Posted by on March 24, 2005 at 23:38:55
In Reply to: Splinter groups posted by Niek0 on March 17, 2005 at 20:26:42:
Hi, Nieko! How's it going?
From my limited resdearch, the Jesus People actually preceded Berg's invention at Huntington Beach in 1968. And none of them were already molesting their daughter, and so forth, with the tacit approval of his mousy and cowardly little wifey, as Berg did.
See:
http://jesuspeoplemovement.com/research-1.html
http://jesuspeoplemovement.com/research-2.html
http://jesuspeoplemovement.com/research-3.html
http://jesuspeoplemovement.com/research-4.html
also:
http://one-way.org/jesusmovement/index.html
Right after I left TF in '74 in Spokane, Washington, and traveled to my wife's hometown, Eugene, Oregon, I ran into an offshoot of Clavary Chapel's ministry, called Shiloh Youth Revival Centers. My wife and I were baptized there, and found the fellowship to be what we thought we had at first found in TF.
A friend named Bob was one of the people I met, and was my contemporary/cohort, as were so many other members of Shiloh--see his current webpage at http://www.calvarychapel.org/northphoenix/Our_Staff/Pastor_Bob/pastor_bob.htm.
See also http://www.shilohyrc.com/AddressBook/Ministries/tabid/114/Default.aspx, for other current ministries which grew up from the early Jesus People Movement/Clavary Chapel of Costa mesa, CA/Shiloh YRC, which PRECEDED Berg's abomination by at least a year.
Berg DID NOT begin the Jesus "revolution", so-called; he offered an already-demonized bastardization of it, "speaking perverse things to draw disciples away after [himself]."
See also:
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/agapecyber/, for more about the early movement,
There were also other groups like Gospel Outreach (see http://www.goalumni.homestead.com/), http://www.verbo.org/site/index.htm,
http://www.jesus.org.uk/nccc/links_index.shtml,
http://www.geocities.com/bprice1949/nolli-eng.html, as well as
http://www.jpusa.org/jpusa/meet.htm and
http://www.cornerstonemag.com/.
And, finally (like I said, in my limited research), here's an interesting link to check out about something called Christian cohousing--much more do-able and common sense than the unfortunate "hippier than thou" aspect of all too many Christian communes--you just cannot get away from that old human nature--selfishness, self-agrandizement, and sin. But there are good things to be found as well.
A lot of these people did far better than most of COG/TF/FI members, though, in their attempts to mimic first century Christians. They neglected top note that jews from all over the world came to Jerusalem for the Feast of tabernacles, stayed another fifty days for the Day of Pentecost, lived together for maybe a couple of months in their early disclipleship, and then went home, to live as Paul advised them to in 1st and 2nd thessalonians, in their own houses. See Acts Chapter 28 about the warnoings about wolvws from without and within the church.
Walter Martin, a foremost authority on the cults in America and around the world, said that Christian communes hardly ever work.
Be that as it may, the so-called Jesus movement ended around the mid seventies--the hippy counterculture even earlier. People married, had children, and lived their lives, with some of them continuing in the ministry as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, while ethe rest of us learned to "do the work of the ministry" in many various, legitimate, qand fruitful ministries that lasted.
I've had that experience in The Vineyard since the mid-seventies. My wife and I are being certified as coster parents through the Central vineyard here in Houston (see http://www.houstonvineyard.org/).
Tel us what you think of the links, Nieko. I would be very interested in your opinion.
'Bye for now!
God bless all!
In Christ,
OldtimerToo.