Jesus Movement Documentary: Embracing True Community

This video explores how parents adapt to their children joining a radical Christian lifestyle.

Members discuss managing disagreements and finances within the community.

Leaders share their experiences with finances and avoiding abuses.

The video also covers the process of becoming a community member, including selling personal belongings.

This video is a continuation of Life in a Christian Community, Part 1. In the first video, we learned something about the beliefs of this unique international network of Christian communities. No one in the communities works for money. They have chosen rather to spend several hours a day preaching their good news. Good news about a world where God pays the bills, while they just concentrate on serving Him and loving others. In the first video, members spoke candidly about things they liked most and things they liked least about such a lifestyle. They presented a long list of ways that God provides for their needs. They also shared openly about various activities that make up their daily routine. In this video, we will look at how parents in particular have reacted to their grown offspring adopting such a radical lifestyle. Women, married couples and parents with children will comment on how they have managed to fit into a monastic lifestyle that has traditionally been reserved for single men. Members will tell how they deal with disagreements, both between themselves and with their leaders. Leaders will share even more candidly about finances and how they avoid abuses. They will describe how one becomes a member of such a community. This includes the shocking practice of selling everything one owns and then donating the proceeds to the community. These resources are then shared equally with the membership and with others outside the community. Members from around the world will also give testimonies about extreme survival on the streets and what they usually refer to as faith outreaches. By contrast, they will also demonstrate how they literally fill shopping carts full of perfectly good food without paying a cent. But first, let us hear about some of the things that most surprised new members when they first started living in such a community. Something that had surprised me and didn't expect was the normality of the group. I thought it was going to be like bizarre, like robe wearing kind of thing, but it wasn't. Everybody's just normal. I was expecting like sleeping on the ground or not having much of things. And what I came to was, you know, an RV. Well, the one thing that surprised me was when there was a lot, when I came, there was people here like, you know, like brothers and sisters showing love to one another. I thought a lot of people here were going to be all elderly and just really old, but it was pretty much the opposite. Even the old people that I've met in the community, they have quite a young spirit about them. I was, more than anything, God can provide, God can do everything. and seeing it in action, I believe that that was the most surprised that I was. The biggest surprise that I've had is that the level or the lifestyle that you live and living by faith and working for God is not as poor as you would think. I was surprised that I'd have to actually watch what I eat more carefully so that I don't overeat because there's so much. how everybody shared everything in unison. Even if it's a candy bar, they cut it in four pieces. I was more or less an atheist. So when I discovered these teachings of Jesus, I was like, hey, this is cool. This is how Christians live. And then when I came on board, and there were just a few people, and we were going out on the streets and meeting with other people who were claiming to be Christians, and yet they weren't living this way, I found that to be quite shocking. I definitely felt surprised by a lot of the teachings of Jesus, that I'm not actually as good a person as I thought I was. I thought it was difficult to break the ice with a person and talk to Jesus' message. I imagined it was difficult and it was really easy to do. It wasn't as I imagined it. It was a little easier. I liked that a lot. I found that people were thoroughly unreligious. here were people who were talking about really important spiritual truths but in a really down to earth sincere way this was a fantastic breath of fresh air i was basically thinking of becoming a monk so i thought it was going to be really hard first week into the community a brother got some uh bacon or ham and i thought oh wow we we eat stuff like that i thought it's like going to be two minute noodles for the rest of my life. While you're in the process of trying to decide to give your life over to God, there's all of this noise and confusion going on in your mind. But when I finally made that decision, the incredible sense of lightness I felt was just unreal. It's exactly what Jesus promises. He says his burden is easy and light, and it really is true. I immediately got to know God's generosity on a daily basis and it was a fantastic and surprising experience We had a competition, a running competition I was quite surprised about myself because before, in my old life, I didn't run that much but then suddenly it was fun Something that actually surprised me a lot about this community was that we worked out every single morning together and how we were building the body, not just the mind and soul and spirit. What I surprised most was to see the effectiveness of the discipline, of the organization. How it makes a lot of people live in the same space and live in harmony. That was one of the things that impacted me most, to see how it results. resulta. When I started, it was the method of solving disagreements, of dealing with the problem and not letting it go. I was surprised how important it is and how it works in general. Resolving disagreements. Hmm. That is one of the simplest concepts that the group has, And yet it is one of the most profound. They say that it has been fundamental to their success over the 45 years that they have been in existence. Yeah, like Jesus said, he gave us some good teachings for how to deal with tensions. There are disagreements and tensions that come up from day to day, not always, but that's why Jesus set up the grievance system or the resolution conflict system in Matthew 18. If we use the grievance system like we're supposed to and go to that person and talk to them, the problems will be settled in and they won't be on lasting. If you can't do that at the first stage, you'll bring in one or two witnesses who come and help to mediate and try and help to resolve the conflict or the disagreement. And if they don't listen, you bring in the whole community. And if the rest of the church feels that someone in particular has a fault and they're not accepting it, then that person basically gets asked to leave. Usually we can resolve most issues before that. I always find that at the end of one of those meetings that we have, those grievance meetings or those resolution meetings, trying to resolve those tensions, that at the end of it all, we have greater unity than we had even before. Before I joined the community I would often ignore issues like that or just get worked up inside and not actually express how I felt. Whereas in the community we try and encourage each other to express how we feel. We won't actually hear the disagreements so that we can work through the issues to find some kind of resolution. In my past life I really struggled giving criticism and I struggled receiving criticism and I felt that it wasn't loving to do so. But it's actually the most loving thing to challenge and criticize one another. And I can see within myself how much I've grown from receiving and giving criticism. Living in a community doesn't mean it's going to be, you know, a utopia type lifestyle. But the difference I feel is that we deal with those issues, and that's something that I never found anywhere else. because they are really easy to solve when they are made in love. Pretty much everything starts out as something small, and it's when we leave them to fester is when the issues get bigger. But since all issues are taken care of immediately, you know, right when it starts, there's really not much tension that comes from it. The grievance system may work well within the community, but things have not always been as smooth with relatives outside the community. Members shared candidly about how things went with their biological families when they announced their intentions to drop out of the daily grind and live as itinerant preachers My mom freaked out. I guess she thinks it's like a horrendous atrocity to not have any money. In particular, my dad was annoyed. He told me, but in the end, you love more to God than to us. And I said, yes. I think the hardest thing was leaving my family. We had a very close relationship, and it was particularly hard, I think, for my mother. But I knew this is what God was calling me to do, so I just trusted that God would work it all out in the end. At the moment I started living by faith, to them it was like, It's like a cult or something not so good. good. My family's connection has been from, it would seem deep to cordial. And that's simply because they really don't have an interest in who Christ is. The hardest thing for me would have to be forsaking what Jesus talked about in Luke 14, verse 26, forsaking my family. My family is very wealthy and they do not approve of what I do at all because their God is not really the God that I worship. and they do not approve what I've done. At first, it was not good. My parents, they thought I was doing this weird stuff. They thought you must be in a working job in a system. Quitting working for the system, it made them think I'm doing some weird stuff and all that. My father was a high church Anglican minister, so he was and still is heavily invested in the church and I think my understanding of what Jesus teaches and what it means to be a Christian was particularly challenging for him. At the time they thought I was being brainwashed and they were very suspicious so yeah that was quite difficult. My family were very kind in pouring in a lot of time and money into my education and I think they had ideas that I was going to be quite successful, quite wealthy. Basically becoming a nobody and living really simply with people that I didn't know before was quite a difficult, an alien concept for my family to wrap their heads around. They wanted that I should have a mental checkup with the psychiatrist. psychiatrists told me that told them that my mental facilities are okay. Initially they were violently opposed to me forsaking all. I think in particular they were looking through financial perspective and that I had a number of seeming epic economic opportunities to climb the material ladder and I left those behind to work for love and they went to extreme measures to stop that, including trying to kill someone that they felt was responsible. When I was going to follow Jesus, there was a lot of opposition from my biological father. because he seemed crazy, he was wasting my life, he didn't have a safe future, and things like that. He was strong words, threatening words to me. The hardest thing for me when I first started was when I pursued my family. Since I'm pretty new at this, they're still in shock. You know, that I did leave everything, that I did leave school. There has been a separation due to their belief that following and obeying Jesus is not a call for every Christian. Not all members reported such negative reactions, however. I was actually a very bad kid, very disobedient to my parents. I was able to apologize for the way I mistreated them, and they've accepted my apology. And so I feel like we've gotten a lot more closer than what we originally were. my relationship with my biological family has actually become a lot better when I started practicing the teachings of Jesus like judging and examining myself and I had more appreciation for my parents and I let them know that as well I had a lot of problems and those problems impacted my family you know emotionally sometimes physically so I think over the years I've grown become more of an adult, more mature, and I think that has impacted the relationship with my family for the better. My father mostly and my mother are both Catholics and I think they have accepted more the spiritual side of it. They've made several visits over the years and I visited them and we've run good contact via email and phone. Luckily my mother is being very supportive. They understand the desire to travel and live in a van. My mother probably respects it the most because she's a Catholic and she kind of sees me like a monk. I think I've grown to respect my parents more than what I did. They've always respected me to make my own decisions, so they're quite happy to support me. and I started to value them more as people and also the work they did when they were born. They were born not with Christian principles but they did good things and after being a Christian they could realize the advice they gave me and the things they gave me in the past. They are happy with what I'm doing here, they are excited to see my growth And they want me to keep doing this. And I really actually thank my family for making this such an easy transition. But even those members who faced strong opposition at the start have reported encouraging improvements in relations over time. There's still a little bit of growing to do, but I think overall it's been better. And it's caused my family members to address their problems, as well as me address mine, and both of us work towards a solution together. Initially, my relationship with my biological family, after I started living by faith, it was not that good, but after a few weeks, I learned that I was the person who had to change in order to make our relationship better and more loving. I wanted to respect a little bit more, and I wanted to reach agreements, I tried not to discuss, I feel that God really helped me to change, and therefore, the relationship changed for good, let's say. They actually told me that it's strengthened their faith, because now they see that God actually does take care of people that dedicate themselves to Him. They do see that I am acting out of conviction, and I hope that they see that that's what a man or a person of God needs to do. With time, they came to understand that it was all about serving God and working for God. And so far, yeah, they are there for it now. Relationships with my family have dramatically improved. my mother actually acknowledged that I had found my spiritual home. And I think that's really a sign, at least, that they have taken some steps towards accepting my decision. My family have really opened up their hearts and their homes to myself and my brothers and sisters in the community. My relationship with my family, with my biological family is quite improved. My relationship with my father is stable. At least we communicate and sometimes when we see us. We share one thing in common these days and it's our love for each other. I really want to show them I love them through this because God's love is perfect love. For many, the Christian community they have joined has become a new spiritual family. Before a few, married couples and parents with children, biological families and spiritual families overlap. They have a special appreciation for how life in the teachings of Jesus community can work out for members who have the responsibilities of a spouse and or children. I was born and raised in this community, so I have them there. But I have gone through the process of seeing my siblings turn against God. So that's been a bit hard. But at the same time, I've been blessed to even have my parents doing and supporting what I do. Being born into a community like this does not guarantee anything spiritually. Everyone needs to make a choice for themselves. Three of our children have turned against what we are doing. And as a consequence, we were pretty much denied contact with our grandchildren as they were growing up. That was very painful. We make it a priority that married couples work on their relationship and not allow work, basically, to get in the way of their relationship. And if a couple has children, then maintaining unity in the family is a high priority. A married couple need privacy. A married couple with children have different needs to a married couple that does not have children. So there are different practical needs that people have that need to be taken into consideration. As a single person, I did a lot of traveling that as a married person I no longer do. Being single and being married have both its advantages and disadvantages. However scripturally and I think it is quite true that being single I was able to focus a lot more of my attention on my relationship with God I feel that having children it limits me to certain things And being alone, I feel that it's a benefit if I don't have a greater responsibility. As a community, we do teach that it is better to remain single. Jesus and Paul both teach that, and there are lots of reasons for that. Being married is a bit like having a little micro-community within a bigger community, and there are different needs within a marriage. And I suppose one of the challenges is around juggling those different needs, making sure your marriage needs are being met, getting your kind of personal prayer time and personal time with God, in addition to the marital needs and in addition to the community needs. as families and all the mistakes we have had we always have solved with more patience, more humildad, which is what we teach and we have seen in the community. And in terms of living as a marriage, first they give that space for that as a family, and that helps to marriage. One of the things that I also liked to live in community is that children are disciplined according to Jesus's teachings, with love, and they respect their opinions. There's a lot more privacy issues and just a number of things that you have to be more responsible for when you're married. It's not easy being married and being in the community, especially in the first one or two years of your newly married life. with respect to children, sometimes the homeless take the last place and decide to help us. My children particularly feel that there is an incredible improvement. We have certain rules with them, how to discipline them, and I agree with them. In the community the discipline is very important and with the children it is carried out very well. I feel happiness in them, so that I am so happy that God has allowed me to work for him, with brothers in faith, and that at the same time my children are there too, and that they share that, so I see it very well and very positive. the married people, how we feel, we have been meeting so much, we have many problems of pride, I don't know, soberbias, things like that, it's a lot of things with my wife, we have many inconveniences with that, my relationship with my wife has improved a lot. Although most people reported that living conditions such as food, comfort, that sort of thing, were better than what they had expected, it has not always been like that. In keeping with two accounts in the Gospels where Jesus sent his disciples out on the road in pairs, these communities all experiment with what they call survival or faith outreaches when they are literally homeless and defenseless against the elements. Jesus sent his disciples two by two without anything and just said, preach the Gospel and everything will be provided for you. We do that from time and time, and that's definitely very interesting because there's a lot of lessons learned in that. Me and my brothers and sisters try and actually take what Jesus said in Matthew 10 and Luke 10 seriously and walk away from the usual living space and see where God leads us. I was out on a faith outreach, and I was worrying about, will I be warm enough? halfway through the night I woke up and had to start taking the extra clothes I had on off. God had provided so many jumpers and miracle duvets from all kinds of places so praise God and don't worry about your food and clothing. It wasn't like you're forced to do that. We chose to do it because we believe that experiments where you don't use money are good ways to build your faith in God. It's not that you're going to be on the street, but in my personal experience, I've been on the street and it's not as bad as they often look at it, which is the worst thing in the world to sleep on the street or to be on the street. If one is with God, it can be even the best in the world if you're on the street, but you're with God. We went door to door and preached, and we ended up sleeping outside one night. And it was really cold that day, so we cuddled up together. But I felt like I grew the most in that night. So even in tough situations, it seems that it always works out for the better. I went to a faith experiment. We walked five kilometers. We ate a little, but it was necessary. Then we found a lot more things, even it left us full, and although food was little, it was rich, like meat or pizza, some chocolates or some cookies. us sometimes god might show you uh miraculous ways that he cares uh and sometimes he's trying to teach you something i would say that the roughest times is when he's trying to teach you something he's trying to smash your prod and uh i've had i've had a rough a faith outreach where you know just sleeping on cardboard and eating some pizza i was kind of cold the most interesting thing I've done is where you leave the comforts of the RV or maybe the apartment or the house or wherever we happen to be living at the time. And during that time, we also didn't use any money to challenge our dependency on money. And it was pretty amazing. A friend of mine and I, we did it for two months. The most interesting thing I've done, I would say, would be about a Six-week faith outreach. We went from California to Oregon. We slept out in the woods and slept out on trains, and people invited us into the house. It was a really, really, really good time. A lot of good memories. Very challenging at points, but yeah, definitely, I think that's probably one of the most interesting things I've done. I think I've done two faith outreaches. they were very special experiences and times I felt particularly close to God. I remember it being pretty cold and we found a shelter. There were open sides and it started raining quite heavily. We were really cold. The rain was coming in. We knew we were going to be there all night. But then that night actually ended up being one of the greatest blessings since I've been living by faith because a stranger came by offering us blankets and rugs, a backpack of clothes, hot soup and hot drinks. People seem to be coming by during the night and just, yeah, bringing us provision. So that was really special. We provided us precisely what we needed. It was very motivating and I was very happy with it. up night just as we were getting dropped off so we thought we'll keep the knife and then a little while later that same day we found a dead koala bear and so we cooked up cooked up the koala bear and didn't taste that great but it was one of the most interesting things I think. We put ourselves in a situation where we cannot depend on the regular ways that we use for witnessing and so that sparks all manner of creativity of thinking of how to evangelize how to share Jesus's message in a different way to what we're used to. One time we went out and we felt led to sing to people we wrote down a few songs that we knew the lyrics to off by heart and would present this list of songs to people and they could choose a song and we would sing that for them so we were able to get in some good teaching and a good message to people at the same time in a not so confrontational kind of way. Llevé el mensaje de Jesús a la persona y no me faltó absolutamente nada y regresé. Así que eso fue muy importante. There is one way of getting free food in most western countries that is considered so easy that it is often banned on faith outreaches. If faith outreaches are times of self-denial, this other experience has proven to be the opposite extreme. It involves recycling tons of perfectly good food that would normally go to waste. The most interesting thing I've done since living like this is bin reading. It's getting food from the bins that people throw out. One of the things we do is often recycle food. People throw it out, we come along and pick it up, and usually it's in a pretty good state. Well, my basic needs are mainly food and clothing, and to be honest, most of that is met through going to the back of supermarkets where we look in their dumpsters and we find lots and lots of discarded food and sometimes even clothing I remember praying for shoes that would fit me because the ones I had were a bit tight And then the next morning, a brother walked up to me with a pair of boots that he said he found in a bin, and they fit perfectly. That was a real blessing. I used to work in a grocery store, and I knew how much stuff we threw away that was still very good. We've been able to make really good meals out of it still. It just shows how greedy this world is by just throwing everything away and how wasteful we truly are. Like a whole bunch of meat, donuts. I can't even explain how much stuff that we get just on that alone. I just could not believe the quantity and quality of food that was thrown out. In this one small supermarket affiliated to a little petrol station, there were like bags and bags of amazing items. There were cans of beer, there were steaks, there were yogurts, bread, vegetables, fruit, you name it, just being thrown out. So learning how to reuse and recycle food that was destined for landfill was quite a surprising but inspiring new development in how I adjusted to living by faith. You simply would not believe what has been thrown out. Everything from lobsters flown in from Canada that day to bottles of champagne, smoked salmon, the finest chocolates, you would not believe it. But that now is shrinking as more and more bins are being locked. Before ending this video, I felt it was necessary and in the best interests of the public to let some of the leaders of this movement respond in more detail about how they avoid abuses in particular, how they overcome corruption in relation to finances. I started by asking them to clarify the requirements for membership. The basic requirement for anyone to join one of the Christian communities is to forsake everything they have, just as Jesus commanded. That's what Jesus said in Luke 14, 33. Well, forsaking all means a lot more than just forsaking immaterial possessions. Living by faith and living in communities is actually very rewarding, but it's not easy. If you come expecting things are going to be all fun and happy-chappy, you're definitely going to be disappointed. What we need is a commitment to give our entire lives over to Jesus. in good times and bad times. Because the reality is that living by faith is hard work. It's a day-to-day, day in, day out, smashing your pride, learning to be a servant, accepting rejection from society, and just basically being willing to be a nobody who faithfully serves God and others without much recognition. So it's very important to count the cost before giving up all your material wealth and wanting to join the movement. If you decide after even a day of forsaking all that you no longer want to live in this community, then your things will not be returned to you. That's why we want people to take their time to get to know us and to experience this way of life before they decide to forsake all with us. Although the community does give people the option of giving the proceeds of their forsake or sale to a charity of their choice, we know that within the community everybody has a commitment to not taking a wage. And the practical result of that is that when we do have resources, they really can go towards the real needs. As a group we will decide on how to use those resources to do some kind of charitable project for non-members or to help out with the needs that the local team has like doing a print run of literature or for doing some other kind of evangelistic project. It doesn't help us to have someone forsake all and then leave the community penniless. Now, fortunately, so far, no one has ever left and then later complained that they had been ripped off. And that's quite surprising because some people who have left have been pretty bitter about other areas, like, for example, being challenged on their pride. We have like a trial period where we encourage people not to give up all their material possessions so that they can make an informed decision. You live just like we live. You eat what we eat. You don't spend personal spending money because none of us have personal spending money. A trial period is something the community completely insists upon. And this for as little as a week to pretty much indefinitely. It becomes a natural safeguard for abuse of the forsaking all process. We do get inquiries from people who live far away from where the community is based and may even live in a completely different country. We may advise these people to sell all of their possessions and turn all of their assets into cash before coming to visit. If they're truly committed already, even before having come out, that this is something that they want to do, it means that they can come and stay or they can not join our community, but they'll still continue living by faith elsewhere. Worst case scenario, you decide that you don't want to forsake all or you don't want to join our community in order to forsake all. You haven't really lost anything. you've got more cash in your pocket and then you can go off and do whatever you like with it this practice of selling up in advance is mostly for you know really keen people who are coming from other countries or fairly far away within one country often these people barely have enough funds or assets to purchase a one-way ticket anyway if they've got more assets well then of course they can come and visit and then go back home if they decide to join and do their selling up then. The reality though is that people who join us usually have very little money and very few assets to begin with. Just like it says in the Bible, not many rich people are going to take up this kind of a lifestyle. I was told that the best way to deal with greed is to have very little to be greedy about. Probably one of the best protections that we have as a community is that none of us work for money. so the fact that we emphasize that teaching so much tends to attract people that aren't really interested in making money or don't see money as a main priority in life people give us donations but sometimes it's just like a few cents really for a tractor a cd many churches or communities are set up on more of a business model where people keep working for money this can mean vast sums of money can be accumulated often quite quickly which leaders can end up controlling and often abusing as a result. We live very simply. That's probably one of the reasons why we don't tend to have a lot of problems over money in our community. Each team, including the leaders, are very accountable on how they use their finances. Each person has a vote, regardless of how long they've been in the community. They have the same voting power in terms of how the funds and the resources of the community should be used. This accountability takes the form of teams across the world sending in a weekly budget to form a collective sort of world budget. On a practical level, this means teams in poorer countries can be pepped up or helped by teams in the more affluent countries. If, you know, for example, they need to get a vehicle because more people are joining or they want to do a print run of literature to distribute to people on the streets, then they can request funds. from the world budget. If there's an expense that is going to cost more than $1,000, we should write to other teams ahead of time and ask for permission to spend that. That's one way that we're trying to avoid an abuse of the use of resources. Another way to avoid financial abuses is a general rule that we have, which is that no individual, including the leader, can arbitrarily spend more than $100 on any item or service without running it past the rest of the team first. Everyone should be given a chance to have access to those funds to spend on whatever really the most important need is worldwide. In America, we don't have as much need for money. I don't think we've spent money on food for the past six months that I've been here. Our motorhomes can be parked on streets where there are no parking restrictions. So the money that we do get, for example, from donations, can be sent over to countries where they don't have the same resources available to them. Just so that everyone understands, these rules apply to Cherry and Me in the same way they apply to other people. With a few exceptions, we've no longer been RAID because of arthritis. and this kind of a standing joke about me putting a lot more peanut butter on my bread than most other people in the community. As with all of the other leaders in the community, Cherry and I keep a personal budget, which we turn in at the end of each week, where we account for anything that we spend. As much as possible, we all try to live at roughly the same level, although there are a fair number of luxuries we can get for free in some of the richer Western countries that we could not afford to purchase for people living in the poorer countries. So conditions are a little bit harder in some of those third world countries for our members. So here we have a level of accountability that would put the average church or family to shame. In the meantime, people who have recently joined the movement in the U.S. are already traveling internationally to gain a better appreciation for what is happening in other parts of the world. Through such things as this two-part video, members of these teachings of Jesus communities are getting to know each other better and to develop closer bonds and a bigger vision of a world where everyone shares equally. A world where love becomes more than just a word. Surely such a movement deserves a little more serious consideration by others who would also like to see deep and lasting changes to the selfishness and materialism which now dominate so much of our daily life. If you would like to learn more about life in such a community, please write to the address on the screen. sharing a bit about yourself and what country you live in. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you haven't already done so, please do watch the first part of this series of Voice in the Desert, the Teachings of Jesus Movement. Thank you. you

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