Do you know Lonnie Frisbee? This guy was an evangelist - who called himself "seeing prophet" - and a mystic in the 60's and 70's. Lonnie Frisbee had a, especially for a minister/an evangelist peculiar way of dressing himself - as he dressed himself like a hippie. The question is, did this maybe even help him reach his success? Who knows - it's obviously hard to say.
Frisbee became called a hippie preacher - and, according to some people, he wasn't one of them because there was only one of them. This was said in the movie about him, called Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher - a movie that dives into how he did become this charismatic leader, that he allegedly was, who gave rise to two denomations. These two denominations were Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard Movement.
He had the problem of being a homosexual preacher of christianity (homosexuality, as you may know, is considered a sin in christian teachings; at least in some; don't shoot the messenger please). In interviews he said that also he considered homosexuality a sin. Obviously, here, a tension was built. The movements that he helped create, Calvary Chapel and Vineyard ministries distanced themselves from him because of his sinfulness.
Lonnie Frisbee's career actually started in a way that could be reminiscent, at least to some, to the way that he dressed. He was getting high and soul-searched. First he, and some friends, who pilgrimaged looked to mysticism and the occult to find meaning but then started reading the Gosel of John - from the bible, in case you didn
t lknow - and then it took speed from there. The following saying, from people who met him at the San Francisco Art Academy, where he studied for a while - might say something about the start of his career: "he was talking about Jesus and flying saucers". The saying, said by a christian missionary, comes from the fact that Frisbee talked about UFO's, practiced hypnotism, and spoke about having taken tries at occult and mysticism.
After not long he became a christian, quit the art academy, went to a place in Novato, California, where he lived with other christians. He later connected with his earlier girlfriend, Connie, and married her.
