I have now moved to Chicago…. sort of. This semester I will be studding at North Park Theological Seminary. For a long time I have wanted to work toward becoming a pastor, and that journey has led me to a little denomination called the Evangelical Covenant Church. I will tell you all about them later, but today I wanted to share about my hosts in Chicago while I wait for student housing to open up.
They are called the Jesus People USA or JPUSA for short. JPUSA is a Christian community in Chicago. They live in a old hotel that they bought at some point and live communally together. I’m not really sure how many people live here but there are at least a few hundred. It’s been a great experience so far.
The first day I showed up and was greeted by Otto. (Otto, it turns out, used to plan shows with my old friend Tony Weatherly. Small world!) Dinner was in full swing so I said goodbye to Joan and then hung out with Otto for a bit. He has a pretty cool coffee gadget collection. Then I went to my room and tried to find some space. I’m currently living with a guy named P.J. He’s a great guy. On the fist night I felt really lonely but eventually did some prayer and talked to P.J. Which helped ground me a lot.
The Second day I spent the morning in the Coffee shop/ Skate shop geeking out about coffee and theology with JPUSA folks.
JPUSA has an amazing coffee shop on the ground floor of the building. It functions as a private coffee shop for residents in the morning, and then turns into a skate shop in the afternoon. It seems there are always a bunch of the local skater kids rolling through, it’s pretty amazing what the shop is turning into!
I spent the afternoon still in the shop but working on http://billyandjoan.com
In the evening Robert (one of the single men’s coordinators) led a really great Bible Study about holding onto the living God, and not falling back on old habits.
Then I had a great conversation about prayer in the dinning hall until bedtime. When I got upstairs P.J. showed me how to use Word press as the back end of a web page… pretty cool stuff.
Today – Day three! I spent most of the day at school. We had orientation today. I’ve been really stressed out about finances since I haven’t been able to find a job yet. They have a great prayer garden here so I went outside to pray. while I was out praying a new friend of mine named Justin came out, and we had a great conversation about our lives, and what God is doing with us. It was such an answer to prayer! I needed it.
I’ll keep you posted as time goes on I still have another week and a half here… I’m off to bed!
Here is a Video from another visitor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZH4tDyEvg0
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In