Greg Laurie is an American author, evangelist, and senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship, a megachurch located in Riverside, California. He was born on December 10, 1952, in Long Beach, California, and according to his own testimony, he became a Christian in 1970 at the age of 17 during the Jesus Revolution involving weird charismatics and, apparently, a practicing homosexual. Laurie has been married to his wife, Cathe, since 1974, and they have two sons, Christopher and Jonathan.
Laurie is well-known in the Calvary Chapel movement and Evangelicalism as a whole. He is the author of over 70 books, many of which are on the subject of evangelism, discipleship, and Christian living. He is also the host of the nationally syndicated radio program “A New Beginning,” which airs daily on more than 1,000 radio stations around the world.
In addition to his role as a pastor and author, Laurie is also known for his large-scale evangelistic events, including Harvest Crusades, which have been held in stadiums and arenas across the United States and around the world. Similar to the Billy Graham crusades, these events have drawn millions of people and often carry with them the spontaneous “conversions” that often expose themselves to be false converts.
A key figure, in the Jesus Movement, and according to Laurie, the man who led him to conversion, was a practicing homosexual named Lonnie Frisbee. Frisbee was known for his charismatic preaching style and his ability to draw large crowds to his events and he was instrumental in the growth of Calvary Chapel, a non-denominational Christian church in Southern California. He played a key role in the early development of the Vineyard movement, a charismatic movement that places undue emphasis on the Holy Spirit and the sign gifts.
Frisbee’s homosexuality was a well-known but largely unspoken aspect of his life. He practiced homosexuality from a young age and engaged in sexual relationships with both men and women throughout his ministry. In the early 1980s, Frisbee’s homosexuality became a point of contention within the Christian community and he was dismissed from the Vineyard movement after his sexual activity was exposed. Many of his former colleagues distanced themselves from him, yet, Frisbee continued to preach and minister until his death from AIDS-related complications in 1993 at the age of 43.
Watch this bizarre story about how Greg Laurie was converted by Lonnie Frisbee:
