A History of Jesus People USA

By Jon Trott

Part 3
Accountability and the Individual

Well before New Life's members melded with JPUSA, Cornerstone had consistently assaulted what the staff perceived as racism in America and within the American church. We also offered in-depth coverage of South African apartheid, then a word that most Evangelicals couldn't pronounce and knew little about. One black reader responded regarding our coverage:

I had made up my mind to worship with my white brothers and sisters in the Spirit. I didn't think that they were capable of condemning anything that the Western world had done. Observe the mute silence that slavery receives and the angry "why bother to bring that up" attitude that many believers get when it is mentioned. Observe the many faults and sins of my own race that are enumerated as if that somehow justifies kidnapping, stealing, and everything else. . . .

[I]t did something to me to see you tackling a subject like that (apartheid). It taught me something about love for the "losing" side. Secretly, my thoughts [about South African whites] were, "let 'em swim back to Europe!" Now I am praying for the white folks there because they were really born into a mess. I wouldn't trade places with them for anything. To face the truth is to give up power. Not to face the truth is to guarantee destruction. ¹

Another theme covered extensively by the magazine during the late seventies and early eighties was homosexuality, as a fair number of JPUSA had been involved in the gay lifestyle before becoming Christians. With our support of antiapartheid figures such as Desmond Tutu, we found ourselves being called Communists; with our support of the biblical picture regarding homosexuality, we found ourselves being called bigots, homophobes, and worse. As usual, like fools rushing in, we elected to "go for it." A Cornerstone "Cult of the Month" feature focused on Evangelicals Concerned and other pro-gay religious groups, dissecting their theological assumptions in light of orthodox Christian theology. The article's wrap-up was impassioned:

If you are gay and sincerely concerned with sound Biblical interpretation, please do not settle for the theological acrobatics perpetrated by the "gay Christian" organizations. No matter how often or cleverly disguised a lie may be, it still remains a lie. You owe it to your eternal destiny to face the truth. Homosexuality is simply sin and very volitional. The early church was made up of homosexuals, murderers, thieves and adulterers who, having turned their backs on the old life, had experienced complete deliverance. Homosexuality did not miss the redeeming power of Christ's death and resurrection. To experience salvation we must all lay down our pet sins and philosophies at the feet of Jesus, submitting our wills and lives to His complete reorientation of our very selves. YOU made a choice to pursue the gay life and YOU can also choose to put it down. No one has ever said this was easy. The old man never dies without a struggle and the enemy is always there whispering discouragement. ²

In early 1978, JPUSA's number of elders/pastors expanded from two (Richard Murphy and Glenn Kaiser) to eight. As the magazine's first masthead after the change put it, "The full-time disciples of our ministry are under the direction of a council of eight: Richard Murphy, Glenn Kaiser, Denny Cadieux, John Herrin, Victor Williams, Tom Cameron, Neil Taylor, and Dawn Herrin." ³

That change sounds far more important than it actually was, since the six new pastors had essentially been fulfilling that role anyway. An earlier Cornerstone reply in our letters section explained our view of leadership, that every leader needed accountability and checks and balances: "We believe in body ministry and the plurality of elders. We have two elders who are in submission to a council of Christians made up of deacons, deaconesses, and advisors."⁴ (The makeup of JPUSA leadership has changed little over the years: Richard Murphy later felt called elsewhere but has maintained his close friendship with JPUSA; Ron Brown, one of New Life's leaders, and Steve Follman, a longtime JPUSA member, joined the JPUSA council in the late seventies though later left the community.)

David Gordon, the sociologist who had worked since 1975 on his doctorate via a research project involving JPUSA and a suburban Jesus People group, finished his paper and, around March of '78, presented us with a copy. Gordon had become a near fixture around both Faith Tabernacle and Paulina, and his paper seemed an essentially accurate (if at times a bit heavy on the "socio-speak") representation of our lives together:

[I]dentity locates an individual in society. A given identity may then be sacralized [made sacred] or, in other words, made compelling, legitimate, and lasting. Being a Jesus Person locates the individual in a hierarchy which runs from God through Jesus, through the worldwide Christian movement, through prominent national Christians, through prominent regional and local Christians, through the elder(s) of the Jesus People fellowship, through brothers and sisters in the fellowship who have been Christians relatively longer, and finally to the individual. . . .

One reason that this particular Christian identity is so compelling is that it simultaneously locates the individual at each of these various levels. Each identity focus gains reinforcement and legitimation from the others. The search for personal identity becomes intertwined with God's will and with the fate of the world. As Peter, a member of [JPUSA], told me, Christianity directs one's attention away from an exclusive preoccupation with self. He said,

Nothing else gets you to completely look outside of yourself and live for something outside of yourself. You know what happens when you look inside yourself and are concerned about yourself too much, you go crazy....

The overarching framework which unifies the connections among all of these identity foci is Christianity. Evangelical Christianity, the Bible, the nature of Christian conversion, and belief in an unchanging God all lend authority and legitimacy to this identity. ⁵

Gordon seemed to have grasped something essential at the heart of our communal experience: our understanding of human relationships. In one sense, his analysis focused on an ordered web of relationships which we had constructed as a result of our encounter with Jesus Christ. Such relationships could not have existed without our trusting in Christ as their center, or (as Bonhoeffer once suggested) as the Person standing between my "I" and every other "I." ⁶ In a second sense, we had rediscovered the (in our eyes) only rational basis for civilization: trust that Christ was correct when He offered His summation of Old Testament law and morality:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets". (Matt. 22:37-40 NRSV).

In short, we had escaped the animal kingdom of survival of the fittest by in faith believing there was a transcendent moral value to loving one another, even as much as self. On this understanding, we constructed our approach to marriage, the family, our communal life, our relationship to the rest of the Christian Church, and the "world" (those without a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ). What we were involved in was no sociological or theological game; it was our life, a Pascalian gamble on the reality of Love.

Meanwhile, street witnessing at O'Hare Airport and in Chicago's Newtown and Old Town areas continued. Christian musician Keith Green brought his entire twenty-member community to visit us in May of 1978, ⁷ topping off a week of Chicago street witnessing by blessing us with a benefit concert for our ministry. ⁸ Keith's community, based in Woodland Hills, California, soon evolved from their communal model ⁹ into the Tyler, Texas-based "discipleship training school" (that good ol' JP Milwaukee phrase was recycled again!). JPUSA and Last Days remained close, though they later disagreed over the issue of Catholicism (the Last Days Newsletter publishing four articles against Catholicism, Cornerstone exposing the anti-Catholic Alberto Rivera as a fraud ¹⁰ and making a plea for tolerance between Protestant and Catholic believers ¹¹). After Keith's death in a tragic plane accident, Last Days kept going strong as an outreach ministry under the guidance of Melody, Keith's widow, and has flourished as a part of Youth with a Mission. ¹² Resurrection Band, despite hundreds of concerts given over a six-year period, had only two four-track recordings to their name: Music to Raise the Dead and the folk-oriented All Your Life. In 1978, the band finally got the opportunity to record their first record album, Awaiting Your Reply.¹³ Why had it taken so long? Resurrection Band's Glenn Kaiser offered a few reasons in a 1978 Cornerstone interview:

[JPUSA was] growing. We needed a house; we were living, to put it mildly, in an ever-increasingly over-crowded state in someone else's church.¹⁴ Which came first? The house. ¹⁵ What then? The house needed repairs. More people joined the ministry. Shoes needed to be bought, teeth needed to be filled, babies needed to be delivered, we needed more cars, more groceries each week. A church building, ¹⁶ another house. ¹⁷ Could the album wait? Yes, it could.

More situations became the literal story of our life. A heroin addict needs someone to take care of her kids while she tries to kick her habit. A mother with four children has no way to support them and needs a home; a little girl gets raped and her mother asks help taking care of her. A couple's marriage is falling apart and they need community. Drug addicts ask for help, gang members turn for perhaps one second of their lives in trust.

The cases are innumerable and we could not close down even part of our homefront. People's needs can't wait, records can. The album would minister as well, but these were people who looked us in the eyes and asked us to care. An album would be really nice, we all agreed, but we were no longer just musicians, we were disciples of Jesus, and His disciples are called to love.¹⁸

The story that didn't get told back then, even in Cornerstone, was that we ended up funding the album's production and recording costs ourselves. A friend lent us the eight thousand dollars, and after recording at Schaumburg, Illinois' Hedden-West studios, we took the record to various companies. Star Song, a then-tiny label, told us that they had been warned away from the project by other record companies' executives. "Everyone had heard it, and thought that Awaiting Your Reply was a good record; no-one wanted it affecting the gospel music status quo." Star Song, who had nothing to lose in light of the fact the project was already complete (even the artwork!), decided to risk it.

To the Gospel music industry's great surprise (and ours!) A.Y.R. went to number six on Gospel music sales charts.¹⁹ Though others (including Petra, E-Band, and Joshua) had recorded rock albums, it was Resurrection Band's album that forced the door open for Christian heavy metal's mainstream acceptance. C-stone enthused regarding the finished studio product:

[Awaiting Your Reply] has become a milestone in the common vision shared by the band and our community. Since the ministry's inception, the band has been considered an outreach to those who are unsaved, as well as a tool to build up Christ's body. . . .

This album is not just the dream of a band; it is the results of a Christian community's effort to reach out in love to a battered and dying world. It isn't just rock and roll; it's a message bearing life to all who will listen.²⁰

Meanwhile, Resurrection Band had supposedly upgraded to a secondhand school bus nicknamed Dawn Treader in reference to a mythical ship in one of C. S. Lewis's children's stories.²¹ Stu Heiss, guitarist for the group and all-around Mr. Gadget, assured everyone that the refrigeration unit he'd bolted on top of the bus would serve as an air conditioner. Galvanized ducts, supposedly to carry the cool air, ran from the refrigerator throughout the bus. When the refrigerator unit refused to work on its maiden voyage during a blistering summer tour, Resurrection Band members experienced new levels of discipleship.

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