Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher (2005)

Others have described this unusual movie better than I can. I'll just add that the extras video on the DVD is essential. It's almost as long as the very short movie itself is. It actually contains a lot more information than the movie does because it leaves out the obscure, annoying and completely irrelevant songs that pepper the movie and eat up at least a third of its under-one-hour run time. The only sad thing about the extras video is that it adds an ugly, bitter, deluded side to his otherwise interesting and sympathetic wife Connie (I love her for being outraged at Chuck Smith's egregious smugness at Lonnie's funeral).I'll also add that I am myself a gay Christian (very emphatically and uncompromisingly both), a year older than Lonnie Frisbee. My life too has been entirely transformed by Jesus (who loves gay men, by the way) and informed and infused by the marvelous Holy Spirit, and I too passed through Calvary Chapel along the way. For some reason I survived the experience that fatally wounded him, but then I was never on the front lines in the same way he was, as Jesus was, and as surprisingly few others have been.I had never heard of Lonnie Frisbee (Smith and his disciples have very successfully purged him from their history), so I'm grateful to this movie for introducing us. I love and admire and thank Lonnie for all he did, and I'm eager to meet him face to face before too much longer. He's better off now than any of us are.

This is the kind of well-reasoned movie about an intriguing public figure that would get a primetime TV slot if the channels claiming quality weren't afraid of meaning. Lonnie Frisbee achieved notoriety in the early Seventies as a major player in the Jesus Movement, in which counterculture kids were attracted to a less rigorous Christianity, emphasising love while minimising constriction. Frisbee was affiliated with the fledgling Calvary and Vineyard churches, both now multinational, but fell out with both, growing embittered before dying of AIDS. Director David Di Sabatino comes from an evangelical family, but possesses a modicum of scepticism to leaven the occasional sanctimony of his talking heads. (Sadly his open-mindedness doesn't transfer to the visual, as he overplays certain tics like zooming into stills off-center. Sometimes it's okay to just show the picture.) When the movie shifts to deal with Frisbee being squeezed out of the Vineyard after it was revealed he had been in a gay relationship, although it does smack of trying to force a thesis, that thesis stands: this major figure in the development of these churches has been whitewashed out of their history books. One could argue, however, that the movie does its own whitewashing by downplaying Frisbee's other sins, like his drug use. In any case, some Christians would consider the idea that a sinner could convert so many people to be perfectly apt (they're the target audience for this movie); other Christians would prefer not to contemplate such things. Hinted at is the question of whether it's possible for Christianity to thrive as an anti-authoritarian movement, like it originally was. Christianity's ubiquity would be impossible without its hierarchies; while open and reformist thought is possible at the fringes, can it affect the religion as a whole? Frisbee, for his part, seems from the archival footage to be a likable, charismatic innocent, joyful at being saved and wanting to pass this feeling on. When those who were ministered by him discuss him, he comes across as something more: an apostle, a prophet, just not a saint. Some of them to this day credit him with miracles. You may not believe them, but to possess the holy stature and earthly magnetism to have others even ascribe this gift to you is rare. The enraptured testimonies help explain the explosion of the evangelical movement, like it or not.One other thing that must be mentioned is the music, which consists mostly of prehistoric Christian rock. Like most of the genre then or since, the tracks are watered-down reassignments of what was fashionable five years earlier, except Di Sabbatino's choices are only slightly watered-down, so that, in the context of the movie, they sound actively pleasant. As Larry Norman asked, why should the devil have all the good music?

This is a great film, showing how Lonnie ministered in signs and wonders, and was a catalyst to both the Calvary Chapel and Vineyard movements. Sadly, much of the good Lonnie did was dismissed by religious people because of how Lonnie died. Kudos to David for this wonderful documentary. As one effected by Lonnie's work, I am very grateful for this film. Like my film on Aimee McPherson, David compassionately explores how an anointed person is still human, and is too often exploited and used by others for their spiritual gifts. This film effected me, spiritually and emotionally, and I hope David makes more films.

It is amazing that I had not heard of Lonnie Frisbee - given that I worked for a national prayer ministry during the 1970's and 1980's and had close contacts with many significant church leaders during those times. And yet as I watched his story unfold, I was struck that hindsight makes us judgmental, but how would we have responded to the "news" at the time? And yet, even today, the church is disturbed by this movie, which begs several questions that many absolutely, positively do not want to address. Church leaders have stolen money, had scandalous affairs, and surely have failed to live up to God's moral standards (gossip, favoritism, etc.) in myriad ways, and yet there is but one "sin" that, for many, is too big to be covered by God's boundless love. Jesus even hung out with lepers - but some still see one human condition as a thousand times more horrible than leprosy. I must confess I was once in that category - and so I welcome this fine film as an eye-opener for those who have failed to look with Jesus' eyes at others created in His image.