We’re a church of the poor, a working class, underclass church. That’s not to say there aren’t people in our ranks who come from ‘privileged’ backgrounds, but they, like the rest of us, have embraced a lifestyle of deliberate equality: brotherhood for real.
One of my friends (son of a wealthy lawyer, now living in Christian community in the same town as me), had an email from an old university friend recently. In it she describes two very different reactions to the Jesus Army.
I recently experienced some strong reactions to JA when I mentioned to a friend from my church (well sort of from my church – he has actually stopped going ‘cause he gets very cross with the vicar) that I’d met up with a uni friend in the JA and some of my thoughts on that. He went off on one about it being controlling and manipulative – and I was a bit like “Whoa – have you actually ever met anyone or talked to anyone in the JA?!”
Anyway – it was an eye opener as to some of the reactions you lot must inspire! To counter this I was also chatting to a homeless guy outside Harrods who was from Coventry and who knew the JA and said you were all great; in his words “not like the skinny girls who go to HTB!”...
Think its probably telling that it’s the homeless guy and not the middle class lawyer who is positive about your work.
When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the “sinners” and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:16-17)
