Jesus People USA is a Christian community in Chicago. We operate both as an intentional Christian community and as a worshipping church (not all members of our congregation live as full-time members of the community). We began as an independent ministry in 1972, and in 1989 we joined the Chicago-based Evangelical Covenant Church. We number about 500 people who live together at a single address on Chicago's North Side. We hold our goods and property in a common fund, looking to the model of Christian community depicted in New Testament (Acts 2:44-47, 4:32-35). Living communally and pooling our resources in this way has enabled us to minister to one another and those outside the community in ways that might not have been otherwise possible. This, of course, does not mean we believe God wants everybody to live in this way, or blesses us in some special way because we do. We have been privileged to function as a resource to the church, a haven for people in need, a learning experience for many whose journey has taken them in our doors and out to serve elsewhere.

The community is primarily self-supporting, generating about 90% of our income from a variety of community-owned and operated businesses. These include a roofing supply house, t-shirt printers, and a sheet metal shop.

The outreach of the community is both local and national, even global. Cornerstone magazine, which began as a typewritten tabloid hand-out during the early Seventies, is now a quarterly journal of culture, politics and faith. Since 1984, Cornerstone Festival has featured the priorities and emphases of the magazine and community in an annual music and arts festival held in Central Illinois, drawing now an average of 20,000 people from around the world. The other music ministries of JPUSA (pronounced "jah-POO-zah") began with the community in 1972 in the pioneer Christian rock group, Resurrection Band, and continue today in a variety of musical expressions. Our record company, GrrrrecordS, distributes these music ministries around the world.

Locally, the JPUSA community maintains a presence in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago's North Side in our women's and children's shelter, Cornerstone Community Outreach; a senior citizens' home called "Friendly Towers"; and in our neighborhood outreach to school kids called "Brothas and Sistas United."

An often printed hand-out about JPUSA was called, "Meet Our Family," in which we explained,

Jesus People USA never started out to be a Christian community; our roots were in the early Jesus movement of the late sixties and the early seventies. When Jesus called, many of us were social rejects in search of something worth living for. You might say community living simply evolved as the practical expression of Christianity in our everyday lives, the working out of agape love.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in The Cost of Discipleship that Christianity without discipleship is Christianity without Christ. "Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship." When we talk about community living we are essentially talking about discipleship. This is not to say that to be a disciple you must live in a community situation. You can have discipleship without community, but you cannot have community without discipleship.

A Christian community is really what the Book of Acts talks about. The early Christians simply practiced Jesus' teachings. The Bible says, "He who has two coats let him share with him who has none." (Luke 3:11). It is taking this principle and applying it to every facet of your life. James wrote that if a man comes to you and you send him away with empty blessings you profit neither him nor yourself (James 2:15-16).

After more than twenty-five years together, Jesus People USA has gone through many changes -- structurally, in membership, in the kinds of ministries we've been involved with, and as individuals. We've learned much, seen much, made friends, made enemies, lived a good deal of our life together in a public way, and lived even more ordinary personal history, collectively and individually -- marriages, births, deaths, spiritual growth, spiritual disasters, seen our businesses succeed and fail, experienced easy times and hard times, long stretches of communal and individual routine and also transition. Through it all, God has not changed. And while we seek to mature together and as individuals, we also strive to keep alive that simple "first love" and the daring vision and openness to new things that launched us on such an adventure.

Indeed, throughout the history of the community, JPUSA's approach to new media and technologies has been one of prayerful openness and experimentation, seeking to find room under the Lordship of Christ for all manner of human creativity and expression. We are particularly excited about the possibilities suggested by the World Wide Web. And while as Christians we value "face to face" communication most of all, we sense a powerful kinship between particular features of community living to what has already been identified as "community" online. The simultaneity of hypertext suggests a hitherto unknown possibility for communicating the wholeness of the Gospel and the diversity of the Kingdom of God. The still-developing Cornerstone Online brings the vision of JPUSA and both Cornerstone magazine to festival into cyberspace.

The "Y2K" has been seen by many, including many Christians, as the veritable End of the World -- a world, one might add, which already seems in many ways "post-apocalyptic". And yet we at JPUSA desire to greet the next millennium without undo clinging to the past nor undue fear of the future. Our hopes in time are fixed at the eternal Ground Zero at which those two thousand years of counting began. And while that "Jesus Movement" which was launched with the birth of God in the flesh must carry on into whatever distance in space and time God allows, and while we seek to follow Christ in incarnating his Word in whatever culture we find ourselves, we do so breathing that expression of the Early Church, the one popularized by a more recent "Jesus People movement," and one we feel honored to join our voice with all the voices of church history by uttering now in this new electronic media: "Maranatha," or "Come quickly, Lord Jesus."

JPUSA and Cornerstone Online

The Jesus People USA Web Site functions both an introduction to the mission and history of our community, but also as a gateway to a family of web sites connected to the various ongoing ministries of JPUSA.

The JPUSA site is divided into three major sections, with subsection pages under each main heading, and links beyond.

WHO ARE WE? is about the mission and history of Jesus People USA, divided into the following subsections:

  • Meet Our Family, a brief introduction to JPUSA and the site
  • "Life's Lessons," a longer multi-part history of Jesus People USA, most of which first appeared in Cornerstone print magazine
  • Community Documents, including our Statement of Faith, Covenant, Term Commitments, and Transition Documents.
  • A list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), which we add to occasionally as visitors to the site come up with new questions.

MINISTRIES is an index of pages devoted to the outreaches, businesses, and services offered by JPUSA.

OPPORTUNITIES offers you a chance to participate in the ministry and/or community life of JPUSA in the following ways:

  • Visit/Volunteer JPUSA is for those interested in volunteering with one of the community's outreaches, or simply visiting the community.
  • Youth Group Program tells how your group can participate in an exiting alternative-inner city mission project at JPUSA.
  • Financial Support is a page for those interested in making a financial contribution to JPUSA and/or its individual ministries.
  • Internet Products/Services is a catalog of JPUSA products available to purchase online, from Cornerstone Festival tickets and books from Cornerstone Press, to music from GrrrrecordS and handcrafted items imported by Concerned Crafts. In the months to come we hope to have our own fully secure site available to facilitate purchases with credit card online. In the meantime, items may be purchased over the telephone, or orders may be sent via regular mail.

Obviously, Jesus People USA has been organically connected to Cornerstone magazine and Cornerstone Festival from the beginning. With Cornerstone Online, we hope to make those links just that, "links," and so take advantage of the unique features of Web communication to network theory with practice, ideas with people, and the community with its various outreaches.

Another feature we hope to get going very soon at the site is a JPUSA Calendar, a regular schedule of community events, including church services, to which all are invited.