Mansion
Messiah
The grace of God makes a man godly,
and then proceeds to make him manly.
Henrietta Mears
Edward Tracy Smith was only three-and-one-half months old "in the Lord" when Pastor Chuck Smith tapped him to be elder in charge of Calvary Chapel's new Christian commune. He was branch manager of a fiberglass-weaving company, was divorced from his wife, and had a serious drinking problem before a business associate took him to Calvary Chapel. There, as Ed tells it, "I met the Lord." He also met the pastor, and Chuck Smith was impressed with this handsome, twenty-nine-year-old convert who looked as if he had just stepped out of the Los Angeles Rams locker room. He stood six feet four inches and weighed 235 pounds.
By his own frank admission at the time of his appointment, Ed Smith was "not too bright in the Word," but he knew something about human nature. He knew what a disorganized lifestyle had done to him, and he determined that Mansion Messiah would become a productive training base for young Christians. If the Christian life was what the Bible said it was, a warfare, then his job was to
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regiment and discipline the raw troops. Under his direction the old house underwent a complete renovation. New plumbing was put in, repairs were made, rooms were painted, and the garage was turned into a bedroom. Everything was made spic and span, and within a short while some forty people had moved in.
One primary rule dominated the operation of Mansion Messiah: every person who crossed the threshold was to be confronted with the love and the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ed Smith believed that if people came to the home, it was because God sent them; therefore, if God wanted them to receive something, it was his job and the job of his colleagues to deliver it. The colleagues got the message. When a telephone company representative came to collect the money from the pay phone under the staircase, he was on his way out the door when someone asked, "Has anybody shared with him?"
"Gee, I don't think so," said Ed.
By the time the man reached his truck, three brothers were ministering to him, preaching to him and, in the language of the day, "watching God work." The man and his whole family soon came to dinner at the mansion and started attending Calvary Chapel.
Others got the same treatment. The police showed up, as hippie communes did not enjoy a good reputation among southern California law officers. But at Mansion Messiah the officers were witnessed to, and it was not long before they began stopping by for coffee. On weekends the place was turned into what became known as an "evangelistic hangout" (a new phrase in the Christian lexicon). As many as two hundred people would crowd the house. Many of them were drifters brought in by the residents who found them lying on Newport Beach. All were welcomed, fed, and told about Jesus. They were given a place to sleep; if the bunks were full, they stretched out
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on the floor, in hallways, or in the backyard.
Another rule Ed Smith laid down was that everyone studied the Bible. Mansion Messiah was to be no crash pad. It was Bible study for an hour, morning, noon, and night; and in addition each resident was expected to have his personal Bible study. No radios, televisions, newspapers, or magazines were allowed in the house — just the Bible. Sometimes the residents would stay up until midnight studying chapters and memorizing verses. Everybody was young in the faith; nobody knew Hebrew or Greek, so the interpretation of the text was apt to be curious, if not downright wrong. But the love was there, the motivation was unimpeachable and the determination very strong. It was verse by verse, line by line, precept upon precept, memorize and underline, read and study, listen and learn, pray and study some more.
For most Christians, reading the Bible is a dity and a discipline. For these guys and girls it was top sirloin, spuds, and gravy served on a warm platter after a long fast. No abbot enforced a monastic rule, no hair shirts were issued, but Ed Smith stood ready to kick the tail end of any goldbrick off the front porch if he wasn't there to get to know the Lord and do his bit. You want to stay here? You get into the Bible.
Ed had still another rule that he took straight out of Thessalonians: everybody worked. The Mansion had to be self-supporting, for Calvary Chapel contributed nothing but prayers. The people who lived there took jobs and turned in their earnings to the house. If they were coming off drugs and still unfit to work outside, they were kept busy around the place, planting a vegetable garden, building bunk beds, working in the kitchen, and keeping the place neat and tidy. Some of the fellows worked in grocery stores and talked the managers into leaving dented cans and day-old milk and bread out back for them instead
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of throwing it all into the dumpsters. Strangers were welcomed for a night or two, and if they were hurting badly they were helped; but if they didn't want to give their hearts to Christ, study the Bible, and do some work, they were invited to move on. Most of the live-ins had been on the streets and could discern whether a person was looking for help or just freeloading and bumming around town.
In the rooming arrangements Ed enforced the strictest discipline. Upstairs was upstairs and downstairs was downstairs. Any hanky-panky, any infraction in the area of man-woman relationships was dealt with severely, for the house lived by a stern code. Usually it meant immediate dismissal. Actually the number of problems in that area that surfaced was minimal, although to the world outside the fact was difficult to accept.
For Michael MacIntosh, life in a Christian commune was a brand-new experience. It was to be the only Bible college and theological seminary he would know. Mansion Messiah became an anchor for him and made him strong in the Scriptures. It gave him the first taste of discipline that he was able to accept. He still carried seeds of rebellion, but he saw that Ed Smith was a well-organized individual and that the discipline he enforced was always couched in love. What appealed most to him about the place and its people was the camaraderie and the cheerful atmosphere. Like the early followers of Francis of Assisi, they laughed a lot. He noticed all the residents seemed to have a common purpose. They were all trying to learn the Word of God and were working to support each other.
When he first came to the commune Michael was not well enough to do much work; but as he grew stronger, and people came to the house looking for short-term laborers, he went out on assignments. He repossessed
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furniture and delivered it to a nearby auctioneer; he also cut down eucalyptus trees around an orange grove. Ed Smith took an instant liking to him, sensing that their backgrounds were not too dissimilar. As Michael began to show responsibility in the tasks assigned him, Ed gave him supervisory tasks and eventually appointed him a deacon. That appointment afterward gave Ed qualms; he wasn't sure that God was in it. On one occasion while they were eating breakfast in the kitchen and discussing some subject or other, Michael became upset.
"I thought we were here to talk about the Lord," he said.
"We're here to grow up in the Lord," Ed told him. "You've got to give us time."
Michael also had big ideas, or as current vocabulary would have it, "great vision." He wanted to take off for Hollywood. He wanted to go to London, not to be the fifth Beatle any more, but to minister to the other four. Ed had to sit down and explain that all of them were going through a time of preparation, that God was the One who was in charge. "When God calls you to something, God prepares you for that something." Meanwhile there was a work order to be filled, and he had better find somebody to do it or do it himself.
On one occasion, two hundred people gathered for a potluck supper at the house, and Michael gave up his seat to one of the visitors and went outside. After the meal Ed Smith began to teach the Bible lesson. He was sitting next to the living room window with people jammed all around him when suddenly the window opened and Michael was there, standing in the flower bed. "Don't forget to tell them about the love of God!" he said, grinning.
It was evident that God had touched Michael in the area of love, because that was all he wanted to talk about. But he was not alone; the whole household seemed to be overtaken with the love of God. "When you depart from the Word of God," Ed warned them, "the concept of love becomes wishy-washy. It takes on emotional overtones and it does not include the discipline that God has in His Word. We are to express our love in the context of the Bible. When we see people doing what is wrong, we are to confront them with true, godly love, and show them that they must live according to the Scriptures to have fulfilled lives, that what they are saying is not what the Bible says. But we are to restore them in a spirit of meekness, and when we do, they will come looking for it."
The young men and women who came to Mansion Messiah were often from above-average income homes. They said their parents had given them so many things they considered it a farce. The gifts conveyed no reality to them. The parents thought they could express their love with material goods, but it left their children confused. Then they listened to Timothy Leary telling them to get loaded and find utopia, and they tried it and found out it was a lie.
Such was their condition when they came to Calvary Chapel and Mansion Messiah, and the results were astounding. "God brought forth tremendous fruit in that house," says Ed Smith. "No one soul was responsible for it, for the Holy Spirit was simply pouring out the love of God upon that place." One of the greatest difficulties the leaders had was staying with the new converts, some of whom attempted to lead others to Christ two days after they were saved. Problems often resulted. And yet those connected with the work contend that statistically Mansion Messiah had one of the highest ratios of success and longevity that any rehabilitation program has ever seen. The reason, they say, was that the love of God was manifested, and God was worshiped and studied.
Michael's leadership qualities began to emerge when a rebellion broke out in the house. Ed learned that one of
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his deacons was smoking marijuana and informed him he could no longer be a deacon. Michael, not knowing all the facts, sided with the accused and said, "If he goes, I go." Ed went off to work. He received a telephone call from Michael that afternoon.
"God is really doing a heavy number here," he said. "You'd better get home. Eleven people are ready to move out."
"That's the way it is," said Ed. "Just relax."
But by the time Ed got home, Michael had learned the truth and decided his loyalty lay with the man in authority. It was a first for the long-time rebel, and it worked. Four people ended up leaving in the commotion, but more important, Michael's leadership was established. From that time on he began to assume more responsibility. When an older man came into the house while Ed was away and began spewing false doctrine, saying that a child could not come to Jesus, Michael challenged him, declaring that he had received Christ when he was eleven years old, even though he did not follow Him then.
When the man persisted, Michael said to him, "I know you're off-the-wall. What you're saying is wrong, and you're not to talk about it in this house."
The older man stared at him. "Who do you think you are?"
"I'm asking you to leave," Michael replied. The man did, but he left Michael shaken. When Ed Smith returned and learned about it, he said, "Your spiritual discernment was correct. That man has given Chuck Smith trouble. If I had been here he never would have come across our front porch."
A major problem facing the residents of Mansion Messiah was indebtedness. Many of them had run up large bills and when Ed Smith called for an accounting and added them up, they came to nearly seven thousand dollars.
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Ed informed each one that he was to write a check every week for five or ten dollars on each of the bills owed. He himself telephoned the creditors to make sure the money was getting to the right place. He knew the kids were pretty good con artists and had learned how to avoid responsibility. Now the Lord was teaching them His way. The debtors would call up individuals whom they had ripped off and make some arrangement. Then they prayed that God would bring in the money. But most of the creditors, when they heard about the good news of Jesus Christ and what he had done in their lives, just tore up the bills. The seven thousand dollar debt was cut in less than half, which added considerably to the faith of the young people.
Michael was so deeply in debt that he was considering bankruptcy. Among other bills, he owed his psychologist a hundred dollars. According to plan, he wrote him a ten-dollar check and took it to his office, but when he tried to slip it under the door, the door opened and there was his doctor looking at him.
"Come in, Mike," he said. "How are you doing?"
"Well, it's like this," said Michael, and he reeled off what Jesus Christ had done in his life.
The doctor listened and said, "You don't need to give me this ten dollars."
"Oh, yes, I do," protested Michael. "You put it out for collection, and if I pay them, you only get 50 percent."
"You don't understand," said the therapist. "You don't have any bill with me at all!"
During the five months that Michael stayed at Mansion Messiah, he saw people being saved in droves. So many were converted that Calvary Chapel opened up a second commune and sent leaders from Mansion Messiah to take charge. But the real key to the commune's astonishing ministry to a needy element of society was not its witnessing
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or its evangelism or its discipline; the real key was prayer. Prayer saturated everything that was done. Telephone calls ended in prayer. Before a car or a truck would start, someone offered prayer. Small items, big enterprises, everything was taken to the Lord for guidance and direction — and for enablement. Did they need lumber for some more bunk beds? The petition was laid on the dining room table and prayed over. That same night Ed Smith attended the men's prayer meeting at Calvary Chapel, and a man spoke to him:
"Do you need any wood up there?"
"Yes, we could use some two-by-fours."
"How many?"
"About a hundred and fifty."
"Well, I can let you have a hundred and fifty two-by-sixes."
Obviously, Smith's design was off; the Lord wanted the bunks made stronger, so he provided the two-by-sixes.
Ed Smith started out to regiment the troops and prepare them for the spiritual warfare every true Christian must face. The message that Michael took away from Mansion Messiah after five months in boot camp was God's word to the prophet Joel: "Blow the trumpet in Zion . . . for the day of the LORD is coming"!(2:1). Armageddon is at hand, and it is not another war-games exercise. The time is ripe; the need is urgent. Get ready. Bring them in before it is too late. Raise up an army and go to battle!
