San Francisco and the Jesus People – IV

David Hoyt and I shared a room on the second floor of the Anchor Rescue Mission. On many evenings I’d help prepare the meal for the people at the mission. Other days and evenings I’d travel with David to gather with other young people for worship, witnessing, and fellowship. Sometimes we attended churches, sometimes we met in homes.

What struck me was that everyone participated in these gatherings, it wasn’t just a one-man show by the preacher. My thinking was revolutionized by this – people where sharing their thoughts, praying for each other, telling others about Jesus, caring for each other – and they were excited and serious and compassionate. I remember writing a letter to a pastor friend back in Maryland about it all, I was in awe – this was church! This was Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, and Ephesians 4; this was a functioning body of believers. Not long after San Francisco I would experience something similar in the early stages of the Charismatic Movement, and I may share about that in the future.

There have been similar renewal movements in church history, movements which have a functioning body of believers as a hallmark. The Pietistic renewal in Germany is one of my favorite models; it had home groups and social action centered in Jesus Christ. Church-life as a functioning body has also been one of the strengths of the persecuted church in China. The beauty of the Jesus People was that it was not orchestrated by man and that Jesus was the focal point of the movement. In the early days of the movement you could truly say that “church is not an organization, it is an organism.”

A friend recently pointed out to me that there were some heresies in thought and practice that came out of the Jesus People. As I thought about that it occurred to me that that has always been the case with renewal – if you have life you’re going to have counterfeit, excess, people doing stupid things, and yes, there will even be the working of the enemy. And then it occurred to me to just look at the New Testament, virtually the entire NT was written to correct heresy, stupid thinking, sin, and the work of the enemy. My point is that it isn’t likely we are going to do any better than the Apostles – not to be negative here, but I think that if the churches they founded had problems and false teaching grew from them, well then, perhaps we can be a bit charitable to one another and also realize in our own ministries that “we ain’t God.”

One evening I happened to be looking in David Hoyt’s Bible and saw that he had drawn artwork on its pages, along the margins. “Why do you have all this artwork?” I asked.

“Well, the Bible is my home and people put artwork in their home.”

I’ve never forgotten his response.

David’s enthusiasm and commitment to Jesus were inspirations to me. If you read about David you’ll find that he became involved in probably the ugliest cult contemporaneous with the Jesus People, The Children of God. I first read about David’s move to the cult in the magazine Christianity Today around 1973. The article also said that he had moved to Atlanta. The next day I drove to Atlanta to see him – but he had left the country and I don’t think returned for a number of years – after leaving the cult. Some of this you can find on the Web, and I guess if his book comes out he’ll deal with it as he sees fit. It was certainly a painful time for him.

Cult or no cult David Hoyt was an example to me and the Jesus People gave me a glimpse of what church-life could look like. The fact that David left the cult is a testimony to the grace and faithfulness of God – our God is a covenant-keeping God and the work He begins in us He fully intends to complete.

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. Phil. 1:6