A History of Jesus People USA

By Jon Trott

Part 4
Authority, Freedom and Uptown

In our history's first three installments, Jesus People USA (JPUSA) created a plurality of leadership, went from being a traveling ministry to locating in Chicago, and in 1975 (after nearly two years living in a church basement) put a down payment on their first home at 4431 N. Paulina Street. Our Resurrection Band's Awaiting Your Reply was released in 1978, and the band's visibility began to rise dramatically. Meanwhile, back on the home front, the young Jesus People continued to reach out toward the greater body of Christ for imput, aware of the dangers of becoming ingrown, arrogant toward others, or unbalanced. ¹

Doctrinally, we were hard to categorize. JPUSA respected and used the writings of church leaders such as C. S. Lewis, Carl Henry, Corrie ten Boom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, James Dobson, John Perkins, Francis Schaeffer, John Stott, J. I. Packer, Norman Geisler, James Sire, Walter Martin, and various other evangelical authors, virtually all of whom were represented in our first-floor Paulina library.²

Along with the Jesus movement overall, JPUSA was also influenced by early charismatics, especially John and Elizabeth Sherrill (They Speak with Other Tongues), Jamie Buckingham's writings, and (yes, our most dubious input) Bob Mumford and others from Christian Growth Ministries. Catchphrases used by Mumford, such as "V.R.G."--short for "verbalized religious garbage"--became part of JPUSA in-house vocabulary. V.R.G. was when someone used religious lingo to cover up their own sinful inclinations and/or actions (some of us old-timers still use the term when it fits).

In community, the issue of submission--emphasized in Mumford's teachings--had (and has) a far greater importance than it might in a "Sunday morning and Wednesday evening" church! And the Jesus People did want to submit, submit to God via His Word, and to one another in both proper surrender of "rights" and confrontation of "wrongs." When in the late seventies it became apparent that Mumford's developing concepts of submission were extrabiblical, especially in their rigidly hierarchical nature, JPUSA consciously moved away from Mumford and related teachers.³

This pattern repeated itself regarding various persons and doctrines which occasionally swept the evangelical/charismatic community and thus came to us: we were initially open, continued to reanalyze in light of new information, and ultimately would reject the teaching if it seemed either scripturally objectionable or unworkable in our communal context. "Demonization" and "deliverance," for instance, became a hot issue during the late seventies, and JPUSA practiced deliverance (the casting out of demons) often. As with all "new discoveries," we tended to go overboard at first. But as some charismatic teachers began going to extremes--interviewing demons, for instance, about future events (an idea forbidden in Scripture⁴)--we moved away from an emphasis on deliverance. Due to its biblical roots, however, we did not rule out the necessity for it in some cases. As with many teachings not central to the Christian message, we found that the main mistake was to overemphasize its importance.

In time we observed that some of the strangest theology, notably the prosperity and faith teachings, continued to emanate from the charismatic movement, and though we maintained our beliefs in the validity of the gifts of the Spirit for today, we found ourselves swinging away from most charismatic/pentecostal teachers' overemphasis on extrabiblical experience. Billy Graham was always a Jesus People hero, and his theology was good enough for us!⁵

In the next few years, we found ourselves looking toward Evangelicals for our theology and, in addition, looking toward our Catholic brothers and sisters for insights into "doing" community. Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen, and Mother Teresa (as chronicled by Malcolm Muggeridge, among others) were the most helpful. Vanier's 1979 book, Community and Growth, would eventually become a sort of articulation of what we believed our calling stood for.

We also entered into fellowship with other Chicago-area communities--notably, Evanston's Reba Place Fellowship--and with the Northside Evangelical Fellowship, a network of Baptist, Congregational, and other evangelical churches based on Chicago's North Side. When writing on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Cornerstone was influenced by Jim Wallis's Sojourners magazine (formerly the Post American) and community in Washington, D.C. Cornerstone urged its readers to involve themselves in protesting our nation's nuclear arms buildup:

In our doing good, we should always be in prayerful expectation that a greater good will spring from our witness. Perhaps Armageddon is around the corner; does that give Christians the right to passively await their rapturous evacuation from a mushroom-cloud covered world? This is not a biblical balance, or a loving one.⁶

And friends at Chicago's Moody Bible Institute invited the longhaired Cornerstone writers to use their library for research.

Cornerstone's circulation as a newspaper rose to around 250,000 copies by 1978, mainly due to the large number of "bulk" distributors who purchased 50 or 100 copies for witnessing and church groups. When, with our forty-seventh issue, we switched to a magazine format, the cost went up and the number of mags sold was far less than the number of papers. Cornerstone was to become less of a witnessing tool for street evangelism and more of a witness against the culture we found ourselves within.⁷

One example of our struggle to identify and interpret the issues came when, in a 1978 article, we softened our previously harsh stance toward the Equal Rights Amendment. During research for the article, which included reading literature from both feminists and anti-ERA advocates, as well as consulting our primary documents (the Scriptures), we became aware of the many wrongs perpetrated historically against women. It seemed clear that our previous writing on ERA had not gone far enough, and in fact had neglected important truths feminist scholars had underscored. We concluded:

In times past, we as Cornerstone writers have been stricken with "preacher's madness, becoming so offended (or enamored) with a cause that our flaming rhetoric won't allow a balanced view of that cause. We have attempted to avoid the disease while writing this article. Yet, in concluding, we find ERA falling short of the mark. ERA itself will not cause our moral structure to crumble, but inevitably will lead to further confusion.⁸

Like much of the charismatic movement, we believed Scripture allowed for women preaching and teaching. Scripture did seem to indicate two facts: men and women are restored as equals before Christ; men nonetheless hold an office in marriage, for example, of leadership. But when such leadership was defined, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . ,"⁹ it became obvious that the paradox of male-female roles in Scripture, like so many other issues, was not one which lent itself to black-and-white answers. Yet we also felt that many feminists ("Christian" feminists included) were misdirected:

What is the relationship between authority and freedom? To some, freedom means autonomy; the individual must be as unhindered by other individuals as possible, and be loosed from responsibility. But to others freedom means linking lives together interdependently, focusing on others rather than one's self. those of the second persuasion do not reject the need of further legislation protecting women's freedom, but do reject the autonomous humanism that treats that freedom as some sort of ultimate "salvation."

... The world will never find equality, no matter how hard they search. They have forgotten God's love, and without love true "equality" is impossible.¹⁰

If our stance on women's leadership seemed liberal to some (how convenient labels are!) our take on "the battle for the Bible" (Harold Lindsell's phrase) was another matter. We understood that if our belief in the Bible's truth and authority was undermined, so was our faith. An interview with Trinity Evangelical Divinity School professor Dr. Norman Geisler concerning biblical authority led to our covering Chicago's 1978 International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Geisler told Cornerstone,

I think evangelical Christianity is like building a skyscraper higher and higher into the thin air of the 20th century. Evangelical Christianity is getting bigger and bigger, some say a third of America is born again. Our seminaries are growing, our schools are growing, there's revival in many places. Evangelical Christianity is on the march. But how high can you build a skyscraper on a cracked foundation? Psalm 11:3 says, "If the foundation be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?" The foundation of everything in evangelical Christianity is the Word of God. Every other doctrine comes out of that doctrine.¹¹

Our interview also led to Norm's visiting our Paulina basement and doing a seminar on inerrancy for our JPUSA discipleship training classes; the question-and-answer session might have come as a pleasant surprise, as the longhaired guys and granny-dressed women turned out to be both feisty and astute. That evening was the beginning of a years-long friendship.

But all was not roses. Christian communities, including JPUSA, felt the heat of suspicion after Jim Jones led his communal followers in their 1978 mass suicide in Guyana. Dave Jackson of Reba Place Fellowship, who with his wife, Neta, coauthored Living Together in a World Falling Apart,¹² a description of Christian community, offered an insightful editorial in Cornerstone after the Jonestown tragedy:

As the secular press has tried to help the public comprehend the recent horror in Guyana, there has been the frequent inference that the problem was too much commitment. They suggest that any time people give themselves totally to a cause, the product is likely to be as heinous. Is that true? And if it is, how should that affect our commitment to Jesus Christ and His church? Is our safety a retrenchment into individualistic Christianity?...

...God has given us the Bible as a standard by which we may test every spirit, every proclamation, every prophet. I'm sure that the powers operating in Jones which attracted people to him were strong, but according to the reports now available in the media, red flags were everywhere for any who would measure him by God's written Word... [He led a] sexually immoral life... insisted that people worship him... [was] a freelancer, unaccountable to anyone... .

Jones renounced the Bible . . . saying, "Too many people are looking to it instead of to me.". . . [He] gave deference to the rich . . . held +seances+ with spirits. . . .

Jones claimed to be Jesus Christ and finally God Himself. . .

God has provided us with the necessary means of discernment so that we can commit ourselves in confidence without fearing that we are being duped. Any false prophet will give himself away if we measure him by God's Word.¹³

Our own approach to those involved in "cults" (a term which, until Jonestown, had a primarily theological rather than sociological meaning) was articulated in the conclusion of an article on how to witness to a cultist:

In these latter years of the twentieth century, the search for spiritual things will increase as the world grows progressively less stable. The fervor of the cults should be matched and surpassed by our fervor for Christ; our lives should shine forth God's love. No longer should experts be able to say (as one has said) "the cults are the unpaid bills of the church" (Dr. J. K. Van Baalen, author of The Chaos of the Cults). We owe the cultists our love. We owe them our attention, and not our disdain. We owe them our own study of those responsible Christian scholars (not sensationalists) who can spiritually and intellectually lead them out of their arid wastelands. We owe them the integrated, balanced walk of the mature Christian, who doesn't have a distaste for honest dialogue and prayerful preparation. And we owe them the truth in an outstretched hand, not in a clenched fist.¹⁴

Witnessing of a different type came our way when January of 1979 gave us, along with the rest of Chicago, a massive blizzard which left snow three to twelve feet deep. Chi-town was effectively shut down for days, the city's fleet of snowplows simply not up to the job of cleanup. As Cornerstone observed, we had found an outreach:

For four nights in a row a team of between 20-30 brothers per night went out and literally "tackled" our block. They dug out each car and cleared our street in many places down to the pavement. It was definitely a heavy-duty job, especially because much of the snow was ice-packed...

Many times we might think that a "heavy" witness is being a missionary in some far off land. Yet, for us, shoveling off the street for those we pass by every day was probably one of the best witnesses we could give them¹⁵

We also used our ministry bus to ferry blizzard-stranded Chicagoans home, witnessing and singing praise songs as we went. JPUSA's ministry outreaches continued to multiply, and a listing of them in the same issue of C-stone showed an interesting mix of evangelism and social concerns:

As far as other important tidbits . . . $1,300.00 was given to us by a Christian community in the suburbs to buy food to distribute in Uptown over Christmas . . . we sent two teams of treeplanters down to Alabama and Louisiana for a couple of months of work . . . we sent a team to join in the Christian protest of the upcoming "Arms Bazaar" [where munitions dealers were trying to sell various Third-World countries arms] to be held in Chicago . . . we sent teams to answer the phones at the recent CBN telethon . . . our farm is still alive and well and some of the crew is now living in one wing of the lodge . . . we now have seven full-time chaplains working with the prisoners in Cook County Jail . . . also, we have four girls going to a special school for hospital chaplaincy . . . our moving, painting, and carpentry crews continue to work in the city . . . and we will be sending down a team to Mardi Gras [to witness] once again this year.¹⁶

In early 1979 a Deerfield, Illinois, Trinity College student visited JPUSA after hearing about us from a friend. Her initial skepticism gave way to respect as she got to know various members and pastors of the community and wrote up her experiences in her school's Trinity Digest:

When asked about the goals or objectives of Jesus People USA, Tom [Cameron, a JPUSA pastor] responded that their objectives took three main directions: 1) an inward goal of providing a teaching atmosphere for young Christians through classes, Sunday sermons, personal counseling, and the formal weekly meetings of cell groups of 8-10 people, 2) an evangelistic outreach through street witnessing; Cornerstone, the national Jesus People newspaper; and Resurrection Band, one of JPUSA's most effective witness tools and 3) an outreach to the poor which is just beginning in the ministry.¹⁷

The student experienced a real adventure when, on the way back from a Resurrection Band concert, a tire on the old JPUSA bus blew out. Pulling over, everyone on board piled into a nearby subway station to stay warm and wait for the second bus. Singing Gospel songs soon gave way to witnessing to the ticket-taker behind his glass window, and before long, the man had accepted Christ. "I was happy to hear the two who had witnessed to the man discussing the follow-up as we traveled home," she wrote. "It wasn't hit-and-run witnessing." The student's final comments were an encouragement to us:

The Jesus People USA are, I believe, a people truly used of God. Incidents like the one described above are not unusual, just part of life. They occur when a person makes Christ the most important part of his life and then is willing to share his faith, regardless of what the world may think. I saw many committed, mature Christians at the commune--Christians we here at Trinity could learn a bit from. My weekend visit to the commune threw a jolt into my Christian life.¹⁸

The Paulina chapter of our story was about to close. We had increased in numbers to the point that 4431-33 could no longer hold us; for some time we had searched in the nearby Uptown, Chicago, ghetto area for a building. By the winter of 1979, we had finally found one. Our new home at 4707 North Malden would usher in a decade-long chapter of our lives together. The neighborhood paper, Uptown News, reported on our purchase of the building:

A Christian missionary group has purchased the Chapman hotel, a former halfway house at 4707-4711 N. Malden, and says it plans to help Uptown's poor and needy.

The religious order, which calls itself Jesus People, U.S.A., bought the hotel complex at an undisclosed price [it was approximately $300,000] from the owners of the Traemour and Stratford nursing homes--two institutions which have been in and out of hot water with state officials because of building code and health code violations. The Chapman also has a history of housing code violations.¹⁹

The Uptown News went on to note that we first planned to bring the new building and a smaller building (later dubbed by us the "annex") up to code. After that, said JPUSA pastor Denny Cadieux, "Our plans are to try and reach out and help the shut-ins, feed the hungry and clothe the people who need it."²⁰ In response to neighborhood worries about what effect we would have on the area, a member of the Uptown Chicago commission checked out our old neighborhood for clues. His report: "Last summer members of the religious order were largely responsible for quelling a buildup of youth gang tension in the Montrose-Paulina area."²¹

Since our arrival in Chicago, the Uptown neighborhood had always been a prime area of ministry for us, and more than occasionally, Uptown residents had hiked to our 4431 North Paulina address for food, bus tokens, and maybe a prayer or some counsel. Well before the move, Cornerstone had reported on this "port of entry" neighborhood:

Uptown truly is unique. It is the home of the most complex culture of people anywhere. Carlos Plazas, Ph.D., Executive Director of Edgewater Mental Health Center, states, "For many years Uptown has been considered a kind of port of entry for people who are coming from different areas of the country and even different countries of the world . . . For example, at this moment there is a 40% white population, 30% Latin American, 20% from different countries in Asia, about 18% are blacks, and 8% native American people."²²

This writer, then-single man, was one of the first to relocate to the new Malden building as one of its caretakers during the rehab period. Within a week or two of moving, I became the startled observer of a lethal drive-by shooting.²³

By May 1979 the Paulina address was emptied of JPUSAs,²⁴ and Uptown's Malden Street was our official new home. At the time, Malden's 4700 block was a street filled with activity, a blend of African-American, Appalachian white, and Hispanic. Our main building had a large dirt yard (soon cemented) and, along with the annex, was surrounded by a low chain-link fence. Trees lined the street, softening the effects of the blighted buildings, broken windows, and abandoned cars. A dilapidated six-flat next to us was filled with Hispanic families, along with some poor whites, while the Malden Arms Hotel four doors down the street was, we discovered, a center of neighborhood violence and drug-running.

We viewed such realities as a challenge. Our first Malden-era issue of Cornerstone was enthusiastic:

What a fantastic summer! We have finished moving into our new home at 4707 N. Malden. The larger building is super and the lay-out makes you think the architect of many years ago had us in his plans all along. . . . The best part of our move is the opening opportunities in our new neighborhood.

In the front yard around the picnic table and benches there's an easy flow of conversation with our passing neighbors.

A deaf couple who had been living together come often to converse and learn with several people in the ministry via sign language.

Pete and Ralph and other neighborhood children have become a special blessing to us as several of our mothers have taken the time to invite them in and show a love that the street cannot provide. It's amazing what an arm around the shoulder and a nose-wipe can do to a little heart of stone.

Helping a handicapped woman move to a new apartment is a simple way for us to show our love. Talking to the young girl who has just been beaten by her boyfriend and is still clutching a bottle of wine is harder.²⁵

It was obvious we were going to be at the center of our neighborhood's ups and downs. A group of white gang members, the Rebels, had frequent lethal encounters with the Latin Kings and other groups.²⁶ Various victims of neighborhood violence stumbled into our lobby; one afternoon a woman who had been beaten and raped ran into our building begging protection. JPUSA women comforted her and dressed her wounds while waiting for police and an ambulance.

In short, we were soon known as a safe zone, a haven for those trapped on the streets. Long-term relationships were built between JPUSA members and neighborhood families, though many times there seemed to be no "happy ending" to their stories. We tried not to measure our successes or failures; instead, we clung to Christ's words concerning the poor: "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40b NRSV).

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