A place called Calvary Chapel. And I was resistant.

But to Mark's credit, he was persistent. He came, he picked me up at my house, he drove me to Calvary Chapel. That's when I first heard Chuck Smith teach the Bible. That's when I was first in a church setting.

This was just a little Bible study I was in on my high school campus. So I was just immersing myself in it at this point. And now I couldn't get enough. I couldn't get enough Bible study. I couldn't hear enough. I couldn't learn enough.

I just was filled with questions. So my life was changing. So I think what every new believer needs to do is they need a guy like Mark in their life, or you need to be a guy like Mark in someone else's life. You need to find a new believer and take them under your wing and help them get up on their feet spiritually. You certainly see this pattern in Scripture. You see Aquila and Priscilla taking in a man named Apollos and helping him get established in his faith, or as the Bible says, learn the Word of God more, the way of God more perfectly. You see Paul doing it with Timothy. This pattern is throughout Scripture, helping someone out, be that someone for someone else. And if you are a new believer, find someone that's mature in the faith that can help you learn the ropes, if you will, because there's just a lot of crazy things you can say and do as a young Christian.

You need to get a good foundation first. And I'd recommend that you not hang around a bunch of your old friends who are still living in the way of the world, but instead find people that love the Lord. The Bible says, flee youthful lusts and follow righteousness, faith, and peace, along with those that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Well, there's so much more of your story yet to come, but I want to ask you right here at this juncture, the past experiences in your life and the way you wrestled with these issues, the way you dabbled with drugs, you faced violence in the home, how do those affect your ability now to relate to unbelievers as you're preaching the gospel? It's very easy for me to put myself in the shoes of a non-believer. Even to this day, even though I've been a Christian for a lot longer than I was a non-believer, I still can understand the mindset of a non-Christian. And sometimes when I'm preaching, I'll be in the middle of a message and I might say something like, and you might be sitting there thinking, and then I'll describe what a person is thinking. And on more than one occasion, I've had people who are non-believers who accepted Christ that particular time say, when you describe what a person might be thinking, you describe me to a T. How did you know that?

I don't know. It's not that hard for me to put myself in my old shoes again, and to almost be the guy speaking and then almost put myself in the shoes of the person listening with the kind of questions they might have in any given moment. And I try to use that to my advantage when I'm speaking because I try to anticipate questions and answer them as I speak, instead of just giving out a bunch of rhetoric that people are not going to necessarily even grasp. Alright, well, we've just crossed a bridge now. You've accepted Christ, you've become a believer, and we're moving into the season of your life when the Lord starts to use you. You draw an analogy in your book between the position in your life now and, in fact, the chapter title is called something about seeing a turtle on a fence post.

Yeah. Describe what you mean by seeing a turtle on a fence post. Well, if you're walking down a little country road, say, and you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, you know he didn't get there by himself. Someone must have put him there. And when I look back at my life and I see what God has done with me and through me, it's clear that I didn't get here through my own designs or calculations or scheming. The Lord put me where I am.

There's no way I could have gone from where I was to where I am today without God intervening in my life. Alright, so you've come to Christ, you're a brand new believer, and Mark has taken you to Calvert Chapel. You're familiar with this preacher named Pastor Chuck Smith. And somehow your graphic arts talents bring you into contact with this man who will eventually prove to be one of the most prominent spiritual mentors in your life.

Yes. You know, I'd been a cartoonist my whole life. My goal in life was to be a professional cartoonist. I actually had been corresponding with Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, who very graciously would write me letters. And I remember when I was a little boy getting a letter from him, and it was like a letter from heaven, you know, and I would ask him the most ridiculous questions, and he would always write back and answer. And one time I said, can I have a piece of original art? And he sent me a whole comic strip that he had done, which I have since lost like an idiot. But you know, he was a very gracious man, and he himself had a faith in Christ early on in his life. I read a biography about him recently that talked about that. But so, you know, this was my whole goal in life.

I want to be a professional cartoonist. And now that I'm a Christian, I don't really know what this all means. I'm processing all this information. And I'm sitting in church, I'm hearing things I've never heard before. Okay, well, you know, back in those days, the little tracks of the religious literature that was handed out in those days, I thought were really ineffective. And there was some that were put out, there were little cartoon drawings about people ending up in hell and the devil laughing at them. And I remember actually reading one of those before I was a Christian, when I was stoned and laughing at it.

That's the impact it had on me. It may have impacted others differently, but I thought, I need something that would relate to people like I used to be, that I could give out. And so I was thinking about this. Well, while I'm going to Calvary Chapel, I'm still in high school, I'm a senior now, in my art class, the assignment was do a comic strip.

Well, comic strip, I've been doing comic strips my whole life, that's easy. But I thought instead of a typical comic strip that I do, which usually is, you know, a series of panels that build up to a punchline, I thought maybe I'll take what I heard at church and input that in cartoon form. And Chuck had given a message on the woman at the well, where Jesus told her if she drank of the water of that well, she would thirst again. But if she drank of the water that he gave, she would never thirst again, because this would be like living water.

So I decided to call this little cartoon story, Living Water. And it's just a picture of a guy with a big old hole in his heart. And I drew a literal hole in his heart. And it starts off, you know, we've all been born with this hole in our heart. And then I begin to talk about Jesus, and I took Chuck's message in effect, illustrated it, then it was all done.

There it was Living Water, and I didn't know what to do with it. So I thought, I think I'll go over to Chuck Smith's house, and show this to him and see what he thought. First time I met Greg, he was had come to the front door of our house. And he showed me a little cartoon that he had drawn that was sort of followed after the sermon that I preached the previous Sunday. I said, Hey, Pastor Chuck, I go to Calvary, and I heard your sermon the other day. And I drew this little track that sort of illustrates what you had said. And I remember as he looked over, a smile came on his face, and he seemed to be enjoying it. And he said, Greg, this is very clever. We should put this in a little booklet form for others to read. So he showed me what the dimensions ought to be and how it ought to be done.

So I went back and I redrew it again, redesigned it to fit this format. And that resulted in a little booklet that was called The Living Water Track. And Calvary Chapel distributed a few of those, didn't they? Yeah, they printed up a few thousand and they were gone. Then they printed up more and they were gone.

And I think it was when it was all said and done, something like 3 million of them were distributed. It really became quite a phenomena. And that was my first taste of being used by the Lord.

So at that point, I thought, well, that's it now. Now I'm going to be a Christian cartoonist, a Christian designer. I'll just pursue my career in art. But what I will do is I'll use it to glorify God. Okay, so you started going to Bible studies at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa and even hanging around there at the church during the week, helping out.

Is that correct? Yeah, I'd set up a little drawing board in one of the offices there. And there were some pastors on staff. They were all about eight, nine years older than I was. And they were doing the work of ministry. They were like interns at Calvary at that time.

And I'm around 18 years old. And I'm doing my artwork. And I know that I want to serve God, but my frustration was there was only so much I could do with art. And I spent a lot of time sitting at a drafting table, looking at a blank piece of paper, trying to think of some clever way to communicate the gospel. I'd done some album covers at that point for various Christian groups and some flyers and posters and things for events that were happening.

But I was still feeling a sense of frustration, wanting to do more but not knowing what to do. And watching these guys serving the Lord, I was beginning to think that maybe God was calling me to more than just being a cartoonist. And maybe God was calling me to be a preacher. He would come out during the day and just sit around, especially waiting for lunchtime when the pastors would go to lunch. And he would have then the secretary put all the calls that were coming in through to him. And he would start counseling people and all.

And of course, people who called in and looking for counsel didn't know they were talking to some 19-year-old kid. He basically gave me the jobs that nobody else wanted to do. You know, if there was some convalescent home that nobody wanted to go to, Greg got to do it. I went to a mental institution and preached one time. I would do a Bible study three hours away because someone said, I want to do a Bible study in our house.

I would go anywhere, anyplace, and do what the others didn't want to do. And actually, it was a great crash course on learning how to minister in different situations. And a young girl sitting up near the front named Kathy caught your attention. In fact, I wrote in my notes, Kathy Martin and the Sisters of Ubiquity. So you got to know this Kathy Martin, who would later become Kathy Laurie, but her sisters were always there. Yeah, it's like they were all fixed at the hip or something. You know, they went everywhere as a trio.

And this is okay, fast forward a little bit now. So now I'm actually getting into ministry and I'm doing a little midweek Bible study down in Long Beach. And so one day when I'm doing my study, I noticed these girls sitting out there. It's not like I was scoping girls when I was giving Bible studies, but I wasn't blind either, you know, and I'm a single guy and I see this girl that catches my eye. There was something special about her. She was very pretty, but there was something different about her that intrigued me. And so I thought, I'm going to go introduce myself to her after the little Bible study. So I walked up to her and said, Hi, I'm Greg, how are you? And you know, honestly, Dave, I thought she would be kind of impressed by me, because I'd just done the Bible study.

And the thing was, she wasn't impressed at all. And I said, so are you going to keep coming back to this little Bible study? She said, I might, but we might go to another one instead. I thought, well, thanks a lot, you know. And I noticed that her sisters and her did everything together. So I invited them all out to coffee afterwards. And so then we went out to coffee. And then I said, Hey, we should all go do this sometime. We went into this and we did a number of things together. And then one day I mustered up the courage to say, Hey, Kathy, why don't you go with me over to this place? Oh, and my sisters? I said, No, not your sisters, just you. And I think she started getting the idea.

I don't really want the sisters to come along. I'm interested in you. And that was sort of the develop or the beginning of our courtship. So the courtship is kind of developing as your ministry calling is developing. Now, at one point, there is a Bible study out in Riverside, which is 45 minutes away from Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa that nobody else wants to take. And so it gets handed off to the new guy.

Yeah, that's right. Coming back to my days at Calvary, you know, I'm just kind of doing whatever I can do. I'm doing everything and anything.

I'm doing cartooning, I'm drawing, I'm designing to try to make ends meet. I'm speaking anywhere people will have me speak. And this opportunity opens up in Riverside, ironically, Lonnie Frisbee coming back to him for a moment. He had started this Bible study up in Riverside at an Episcopalian church, it had actually grown quite large, and was doing very well, about 300 people. But Lonnie left that Bible study and moved off to Florida, and it was handed off to various pastors.

And you know, as one could understand, when there's not a stable person there, it just got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. And by the time it came my direction, it was around 80 people. And in various guys at Calvary were doing it. And you know, I did it last week. You do it. No, I'm doing it next week.

I don't want to do it. And then they finally turned to me and said, Well, Greg, do you want to go do that Bible study in Riverside? I said, Sure, you know. So I got in my car and I drove out to Riverside. And it's kind of funny because the people were there. And I walked up and said, Hi, I'm supposed to do the Bible study tonight.

And the guy who was in charge, he was an older man. He said, Well, who are you? I said, Well, I'm from Calvary Chapel.

He says, Well, I don't know you. Nobody told me you're coming. I said, Well, I'm supposed to do the Bible study goes, Well, you're not going to do it.

No. Okay, now the old rebellion starts coming back. And I'm looking at this adult guy, they you're not going to tell me what I'm not going to do. But then but see, I've changed a lot.

And I thought, No, that's not what God would have me to do. I need to humble myself. And I said, Um, okay, well, whatever you want, I'll just be here. And if you need me, I'll be here to speak.

And if you don't want me, I won't speak. And I just humbled myself and shut up, where normally I would have given him a lot of backtalk. I might have even just walked up there and done it.

I thought, No, that's not the way I should do this. And well, the other guy didn't come because he wasn't coming. The guy realized I was the guy.

Yeah. So he says, All right, you can speak this one time, but only once I said, Okay. And I got up and I spoke and real vote of confidence. Yeah, real vote of confidence.

You know what? Well, I gave an invitation and a number of kids came forward and gave their life to the Lord. And apparently, that had not happened in a long time.

And he said, Well, why don't you come back next week and do it again. And that became the beginning of what is our church today. But at one point, some of the officials from that church actually drove out to Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. You saw them come into the church to meet with Pastor Chuck.

And you thought, Oh, they're coming to give me a pat on the back, right? Well, see, about a year has gone by and this little Bible study has now exploded. We're running over three, 400 people. The local newspaper has come out and done an article on it. I had started a midweek Bible study and we're teaching through the Bible together. It's becoming a church in a church.

And we actually drew up a little bulletin. And in this little bulletin, over in the corner, very small type were the words Minister Greg Laurie, not even pastor, just minister. They didn't like that. You're not the minister.

You're not the pastor here. And they kind of wanted to control it. And they wanted to get rid of me. So I'm still hanging around Calvary and living in Orange County at this time. And I'm down there at the office. And one day I see like the pastor of the church and a couple of the elders come in. And I said, Guys, what are you doing here? Well, we're here to meet with Pastor Chuck. And I said, Oh, great.

Can I come? They said, No. I said, Why? They said, Well, we're here to get rid of you.

So that was a pretty low blow. And they went into his office and I was devastated by that. And I thought, Why? And I prayed. And the Lord spoke to my heart again. And I felt the Lord saying to me, I'm going to move you to a whole new place.

A whole new thing's going to happen. And I waited in the office praying. And then I was in one of the other pastor's offices just sitting there in the little intercom ring.

And it was a secretary. She said, Pastor Chuck wants you to come into his office right now. Now I'm flashing back.

I'm in elementary school again. I'm going to see the vice principal, you know, I'm in trouble. And I go and sit down in Chuck's office.

And he has a big smile on his face. And he says, Greg, we got to find you a new place. And so instead of wanting to get rid of me, he understood what was going on. And he wanted to help me get established as a real church. So what happened after that? Did you find a church? Well, it just so happened that around that time, someone had discovered an abandoned church building on Arlington Avenue. It used to be a Baptist church, they had had a split. And literally, these people had come in and taken up pews and the pulpit was gone. They literally carried furniture out of the church.

It was a bitter split. And there was this building sitting on a hill abandoned and it had been that way for some time. And someone said, maybe we could use that building for our church. And so I remember one night, we went there into the parking lot, we stood outside and we prayed.

And you know, you have to understand how impossible that seemed. I mean, we're just a little group of, you know, a few hundred kids. I mean, literally, we're all kids. The oldest one among us is 22 tops, you know, 23 maybe.

And a lot of us even younger than that. And we're trying to figure out how to do this and understand also, you know, nowadays, startup churches are common and we see churches everywhere with contemporary music. At this time, there were no little startup churches. There were no churches of young people. There was not contemporary Christian music as the norm. This had not been done. There was Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa that it was going to at the time, but this was a whole new frontier.

And I'd never known of anyone who had done this before. But it was clear that the Lord had raised up a church. Now what? So this property is available. So we found out the realtor representing the property. I called Chuck and said, Chuck, would you come out and meet with this realtor? And he came out and I remember that we're looking at now at the building.

It's daytime. We're walking around the place is just so thrashed and carpets coming up and paints chipping off walls. But hey, it was a building.

It needed a lot of work, but it was a building. And I'm sort of looking around at this building and Chuck and this realtor are deep in discussion. And I see Chuck pull out a checkbook, write out a check, give it to the realtor, shake his hand, and he walks over to me and says, Well, Greg, you just got yourself a church. He shook my hand. He got in his car and off he went. And what he had done was he had put down the payment for our lease for our first few months, but we had to come up with the rest.

So he gave us our start. And then I had to go back to these guys at this other church and say, We're leaving, and we're going to go to our own church. And I remember the pastor saying, You're going to fail, Greg. This is not going to work. He said, The reason that these young people are being allowed to come is their parents know there are adult chaperones around.

They care of this. And with us gone, the parents will never let their kids come. This is all going to collapse. You'll see. And boy, I felt bad, like, Wow, what am I doing?

I am out of my mind. So I announced that Sunday, this is my last Sunday here. And we're going to this place and had a little map drawn up.

And I said, I hope you'll come with me. And we left there with 300 people. And the next Sunday, 500 people showed up. So we picked up 200 people.

I don't know where they came from. Well, if that's failure, that's a good failure to have. And as I got up on the platform, there's a great excitement in the room. It's worked. You know, the Lord's blessed it. And there's a buzz in the room. And I look out and sitting a few rows out is the very pastor that had told me it wouldn't work. And I felt really vindicated. And almost a sense of pride, like, See, I was right. You know, and again, it's this thing with adults. And he's an older man. And I'm thinking I see I showed you.

But then I thought, No, you know, that's not right. What would the Lord want me to do? I think I'll ask him to come up here. And I'll thank him for all he did to help get this church started. And I swallowed my pride and invited him up. And he was shocked when I did so. And I thanked him publicly. And I didn't mention the things he said to me to discourage me. And I and he said a few words, and I felt that was the right thing to do under the circumstances. Well, that was ultimately the birth of what's now known as Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, a church of some 15,000 people. That's K-N-O-W-G-O-D dot org.