In January 1974, the Jesus Centre stood at a crossroads. A small core of people who felt committed to the work, sensed that the Lord may be leading them to shift location to North Adelaide. In what seemed a ‘last-minute’ timing, permission was granted to use the Methodist Church Hall in Melbourne Street.

 

Difficult lessons were learned with the Jesus House in Malvern. However, the experience gave us the foundation for any future operation of Jesus Houses. As an answer to prayer regarding the ongoing ministry, a house at 134 Melbourne Street, almost opposite the coffee shop quite miraculously became available to rent.

 

An earlier diary entry of Maureen Harris on the 11 & 12th May 1973 said:

Three of us have had a vision for a ‘Christian commune’ in a house where we can live together and offer our house to people off the street where they can sleep and have fellowship. If God wants us to have one he will.

 

The deteriorated hippy dropout house was cleaned up, and within a few weeks, Kym Smith and Mal Graetz moved in. The house was next to a BP service station and had a below ground-level swimming pool in the backyard. 

 

The Melbourne Street Jesus House was soon busy accommodating Christian brothers and sisters from interstate. As a follow up to Kairos 1973 in Canberra, plans were conceived for a large gathering of Christians from around Australia to converge on Adelaide to coincide with the biennial Adelaide Festival which was held from March 9-30. Mal Garvin from ‘Teen Crusaders’ and several others from ‘The House of the New World’ in Sydney, including John Hirt and Ken Rolph, made the Melbourne Street house their base for several weeks. Jesus Centre people participated in the Kairos ‘74 outreach as much as possible. Through the many events and outreach opportunities, they got to know many Christians from interstate and Adelaide who were involved in similar mission work. John Smith and others from his group in Melbourne also had a key role “in bringing the festival to the streets”.

 

By mid 1974 the number in the Melbourne St. Jesus House had grown to seven: Trevor and Maureen Harris, Kym Smith, Mal Graetz, Jenne Pittaway, Beryl Schaefer and Elaine Wilson. Tom Ryan, a new convert, also join the household late October.

 

Because of the shift in locality, there was a change in people attending the Jesus Centre gatherings. However, there was a handful of people who felt committed to the ministry despite the large turnover and fluctuating number of people coming for different needs and purposes. They felt committed to each other and did not seem to fit into any of the established churches despite their efforts to do so. Before the main gathering on Thursday nights, they began to have prayer and sharing times with those who felt called to the ministry. The One Way Drop Inn was open on Friday and Saturday nights. A fellowship time for workers was held before the coffee shop opened on Saturday.

 

The Jesus Centre had access to three buildings a ‘stones throw’ apart. The One Way Drop Inn, the Church hall and the Jesus House. Most of the activities revolved around these premises so conveniently provided by the Lord. An ‘open door’ policy was adopted as they began to work out together what it meant to ‘live in community’. Emergency accommodation, meals for guests and personal counselling was a result. Many could tell of many hair raising incidents experienced with people that were contacted in the coffee shop, community house, on the streets and in pubs. 

 

Water baptisms were held both in the sea and in the swimming pool at 134 Melbourne Street. In July 1974, 7,000 copies of Issue 3 of the “Adelaide Jesus Paper” were published and Issue 4 had 8,000 copies printed in November 1974.

 

Thought had been given to declaring the Jesus Centre a ‘church’. It was mostly rejected until later in the year. There was the responsibility for new converts. The ‘open committee’ was being replaced by a recognized eldership, although not official. Pastoral care and oversight were both needed. There was a felt need for a more defined body and a call to minister in a local geographical area. Through prophecy, visions and convictions, the group sensed God was calling out a people to become a defined Christian ‘family’ or ‘body’.

 

In mid November, Trevor and Maureen Harris shifted back to their house in Norwood in time for Maureen to give birth to their first child, Sharon on the 22nd November.

 

From the 28th November 1974 to the 2nd January 1975, Kym Smith, Mal Graetz and Jenny Riemann travelled by car on a five week trip to Queensland and returned to Adelaide along the eastern coast of Australia. They visited several Teen Challenge Centres and many Christian communities along the way. They went to Nimbin, a hippy community, (70km west of Byron Bay, NSW), where Kym had come to faith a few years earlier. They called in to quite a few Christian Bookshops and gave them copies of the ‘Adelaide Jesus Paper’. They also visited John Smith’s group based at the ‘Jesus, Light & Power House’ in Bayswater North, Melbourne.

 

1974 was a year of real Christian growth for Jesus Centre people amidst the pain of working out relationships in the community into which God had called them.

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