Paul’s Story

Based on an interview conducted on March 8, 2020, in Santa Barbara, California:

My dad was in the Army, so we moved around quite a bit. And we ended up in Northridge, California.

And from there I went to UCSB in 1965 for college. I decided on UCSB because it was a beautiful  campus, a party school, and plenty of surf.  And my brother was also going there, so I could use his car. I couldn’t get into the dorms the first year, so I moved  right into Isla Vista (IV), the tiny college town adjacent to campus. I partied around quite a bit that first year and started drinking and smoking. Nothing significant happened during that first year at college, except that I felt a little disappointed. Somehow I expected more out of college. And I started questioning life in general. I got a little depressed wondering what the true meaning of life was. 

I went back that summer to my home in Northridge to get a summer job and earn some money for college. While back home I looked up an old friend of mine named Rich. He was going to Van Nuys Baptist Church, and he invited me to a church barbecue. I went there and got saved. They started leading me down the road to reading the Bible and things like that. And they suggested that I join Campus Crusade for Christ when I went back to UCSB in the fall.

Well, I went back to UCSB and forgot about their advice. I joined a fraternity instead and just started getting back in my old ways, drinking and smoking and stuff. Then I accidentally went to a Campus Crusade function called “The New Folk Singers.” I signed a guest card, and a Christian called Al Haffner looked me up. That was a major turning point in my life, because Al really helped me in my Christian walk. He took me under his shepherding. He was president of Campus Crusade at that time (the fall of ’66). We hung out all the time, along with Steve, John, Bob, Lance and Steve D. I dropped out of my fraternity because the fellowship I had with these Christian brothers was just so much more satisfying than anything a worldly fraternity had to offer. I was always over at Al’s place and we studied the Bible, and we looked at Campus Crusade spiritual growth tapes. We even weightlifted, because Al was a weightlifter and body builder. That was his last year there, so he made me President of Campus Crusade for the next fall. But in the meantime, I had heard some things from Jon Braun, a Campus Crusade national speaker, about how to start a “dorm church.”

So, the next fall, the fall of ’67, I signed-up for the dorms, and tried to get some other Christian brothers to come with me to start a “dorm church.”  As a leader of Campus Crusade, I wanted people to come with me, but nobody wanted to go back to the dorms. So I went alone and did some evangelism. One of the people I ran into there in the dorms was Sam .

By the way, just yesterday I stayed with Sam and his wife Sharon here in Santa Barbara, and he told me he was going to get baptized today because he couldn’t remember ever being baptized. So today after being saved for 52 years, he said, “It’s time.” Sam asked me to help baptize him in the ocean. So I went and helped baptize Sam and two of his grandchildren in the ocean today, and that was really a great honor. We had a fantastic time in the Lord on the beach with dozens of  fellow believers.

Back to my story: I hung out in the dorm for a whole year and talked with many different people. Mostly my mission there, I determined, was to not create a “dorm church” but to drive people over to Campus Crusade meetings. I dragged a lot of people over to IV, including Sam. So in a way, I was the first missionary in the Isla Vista church.

I did see a lot of Lance, and a lot of Bob also. Because I was over in the dorms, Bob and Lance pretty much took over the leadership of Campus Crusade back in Isla Vista, which was a really good thing. They were so good at it. It worked out so well. We had a Campus Crusade meeting once a week in Isla Vista, and I’d bring some people over from the dorms. Many others came from Isla Vista, and the meetings were just so spirit filled. There was lots of singing and testimonies. Jesus Christ was really lifted up. Sometimes we were even standing on chairs singing the Hallelujah chorus. It was just a wonderful time for us all.

On top of everything, we started driving down to L.A. to hear Hal Lindsey speak. Hal Lindsey, a national ex-Campus Crusade speaker, was down at what they called The J.C. Light and Power House in UCLA. My future wife, Wanda (“April”), moved into J.C. Light and Power House at that time, and she went to Hal Lindsey’s meetings also.

Eventually they had a conference called the UCLA conference, and it was mostly ex-Campus Crusade leaders. I went there with my whole family; even my dad, who was a psychiatrist, was interested in it. We were all shocked by what Gene Edwards, a famous evangelist, had to say. I think Lance was there also, and a couple other people from Isla Vista. April was also there. So we brought the “UCLA tape” back to IV and listened to it. This “UCLA tape” went all over the U.S. and eventually all over the world. Somebody in Campus Crusade said that Bob ought to look up Gene Edwards, so that’s how Gene Edwards was invited to IV. Gene surprised all of us by coming to our small town. 

So that was the beginning of the IV church, as far as I’m concerned. Being saved was the number one thing in my life. Another major turning point was the fellowship of the believers I found first in Campus Crusade for Christ. But equally as important was having Gene Edwards talk about God’s eternal purpose, and explaining how to live by God’s life. Our Campus Crusade group had largely survived on the weekly meetings and that was wonderful, but to have God in our lives throughout the week, and feast on Jesus daily, was so much better.

So that was like a big step up in our corporate venture. Here is salvation; here’s living by the life of Christ daily above that.

We started meeting in twos daily in the mornings. That was a big deal. I met a lot with Bob and Lance and John, and sometimes Steve.

We dropped out of Campus Crusade at the same time all the national leaders of Campus Crusade were leaving. There was a beginning of a national revival, “the Jesus Movement,” going on all over the U.S., particularly in Southern California. We dropped out and started meeting with Gene. The meetings were small at first, but then grew and grew. Gene was coming up on weekends. He lived in Altadena. Sometimes we would go and see him, and most of the time he would come and see us.

It was just so fantastic that first year, learning more and more about Jesus and God’s eternal purpose. Finally, after Gene coming up from Altadena to Santa Barbara for a year, Gene announced he would be leaving for a year. April and I actually got married Labor Day 1970, and it just so happened that it was when Gene was leaving, so that whole meeting was unbelievable. Between Gene leaving and us getting married, it was like everybody had something to say. Gene said that was the best wedding he’s ever been to. It happened at a place called Devereux, which is a little meeting house for UCSB on the cliff of the ocean. It was sunset, so we had the wedding and the sun was setting, and it couldn’t have been more perfect. My parents were there, and April’s parents were there, and they just couldn’t believe it. They had never seen a meeting of the church – and that’s what it was, a meeting of the church. Everybody was saying stuff about the Lord and His bride, and it was just one wonderful thing after another. Everybody spoke. So Gene left that night and went back to Altadena. He was going to be gone for a year as a testimony to the angels that our church could exist with just the Lord’s leading and no outside help.

I think we mostly did exist alone. There might have been a couple of phone calls to Gene. But when Gene came back in a year, things had changed. Jon Braun had moved in, along with a lot of other ex-Campus Crusade people who moved in to be with Jon Braun. Of course, they hadn’t been there when Gene was there before, so it was a little awkward, because they had moved in for Jon Braun basically. Then Gene came back as the rightful leader there, so it was a little strain. We eventually had a split. That was the first really big heartache I ever had, because some of my friends left the church to be with Jon Braun’s church.  It was a little tough after that. But we survived. We went through the desert and we survived.

From there on, we started moving out a little bit more into the city of  Santa Barbara. We got a place we called “State Street,” which was a big house down by State St. and Arrellaga St.  A lot of us “oldie” people moved in there. “State Street” was a wonderful situation but a lot of work, because it really needed to be fixed up. But it was the first time we really kind of lived with so many families so close together. Well, I guess we had a couple of houses together back in Isla Vista, but it was kind of like a new thing that we did, reaching out to the community. We eventually also got another house down the street on Arrellaga that Gene had Bob and me oversee. It was a special place for new single brothers.

So we lived there at Arrellaga for about a year. The next major thing I can remember was, Gene asked Bob and me to go to Hawaii. It was part of an event we  called “Weltblick,” which means looking at the world. Gene was very concerned because it looked like a worldwide recession was about to take place and we needed to go to places in the world where we could evangelize the people and start churches. He wanted us “oldies” to get out and be in certain English-speaking places (Europe, etc.), where we could work and evangelize. So he sent Bob and me to Hawaii, which everybody laughed at. “That’s not a tough place to go.”

Well, it turned out to be a tough place to go because the cost the living there was very high, and a couple of other factors made it hard. But we went there. We both became teachers. I had at one time four jobs, just trying to earn a living. But we met some marvelous people there – Claudia, Jan, Joe and Joanie and some other people. And they came back with us when we went back to IV two years later. Bob and I had both become teachers by then. Bob continued on to Europe to be with some of the people there. I just went back to Isla Vista and kind of held the fort down, because not many of the oldies honestly wanted to come back to Isla Vista.

They were having families, and Isla Vista is a college town, full of drugs.  So the “oldies” weren’t excited about coming back to Isla Vista and raising families. Plus, they had been on their own for two years, and many of the sisters had a feeling of independence. Gene was a nice person and we loved him, but some of the sisters felt he was a little demanding. Many times we had to move once a year or every other year, and in general do different things because Gene had a new vision for the church. So my wife and I moved quite a bit, 20-some times within 20 years. But that was the way it was in the life of the church. And this seemed to keep things new and fresh. We were basically confident that Gene was led by the Lord. Some people would disagree on certain things, like living in common. That was a big controversy, whether that should have really happened. But most of us jumped into it willingly. But there was some controversy over some of those things at times.

So some of the memorable events that were happening were, of course, the church meetings themselves. But close behind them, we had actual Christian marches with torches in the streets of IV. And that always frightened the police until they heard the Christian songs. Isla Vista at that time in the ’60s and ’70s was full of political radicals. As a matter of fact, they burned down the Bank of America at one time. I can remember being in my apartment complex once, and I just stepped outside and smelled all this tear gas, and I looked out through this glass pane, and these radicals were lighting dumpsters on fire in the street. Then all these sheriffs’ cars came screeching around the corner and stopped  all of a sudden. A bunch of sheriffs’ deputies jumped out and started chasing the radicals. Some of them lived in my apartment complex, so they chased them in there, and the radicals slammed the door on them. This one big old sheriff’s deputy took a flying leap at their door, hit it, and rolled off the door into a hibachi that was lit. Then he got really mad and knocked on the door and some guy answered it and said, “Can I help you, officer?” And the officer didn’t say anything, he just grabbed him and pulled him right out. Then the rest of the officers ran into the apartment and pulled out the other radicals. So it was an exciting time in Isla Vista in more than one way.

I also remember one time, we were coming back from one of our meetings, and the police had declared a curfew that I didn’t know about. So I was riding my bike back to my apartment and this helicopter came down with a big spotlight on me. A voice said, “Get off the street, there’s a curfew.” It was like God speaking in a way. I  just said, “Yes sir,” and got off the street as quickly as possible.

We had baptisms down at the ocean. We heard that Costa Mesa had them too, so we weren’t the only ones. It was a big blessing. We’d take the torches down at night after the meetings and baptize new believers in the ocean. People from IV would follow us to see what the “crazy” Christians were doing. It was a very exciting and blessed time.

The Brothers’ meetings back in Isla Vista in the 70’s and 80’s were pretty straightforward. They were usually on a Saturday morning, and most of the brothers made it. Some of the brothers preferred to sleep in because it was Saturday morning. We usually sang a couple of songs, and then somebody would bring up an issue or Gene would talk about something that he had on his heart, and we would discuss it. Generally, we would talk, and Gene was open to change. But most of the time we did whatever Gene felt we needed to do, and that was pretty straightforward. We would just bring up a subject and we’d talk about it. Once in a while it’d be a particular person we were talking about that was causing some trouble either with the sisters, or the brothers, or both. We’d discuss what we should do. Every issue was handled on an individual basis. I’m thinking mostly about new people that had just come in the church, what we should do about them, and things like that. I don’t really have much more to say other than the brother meetings could be somewhat boring.

The living in common food thing back in IV was a little controversial also, because some of us were almost vegans and others definitely were not. So most of us that were not vegans tried to stretch ourselves a little bit and go more vegan and not eat as much meat. Things like that. I think they built refrigerators or something that were supposed to be mobile, and they didn’t turn out to be very mobile. That was a problem because we had to change places sometimes.

That whole living in common thing seemed to be good at first, but then I saw there were some little problems with maybe sisters not agreeing on what to prepare for dinner and things like that. 

Life could be a little boring in the church. There was a time when we went from living individually as families living in one apartment, to trying to mix it up more and have several families live in a big house. Sometimes that was a little bit of a strain because that means that more than one woman would be in the kitchen, and they didn’t always agree on what should be served and all that.

There were some other problems in IV. The New Testament Church had its problems too. They used Steven and some other brothers to try reconcile those problems, so the apostles would not have to deal with them. I could see from our experience, why the apostles would want to get other brothers to do that. Our living in common particularly, but just every aspect of the church, gave new light on the New Testament. We were living the New Testament life to a large degree in IV, including people coming in and coming out of the church. It was always exciting when new people would decide to come in bulk, like from Memphis a bunch of people came at one time; and from a place called Garberville. Garberville was a separate little Christian community, and they had come to visit us, and we invited them in and we had a great time. They were basically trying to sell Bible-related stuff, Bible covers and stuff like that. So they had made a lot of leather goods and came to sell it to us because we were a big target. They stayed for the meetings, and then decided, “Hey, this is better than what we have,” so they moved down. That included Theo . Of course, we loved everybody that came. There were a few problem people, but basically they all came with joy and we accepted them with joy. 

You asked how did I feel about Gene shutting the church down in 1981. I came back to Isla Vista from Hawaii in 1978, and did the best I could as a substitute teacher. Eventually I went back to computer school, and got a degree in that. So that’s how I ended up with a career up here in Sacramento, with the County of Sacramento, working on a mainframe computer.

But anyway, Lance and I and just a couple of others were the only older people that came back to Isla Vista. The rest either didn’t want to come back or they couldn’t find a job in Isla Vista, and they didn’t want to just settle for substitute teacher or whatever. So that kind of wiped out the church in a way. 

Some of us oldies that did come back to attend the meetings found the meetings were quite different before we left and after we came back. I attended the meetings until 1981, when Gene shut down the church. We had kind of a sister church in Sacramento led by a Christian leader named Don Morsey, who had known Gene for a long time. Don had spoken at our church a few times, so we were acquainted with him. And Don Morsey did have a great church. We went up there and visited, and it was really a nice church. It was a lot like Isla Vista, so you could call it a sister church.

So some of us decided to go ahead and move up there. Lance moved up ahead of us, and some others moved up there also. It seemed like a lot of other people moved to Portland, Maine. So we were divided across the country. Well, what happened is that by the time we moved to Don’s church in  Sacramento, like three or four months later, that church had split. So it was very sad in a way, especially because I was working for Don Morsey at his pest control company, and half the people that had split to the other group were still working there for him. So those people would be talking to me sometimes, encouraging me to leave Don’s church. I was thinking, “Oh, brother. I’ve gone through this once before and it was kind of bad news.”

But the good part was that we had moved right next to Don Morsey, and he had a wonderful wife called Jewell who was a real jewel. Don’s wife Jewell and my wife became very close friends. It’s the first time April had felt really good about church life in several months. Don and Jewell said, “April is just the perfect person to live next to us.” She and Jewell got along really well. 

So I worked at Don’s pest control company for several months. Then I eventually got another job with the County of Sacramento as a computer operator working with the big old computers. That was kind of a fun job. Working with big “main frame” computers was the new thing to do. The whole County of Sacramento, 10,000 employees, depended on me and my fellow computer operators to keep the computer going. 

As for how that experience affects my life today: I’m still singing many IV songs. I’m looking for the perfect meeting. I found a couple of places that I really like, home church meetings. I’ve been part of about four or five really great home meetings that have eventually fallen apart. Kind of like Isla Vista. It seems like they do have a shelf life to them. They usually start in a small way, like as a small Bible study, and more and more people come, and eventually something happens, and then it goes downhill. Recently I’ve found more home church meetings to go to. I don’t think I would have looked for home church meetings if it hadn’t been for Isla Vista.

That’s really where my heart is, to be built up with people in home meetings; and that seems to be the only place I can do it. I’m not a real outgoing person, so it’s hard for me to make friends. But in a home meeting, I do. The Lord just comes out in me more in songs (Col. 3:16) and all of that. I just have more life and it flows. So I like that a lot better. I always look forward to home church meetings, and I have at least one of them right now, so it’s been great.

I still meet with Jay, who used to be in the IV church. So that is neat that we have been able to maintain our fellowship for over 40 years. Lance and Steve moved out of Sacramento a long time ago, and Don Morsey died.  I miss them a lot. But I found other people in between that have been almost as good as Lance and Steve. April has found fellowship and friendship with new sisters over the years. But recently, we’ve been going to this one place that’s kind of like Calvary Chapel, about every other week. Normally on Sunday we go to a small meeting at a large megachurch. It has a small marriage enhancement group for married people. They play a video about marriage and discuss how you can have better communication. And each speaker is different, each week, and it’s really neat. Then after the video we sit around small tables and discuss some questions that they have for us, and that builds us up a lot. We’ve really found some wonderful people there.