My Early Story (29)

 

San Francisco and the Jesus People – One

 

A while back I was talking with a parishioner and mentioned the Jesus People, he didn’t have a clue to what I was referring. If you don’t either I’d suggest you Google “San Francisco Jesus People” and get some background. If you do read about the Jesus People in San Francisco (and elsewhere) chances are the names David Hoyt and Kent Philpott will come up.

 

Much like Miguel Diaz and George Will, David and Kent had an early influence on me. Around 2010 I chatted with Kent on the phone after some email exchanges, and later I had a snail mail (yes – they still do happen!) exchange with David Hoyt – in both cases it had been over 40 years since I had contact with them. David has recently published a book on the Jesus People.

 

If you do Google about the Jesus People, you’ll find more info about David and Kent than I could share on a blog, but I do want to share about my time with them, especially David, and about my time with other great people in San Francisco.

 

I suppose you could say that I had three spheres of relationships in San Francisco, the Jesus People, the black church community, and the hippie/revolutionary movement. Yep – no typos here. For a time I lived in Haight-Asbury (and again, if you don’t know about Haight-Asbury and the hippie movement go ahead and look it up). I also lived with David Hoyt at the Anchor Rescue Mission.

 

Now I need to adopt something here that I am a bit uncomfortable with, but I see no way around it – other than David and Kent I’m going to have to supply names for people whose names I can’t remember. If I do remember an actual name I’ll point that out, otherwise I’m afraid that I’ll be supplying names as I go along – I think you’d get tired of reading about “Mrs. so-and-so whose name I can’t remember.” Fair enough? Thanks.

 

The Spanish-speaking community of New York City taught me hospitality, a love for missions, and a love for those in need. The Jesus People introduced me to the functioning Body of Christ. Up until my encounter with The Jesus People my paradigm of church was traditional, the preacher/pastor did the work and everyone else basically watched. My idea of “ministry” was individualistic, ministry centered on the preacher/pastor, and these preacher/pastors were focused on developing their ministries – as opposed to developing people.

 

By this time I had probably read Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Church Life, now I think republished under another title, but I must not have understood it. Nor must I have understood Bonheoffer's discussion of community in The Cost of Discipleship. What we see is so much more powerful than what we read – I guess I needed to “see” a functioning body before I could relate to writings about a functioning body.

 

If you’ve never seen a VW microbus with Jesus- People art painted all over it, rolling down the highway with the driver and inhabitants singing Jesus songs, you’ve missed a sweet part of both Americana and church history. Some folks might want to celebrate Woodstock, I’ll celebrate The Jesus People. Come to think of it, that’s not a bad testimony – to have people call you “Jesus People.”

 

“…and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.”      Acts 11:26