Sometimes we resist traditions outside our own branch of the Christian faith, and do so for reasons we don’t totally comprehend ourselves. Today I received in my email a post from Vic Williams, one of our Jesus People USA pastors, about just such a tradition: Ash Wednesday. Today, in case anyone hadn’t noticed… JPUSA is having an Ash Wednesday service […]

C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters offer up one side of a “correspondence” between two tempters from hell, one (whom we never actually hear from) being the Junior Tempter and the other (his “uncle” with all the creepiest meanings of that word) being the first’s tutor. Below is a short tutorial the elder demon Screwtape offers regarding the proper use of […]

I, along with other people I’ve been talking with about it, have been reading the book of Revelation (at the end of the Bible). Are these really the ‘end times?’ Is Jesus really coming back, soon? It is a wonderful thing to have a healthy, reverent fear of the living God!! Come on, either God is real, or He’s not. […]

“Consider, oh God, that we are without understanding of ourselves; that we do not know what we would have and set ourselves at an infinite distance from our desires.” – St. Teresa of Avila What do we want? Not, as is often done, asking this about a passing bodily appetite of one kind or another… but what do we want? […]

Up late at night, perusing face book and then a feminist web site and then, these thoughts of my own… I’ve yet again been reading about 2nd Wave Feminism and its (usually) anti-porn stance vs the 3rd Wavers’ usually pro-porn stance. One phrase from Naomi Wolfe (a third-waver with second wave sensibilities) stopped me in my tracks: “Porn is the […]

Jesus People USA is a community… and a ministry. We live together so that we can minister more effectively, yet our lives together are about more than ministry. Sometimes, I’m nervous when people talk about our shared lives as if we do this only for pragmatic reasons. There is more than pragmatism involved for me. I find community to be […]

Marie James, long-time friend of JPUSA; member Jane Hertenstein would later write a book about Marie’s life called Orphan Girl. Photo copyright 2011 Jesus People USA. All rights reserved. It’s 3:30 p.m., time to prepare for dinner. Some of the brothers are getting the food and the utensils together. Others are setting the tables or separating plates, readying them to […]

[Historical note to this 1979 article: It details JPUSA surviving the infamous Chicago blizzard of ’79 and using it as a witnessing opportunity, and it also details our purchase of the 4707 N. Malden building (JPUSA was at this time living at 4431-33 North Paulina Street in a converted six flat).] JPUSA WINTER At first it was simply a lot […]

  In 1978, when Jesus People USA first moved into Chicago’s Uptown after a few years in the Ravenswood community, I was one of the “single brothers” picked to move into our new 4707 N. Malden digs. Only a few months after the move, three of us were playing cards on a hot summer night. Suddenly, we heard the unmistakable […]

Today, our twenty-fourth anniversary, I share just a few of the things my Carol Elaine Durkin Trott is to me. Teacher, Teacher I jump out of my skin When you touch me with your existence I cannot learn enough about you And the brilliant gold Of you, completely real, real. History happens, Regardless of philosophy or books Events progress inevitably […]