A History of Jesus People USA

By Jon Trott

Part 5
Who Is My Neighbor?

As the Me Decade of the eighties began, JPUSA experienced an increased identification with the poor. "Identification" sounds spiritual, but what it actually meant in the concrete world was that we constantly found ourselves confronting our own limitations and sinfulness. We were being taught to claim Christ's promise to Paul that "my grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9 NRSV). If we wanted to follow Christ, we had no option regarding the poor. Cornerstone chose to underscore that point with this quote from the father of the Reformation, Martin Luther:

If we fail to do the works whereby we serve the poor and if we do not interest ourselves in their need, He does not intend to recognize us either. For what we do for our neighbor we do for God and for Christ Himself, as He will say on Judgment Day: "What you have done for the least of these My brethren, you have done for Me" (Matt. 25:40). "Who has commanded you to build churches? I have placed living temples before you. These you should have built up, supported for Me and helped for Me. Instead, you dealt with other things, tomfooleries that I have not commanded. I do not know you."¹

A dinner program for our neighbors began in 1979 when people from the Uptown neighborhood started eating supper with us in our large communal dining hall, which took up much of 4707 Malden's first floor. They kept coming back, each time bringing a couple friends. As the months went on, the dining room became more and more crowded. Finally, a neighborhood woman made a suggestion. "Us neighbors could eat earlier. You folks could eat at your normal time. That would make room for everybody." As we noted in Cornerstone, there was a touch of the miraculous involved:

Months ago, we had begun sharing our evening meal with 2 or 3 of our neighbors as their need arose. Soon the number had risen to 40 or 50, but we turn, and today find ourselves sharing with between 100-120 each night and have made no increase in the amount of food we prepare. Almost without our notice, the Lord had been performing the miracle nightly of feeding a small multitude with His own hand.²

As "Reaganomics" took hold in the early 1980s, homelessness suddenly became one of Uptown's most noticeable features. Entire families had nowhere to go. The total number of those we provided dinner for grew (to between two hundred and three hundred a day), and the complexion of those eating with us changed as well, from predominantly single men to entire families. The vast government cuts in housing programs also created a tremendous demand for temporary shelter of any kind. It was obvious that housing had become Uptown's most pressing problem, and we were compelled toward finding solutions. Cornerstone reported:

Every night we receive 10-12 phone calls for temporary housing for families evicted from their homes (many people in Uptown live in condemned buildings), abused women, mothers with no food or place to stay with their children. Utilizing every room to its maximum capacity, our house is full. "The fifty year old woman who was evicted tonight is on 3rd floor in the Ahearns' room. The family with three children can stay in one of the couple's rooms who have gone to the Missouri farm for a week . . . [There are also] two pregnant teenagers. One can stay on second floor with Charlyn and Linda . . . So it goes every night till everyone is fed and settled. Then at 2 a.m. the imminent happens. The phone rings.

"Hello, Jesus loves you, may I help you?"

"Yes, this is Human Services [Chicago's department for coping with housing problems]. We have a young woman here, we were wondering if you could provide shelter for a night or two?"

"I'm sorry, we've filled every available space tonight."

"There's a fifteen month old child with her and she appears to be about six months pregnant. It seems there was a fight and her boyfriend has threatened her."

(Pause) "Yes . . . yes, bring her over, we'll make do."

Again, the answer is as obvious as the need. ³

But just because most Americans viewed poverty as synonymous with sinfulness didn't mean we could afford the opposite mistake, to think of the poor as sinless. In one appeal to our readers for financial aid, we illustrated the dilemma:

The man calling from a laundromat related his story to Denny as best he could. He was about to lose his apartment by three o'clock if he didn't come up with the $68 still owed on this month's rent. The aid check he depended on had been delayed by the government's slow office work. His wife and kids would be out on the street this afternoon.

Many things sped through Denny's mind. Living in a poor section of Chicago teaches you to listen to stories well. The streets daily transform persons desperate for another bottle or another fix into persuasive actors and actresses. Denny also knew the weight of the landlord's threat. Many times we've seen evictions "Chicago style." The furniture is placed or piled on the front sidewalk. Dressers, tables, clothes, dishes, books--everything. The former tenants always have that dismayed, startled expression as they rummage through their stuff.

"Come on over and we'll help you out." The man on the other end began to cry. "Do you have a way of getting here?" "I've got one dollar left. I'll catch a bus and be right over--believe me!"

It was a blessing we were able to give him a large box of groceries along with the money.⁴

As JPUSA continued to learn how to live the gospel in our inner-city neighborhood, Cornerstone continued to sharpen its journalistic teeth on a variety of cults, as well as various movements within the church which merited critique. Jack Chick's anti-Catholic crusade took a drubbing as we exposed both a supposed ex-priest, Alberto, ⁵ and an alleged ex-Satanist, John Todd, published by Chick. ⁶ (The Todd expose followed up journalist Ed Plowman's work in Christianity Today and included a Cornerstone interview with Todd which had quickly degenerated into an attack upon the interviewer.) Perhaps sensitized by our own experience with the poverty of Uptown, we attempted to dismantle the so-called prosperity message being offered by an increasingly erratic charismatic movement. ⁷We examined the entire concept of intentional community in a somewhat fanciful courtroom setting, Scratch being the prosecutor and Theo Loogey the defendant's lawyer. ⁸

A Salvation Army married couple, Robb and Bette Durr, visited JPUSA in 1981 and recorded a diary of their reminiscences in their magazine, Great Times. We enjoyed their unique perspective, which picked out the details of our lives with an almost embarrassing precision, and reprinted it in Cornerstone. Some snippets:

JPUSA has its own interesting inside lingo: "rev from heav" ("Hey brother, do you have a 'rev' on this?"); "purge" ("What a purge"--the bus is an hour late picking up the street-witnessing team); "in the flesh" ("I was really in the flesh at him"--a sister who felt one of the deacons didn't have enough sympathy for her situation. . . .)

The hallways here are long with about 23 rooms on each floor. Twenty-three rooms begets twenty-three doors and doors are an interesting means of communication. If the door is open, company is welcome. A closed door usually carries detailed instructions regarding outsiders' conduct and insiders' frame of mind.

Examples of JPUSA graffiti:

"Quarantine--chicken-pox kids within"

"Praying and reading--don't knock unless it is an absolute emergency."...

"Baby is sleeping -- Sandy is not here"

"Spotty the turtle is loose so enter carefully please."...

"This sign that you see below (if there is one) is true. Please believe us. We are Bible-believing Christians simply trying to be obedient to Mark 16:17, 'And these signs shall follow those that believe.'"...

Fortunately, visitors and newcomers to the ministry are assigned "buddies." These merciful people make sure you survive your initiation to the dining room, are fed, have companionship and generally aren't swallowed up in community life.

In order to assure that no one is lost in such a large community, people are broken down into groups of thirteen or fourteen. They meet every week and individual attention can be given to everyone's needs. Married couples' groups also have their own time together. ⁹

Over the years, the group meetings would evolve away from being "guys' group" and "sisters' group" to a more complex but also more interconnected extended family structure.

As we continued to grow over the next three years, we hunted for more real estate. In 1980 we found a four-story apartment building at 4626 N. Magnolia, only one block from our Malden address. Though the building's front facade rose in beautiful castle-like minarets, its rooms were studies in squalor, infested with both rats and cockroaches. Just cleaning out the building took weeks. Yet slowly we made "Maggie" livable, filling it with married couples and singles, mostly women. The temporary ownership of a La Crosse, Wisconsin, area hog farm (also in 1980) ¹⁰ was one of our most spectacular financial failures. Before it was over we'd lost twenty thousand dollars. In 1982 we purchased a small factory building near Chicago's infamous Cabrini Green housing project. "Clybourn" initially housed Cornerstone magazine, our typesetting shop, and the mailing department, and became home to REZ Band's Tone Zone studio. ¹¹ In 1983 we obtained a partially burned-out apartment building, 4656 N. Malden.¹² This building became the domain of single men, who at that time far outnumbered our single women, and was dubbed by them "the Monastery."

We also created links with other Christian communities during the early 1980s, as Cornerstone noted in a philosophical introduction to some passages from L'Arche community cofounder Jean Vanier:

It would be hard to pinpoint the date we became a community. The seeds were there from the beginning, the working out has taken years. We came together to survive, we continued because we found our calling.

Through all the growing pains we have deeply appreciated the fellowship and stability of other communities such as Reba Place, Daystar, Gospel Outreach, Wellspring and many others...

All communities carry their own flavor and emphasis, this is the beauty of Christianity; it is most especially the beauty of community; separate individuals making one whole. ¹³

In the fall of 1983 another doctoral student, William L. Smith, came to visit our community and a few others. His thesis was an attempt to compare seven religious communities ¹⁴ in Chicago to one another and (take a deep breath) to a sociological model developed in Rosabeth Moss Kanter's Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective. ¹⁵ In one of two published papers on his research, Smith notes:

Commitment, according to Kanter, connects the individual's self-interest to the requirements of the group. It forms the link between self-interest and group interest. . . . [Kanter] was particularly concerned with how certain types of group structure inspire personal commitment and how others discourage and minimize it. ¹⁶

Smith's further comments about Kanter don't fit in our context here, but in short, he developed her theories with critiques from J. Gordon Melton, John R. Hall, Anson Shupe, and David Bromley, who nuanced and modified portions of Kanter's model. He then attempted to analyze the seven communities' "commitment mechanisms" using a mixture of Kanter and Hall's theories. Kanter's model (sometimes abused by certain secular anticult groups) explains a process of "deindividuation," or stripping away of the individual's sense of self within some group contexts. Smith directly addressed that question:

Deindividuation is not utilized by any group, nor integrated into the daily life of the communards. Uniforms are not worn, and individuals are encouraged to be themselves and to live to their fullest capacities.¹⁷

Regarding us, Smith initially observed,

The community attempts to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with anyone who is interested, but especially with those who are alienated from the more traditional and conservatively structured churches. Love and forgiveness are important qualities that members and the community, as a whole, strive to achieve. ¹⁸

In Smith's initial research paper, the chapter on JPUSA focused on the relationship between the individual and the community:

The community also strives to aid members in their struggles for maturity. Classes, personal counseling based on Biblical Christian principles, and a shared life are avenues by which the larger group contributes to each individual's well being and personhood. The community also endeavors to reach out to the poor with both spiritual and material aid. Fellowship, witnessing, and counseling constructively support the community's goal of attempting to teach believers the necessity of a mature and consistent walk with Jesus. . . .

Although the community strives to help members with their emotional and religious maturity, the final result or product is in the hands of the individual. One member has commented,

The individual is very important to God. He deals with us in that way. I'm not the same as the girl down the hall. God may ask me to do something He won't require of her. My life and my behavior [are] a personal answer to the Lord. Jesus People is a great place to live but they don't save me, Jesus does. I'm just blessed to have a bunch of folks around me who are headed basically in the same direction, giving our best to Jesus.¹⁹

Regarding "sacrifice," one of Kanter's methods of commitment, Smith noted, "Members [of Jesus People USA] are prohibited from smoking, drinking alcoholic beverages, and use of recreational drugs. Sexual abstinence is expected of single members until they marry." ²⁰ (We nonsociologists might be wondering if the above is really a mark of a commune or a mark of a Baptist.) Smith, in another article written on "the world of meaning" in community, quoted JPUSA members on the centrality of Christ to their self-understanding:

Coming to grips with knowing and loving yourself was also mentioned. The battle with assertiveness, self pity, selfishness, pride, self centeredness, was [before joining the community] a problem for many. The respondents have indicated that living in community contributed to their positive handling of these characteristics. One member of Jesus People USA states, "There have been too many good and necessary changes to specify, but I guess you could say I basically grew up."

Another member of Jesus People USA indicated, "Most of us share a sense of urgency, as with most Christians, that brings the desire to share the Gospel with the lost (non-Christians). If we didn't have this common value--I don't think the ministry would last as long as it has or run as smoothly. And who would be so willing to work full time and overtime--receiving no pay--and only getting your basic needs met??!. . . [It takes] Love and forgiveness--true love can forgive--in order to live together in Christian love. It's very hard to do this. Especially in community living--as we all live so close and see so much of each other and become very vulnerable to each other, it requires an openness and honesty with each other that none of us are 'born' with or accustomed to. And we all must be extra willing to try harder to accomplish this in order to have love and forgiveness at the heart of the community."²¹

We remained what we had always been: open to our neighbors and other visitors -- pastors, college students, and even sociologists interested in putting us on their own analytical map. Yet as the eighties progressed, some of the roughest waters lay ahead. Without our knowledge, rich housing developers and advocates for the poor and dispossessed were lining up in preparation for a war which would transform parts of Uptown. It would also further transform us, forcing us to count the cost of following Jesus once again. But on the other hand, how about JPUSA starting a yearly rock festival?

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