Believers Live in Close Community: Chicagoans Experience Gender Equality in Communal Church Living

     Jon and Carol Trott share their car, shampoo and bread with about 500 other people in the inner city of Chicago.

     The Trotts live with the Jesus People USA, a community of believers that tries to live out Luke’s description of the early church’s devotion to God and each other through communal living in Acts 2:44-47.

     This experience of living in close community with other believers has brought Jon and Carol to a unique understanding of the process of discovering and implementing unique abilities in marriage and ministry. As Jon explains, “Each member of a marriage has gifts, just as each member of our community has gifts.”

     This recognition and devotion to gifting enables JPUSA (jah-POO-zah) to reach people in a wide variety of ways. Some people feed the needy, play with children or help clothe homeless people, while others do carpentry, make music or work for Cornerstone Press.

     Local churches such as Uptown Baptist Church and Emmaus House work with JPUSA to offer outdoor concerts and other ministries to the surrounding community. Affiliation with the Evangelical Covenant Church opens the door to other opportunities as well.

     Each member of the JPUSA community spends a majority of their time working with the ministry that they are most gifted in. In fact, the line between ministry and community is so faint that Jon describes the ministries as “JPUSA being expressed in one particular way.”

Daily Living in Community

     Carol works as a case manager at Leland House, a second-stage housing center for homeless women with children. Her daily tasks involve helping other women move forward in their lives as they make the move from various shelters into apartments. Most importantly, she keeps the women accountable to their goals of finding training or jobs, housing and getting back on their feet. Jon edits Cornerstone Magazine and is in charge of its Web site (www.cornerstonemag.com). They are both involved in the struggle for low-income housing in Chicago.

     In addition to these other duties, the Trotts spend Wednesday nights in a homeless shelter, and serve meals to senior citizens a few times a year. On the weekends Jon helps with the dishes, Carol answers phones and they do their family’s laundry together.

     Jon and Carol are happy with the life they have chosen in Chicago. They heard about the Jesus People individually in the 1960s and 1970s and joined the community in the late 1970s. In JPUSA, Jon found what he had looked for in college: “a bunch of imperfect yet transparent people trying to obey Jesus in their daily lives.” Carol discovered a ministry where she could fit in, even as a recently divorced mother of two.

     When people come to JPUSA for help, they are not expected or required to repay it in any way. Carol explains, “We don’t look for repayment because that would be discouraging.” It is encouragement enough to see some people come to know Jesus and change their lives for the better. Jon mentions that some people have received help from JPUSA and “have gone full circle to become fellow workers in Chicago.”

Close Living Requires Shared Responsibilities and Roles

     In the course of daily life, and through the process of building relationships with those in need, the Trotts frequently come across people that hold passionately to a belief in male dominance. Practice has shown Jon and Carol that the best way to reach those people is to model a marriage based on equal partnership.

     The absurdity of universal female submission is apparent in everyday life at JPUSA. In the Trott’s marriage, Carol has a better head for money matters, so she manages their funds. According to Jon, the only benefit to his handling their money would be “to show how macho I am.”

     When asked about the roles of men and women in the church, Jon tells the story of Dawn Herrin (now Mortimer). He describes her in the early days of JPUSA as “by far the oldest and most mature believer in the community.” Her “people first, task second”
philosophy taught Jon the necessity of focusing on individuals and relationships. “Her role in my life as a mentor and friend is a debt I can never hope to repay,” he says. Dawn edited Cornerstone Magazine until 2001.

     It is with mixed emotions that Jon reflects on Dawn’s impact on his life. He doesn’t know “whether to laugh or cry” about people who still believe that women should always submit to men. He believes that women can work in leadership roles in the church and keeps Dawn’s example in mind when he is faced with the contrary assumption.

     In the JPUSA community and church, women are respected as leaders, pastors and teachers. They are also in charge of the JPUSA School and coordinate “the rather unenviable fleet of automobiles we collectively share,” explains Jon. Family, church and other duties are not evenly divided between men and women, though, because it is important that people serve according to their gifts.

     Even though certain roles at JPUSA fit into the traditional mindset, this does not mean that either gender is prohibited from service in any area. Jon notes that, “even in an ‘egalitarian community,’ male/female leadership is not a fifty-fifty proposition.” The workforce at Lakefront Roofing Supply, their main “tent-maker” ministry, is largely male, and childrearing duties fall mostly to the women. Still, many of the men do laundry, wash dishes and change diapers.

     Since 1973, men and women have shared leadership roles in JPUSA. These leaders are careful to give due credit to Scripture, church fathers, current theologians, and personal leadings from God, in declining order. They recognize that sin caused a male-dominant hierarchy to form over the creation of men and women as equal partners in a perfect world.

     The ray of hope, Jon says, is that “through Christ, the domination of sin has been monumentally affected.” As believers we are no longer bound by sin and are free to submit one to the other. Carol offers the reminder that “all people are equal in the eyes of God.”

     She didn’t always see a problem with male dominance in marriage. She used to believe that it was the man’s job to make final decisions in a relationship, as long as he wasn’t leading the woman into sin. She and Jon are learning to live out their egalitarian views in the everyday decisions of their lives, but they know that, as Carol confesses, “This will be a life-long lesson.”

By Elsa Petersen