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Helena · Joined: 28 Dec 2006 Posts: 75 Location: yorkshire, UK

Jesus Fellowship Church
aka, Jesus Army

I. Profile Report
Name: Jesus Fellowship Church, aka Jesus Army

Founder: Noel Stanton

Date of Birth: December 25, 1926

Place of Birth: Bedfordshire, England

Year Group was Founded: 1973

Sacred or Revered Texts: The Bible

Cult or Sect: Negative sentiments are typically implied when the concepts "cult" and "sect" are employed in popular discourse. Since the Religious Movements Homepage seeks to promote religious tolerance and appreciation of the positive benefits of pluralism and religious diversity in human cultures, we encourage the use of alternative concepts that do not carry implicit negative stereotypes. .

Size of Group: Approximately 700 members live in approximately sixty communal residences of the Jesus Fellowship. An additional 1800 persons are active members living in various non-residential settings

II. History

The Jesus Fellowship Church was founded in the early 1970s in the context of the New Church Movement in the United Kingdom. The latter began to take root in the late 1960s. The New Church Movement paralleled the Jesus People Movement in the United States in many respects including their exploration of communal life. But the spiritual life of this movement was more akin to the Charismatic Movement that was taking root in enclaves of Episcopalians and Roman Catholics in the United States. In the U.S. the "gifts of the spirit" still remains a rarity among Baptist traditions, but the New Church Movement, which has included many Baptists, early embraced the "charismatic gifts." John Campbell, a long time member and leader of the Jesus Fellowship Church, writes:

The main thrust of the New Church Movement" was informal, committed relationships and the charismatic movement. I think they were all interested in the "community" in the broadest sense of the word; fewer in its residential aspect. [Personal correspondence, 05/11/01].
This was the context in which Noel Stanton would one day found the Jesus Army. Following a term in the Royal Navy during World War II, Stanton was baptized by a Pentecostal minister and, himself, felt called to the ministry. He studied in a Bible school and then spent some time working in the UK for a West Amazon Mission, and held a couple of jobs in the business world before he would become a Baptist Pastor. It was in the late 1950s that Stanton accepted a call to become a part-time minister to the small Bugbrooke Baptist Chapel, in a small village a few miles west of Northampton.

For almost a decade Stanton pastored the Bugbrooke congregation with little evidence of the renewal he had hoped for. By 1967 he felt he had reached a crossroad and was uncertain as to whether he should continue. Then, during the summer of 1968 Stanton started Saturday evening prayer services in the church manse. A dozen or so joined him in Bible study and a searching of the scriptures for a path to renewal. In time their prayers would be answered. Simon Cooper and Make Farrant, in their story of the Jesus Fellowship Army, describe the breakthrough in Stanton's own words:

The experience was...so intense that I felt I was just not going to live anymore! I became filled with the intensity of God. This went on for hours and hours and I moved into speaking in tongues and praising the Lord. It was a tremendous experience of life and fullness from which I didn't come down for a long time--and this was the changing point in my life
Motivated by this experience, Noel Stanton inspired many in his chapel congregation to follow in his steps in quest of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Not all would follow, but it would also become the changing point in the life of his congregation, for others soon began to have similar experiences.

The group commenced communal living in 1974 and membership grew rapidly in the early years. By 1977 there were almost three hundred in communal residences. The maximum number living communally peaked in the early 1990s with about nine hundred and then slipped back to around seven hundred where it has been stable for a number of years.

The fellowship began as a fairly rural enclave, with the first community homes in large houses in Northamption and the surrounding area. Fairly quickly, however, their felt need to engage in spreading the Good News, and their commitment to a ministry of social service to those experiencing suffering and pain, led them to spread out and establish homes in cities.

The Jesus Fellowship continues to recognize its Baptist roots, takes part in various joint evangelical initiatives, and is a member of the Evangelical Alliance, a major grouping in the UK. The closest alliance is with the Multiply Christian Network, an alliance of like-minded charismatic churches.

The communal life of the Jesus Fellowship is organized as the New Creation Christian Community. By the end of the twentieth century the Jesus Fellowship had fourteen fully established congregations and outreach programs in England with a presence in another dozen locales. [insert footnote to http://www.jesus.org.uk/uk.html] In addition to the approximately sixty communal residences that they own in England, they have created a number of successful business enterprises. These businesses provide training and employment for members, many of whom were previously unskilled and unemployed.

The outreach ministries of the Jesus Fellowship operate under the name Jesus Army. This name was at least partially inspired by the Salvation Army which was established in East London in second half of the nineteenth century. (See the Salvation Army Profile Page on this site). The name and the commitment to social services parallel the organization created by William and Catherine Booth in 1865. While members do not uniform, suggesting a further likeness to the military symbolism of the Salvation Army, the male street evangelists usually wear jackets that bear a resemblance to battle fatigues. [insert picture]

There are other resemblances. The Jesus Army focuses its evangelism towards the more down and out members of society. The group is composed of persons coming from many backgrounds, but like many of the Booth's recruits, a significant proportion are from working-class backgrounds. Many in the Jesus Army have experienced homelessness, problems with drug and alcohol abuse, and some are ex-prisoners.

But the Jesus Army has a distinctive modern-day character. While there is a good bit of discipline in this group they do not have the visible appearance of uniformed Salvation Army workers marching in step. When they work a large crowd, they stand out because of the blazing fluorescent pink crosses around their necks and the colorful Jesus Army logos that are sewn on their bright battle fatigue jackets. Were it not for these visible symbols, many in the Jesus Army blend right in with the down-and-outs they seek to reach with the Gospel and the offer of a hot meal. The Jesus Army is almost certainly best known to London and in other cities around the UK by their brightly painted Modern Jesus Army minibuses and similarly adorned double-decker buses.

Much of the success and drawing power of the Jesus Army is their ability to create revival services that combine the old-time religion with contemporary entertainment -- disco lights, music, dancing and a high emotional tone. People are frequently touched by the Holy Spirit and exhibit a wide array of emotions from laughter to tears. These lively revival services are clearly unconventional by traditional worship practices in most British churches.

Organization

The communal residences that are home to approximately 700 of the members of the New Creation Christian Community vary considerably in size. Houses consist of between six and sixty people, who live as a large 'house family' In some locales two or more small residences may be linked together and share common dining and supply resources.

The core units of the church are the local congregations and 'church households' (house groups, usually based on a community house). Each church household is led by a team of two or three elders, together with other junior leaders. .
A group of senior leaders have overall responsiblity for the church, but they do not constitute an administrative elite. They meet regularly to conduct the business of the church and community, but they hold other jobs and do not reside in the same locale.

The basic financial structure for the Jesus Fellowship community is a Trust Deed created by the membership in 1979 for the benefit of members and the collective community. "The Trust Fund receives the possessions and capital of the members, and the Trustees are required to administer the Trust in such a way as to maintain the capital value of these contributions"The Trustees also have oversight of the "Common Purse" into which all income is pooled and dispersed.

Everyone who lives in the New Creation Christian Community gainfully labors either for a community owned business or takes outside employment [except of course students, the sick, the old]. Around 250 are employed within the community.

Membership and Lifestyles

Persons can become involved with the Jesus Fellowship and the New Creation Christian Community at a number of levels of intensity. They characterize these levels of involvement as "Styles of Covenant Membership." All who engage in one of these styles are baptized members of the group and are considered to be a member of the church family.

Style One Covenant Members. Persons who, for various reasons, are not prepared to make a full commitment to communal living. A common reason is being "spiritually 'young' in Jesus," but there are other reasons as well. Style One members will normally attend the Tuesday evening Agape meal in a home and participate in Sunday meetings.

Style Two Covenant Members. Persons committed to living a life of simplicity, sharing and discipleship, but who for various reasons, prefer to maintain their own lifestyle and residence.

Style Three Covenant Members. Persons fully committed to share "all things in common" as was done by the early Christian communities. They live and worship in communally owned housing, sharing wealth, income and possessions.
The New Creation Christian Community actively seeks new members, but it follows well-defined guidelines to assure that the prospective recruit has time to consider the implications of their decision. The Trustees created the category of associate membership that new recruits must belong to with a probationary period of two years. If the recruit is a minor, the probationary period has to extend up age 21.

When the individual makes the decision to become a full-fledged member they give all of their possessions and money to the Trust Fund. These resources are received in the members' name. In the event that they might later decide to leave the group, they have the right to request that their gift be returned. While the fate of the individual's contribution is legally at the discretion of the Trustees, Campbell and Bird report that requests to return money to departing members has never been refused .

Style Four Covenant Members. Persons who are in every sense fully committed members of the fellowship, but live at a distance from any Jesus Fellowship congregation community and, thus, are not able to regularly participate.
In addition to these formal "covenant" commitments, there are additional life-style commitments that people make. For example, approximately one quarter of the community commit themselves to a celibacy. There are also a variety of other levels of membership with less commitment, with the aim that "everyone can find their place"