Jesus People: Firstfruits of the Jubilee

Pastor Harold and Mona Warner

By Daniela Tascarella

Growing up in Tucson as part of Door Church, I have often heard of the Jesus People Movement and that our church had its roots there. Most of what I heard came as snippets of information, so I kept feeling I lacked a full history of how that revival impacted our church.

As for the ministries within the congregation, most of these were already in place by the time I was born into it. I was curious as to the origins of these ministries and of the church in general. While this article by no means takes a deep dive into all that has happened on our 50-year journey, it does provide some historical context for the move of God we have experienced.

Evangelist Larry Beauregard was the first convert in the Tucson congregation, saved on February 13, 1974, during the Jesus People Movement.

In his book, You Can Become a Walking Revival, he explains that he only went to church that night because of a deal with a co-worker. “If I would go to church with her just once,” he said, “she wouldn’t tell me about Jesus anymore unless I asked. I didn’t plan to ask.”

But God had other plans. That night, Evangelist Jack Harris was preaching his first revival in the tiny Foursquare Gospel mission led by a young couple from Prescott, Arizona. Pastor Warner and Mona had arrived in Tucson three months before, and they were the only people there besides the evangelist and his wife.

“As we entered the building, Naomi immediately started clapping her hands and singing along with them,” Larry said. “There were five of them and one of me. Being a good sinner, I immediately separated myself from them and sat two rows behind Naomi. All I could think was, these people are nuts!”

But Larry felt the presence of God very strongly that night. He answered the altar call and prayed with Pastor Warner. “By the time I finished the sinner’s prayer, I was weeping uncontrollably,” he said. “It was a very supernatural night for me. I was born again! Converted! Changed! Transformed! Jesus was very real to me from that moment on.”

Pastor Warner visited Larry almost daily to follow up and disciple him in the Lord. Larry defines follow-up as spending time with new converts so as to prevent the devil from stealing away the seed sown in their hearts; basically, showing them how to be Christians.

Larry began witnessing at The Village Inn Pancake House where he worked, and within the first two weeks, Gary Childers and Bob Sanborn got saved. A month later, Brad Breckinridge and Daniel Cervantes came in, and then Kathy.

“I was witnessing to my friend, Kim Pensinger,” Larry said. “He got saved in May, and then Susan got saved July 14, 1974, so we had about 12-15 people. Daniel and Kathy were the first marriage in the church a year later, and on September 10, 1975, Susan and I were the second.”

Door Church in Tucson was a congregation of about 125 people when a band from Clifton, Arizona was invited to play for a Friday night music scene. As it turned out, the group was mostly made up of Catholics. When Larry gave the altar call, the whole group came forward and got saved. One of the converts from that group was Evangelist Fred Gonzalez, Sr.

Soon after this, Pastor Kim Pensinger was sent to Clifton to pioneer the Door’s first baby church.

In 1977, Larry and Susan were sent out to pastor a church in Douglas, Arizona, and wound up pastoring another church at the same time in Agua Prieta, Sonora – across the Mexican border, on the other side of a small barbed wire fence that ran between the two cities.

The Beauregards have now pastored churches in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada and Larry has preached as an evangelist in more than 50 countries around the world.

God has recently placed Larry in a position as the overseer to a group of churches in India, where revival has broken out among the country’s poorest caste.

“Susan has stuck by my side the whole way,” Larry said. “She has paid a dear price through the years, ministering in the shadow of her husband, like most pastors’ wives. She is a great wife and a great mother. After 49 years serving Jesus, she still prays and reads her Bible every day; she is always faithful.”

Frank and Susan King were saved in 1975 when Frank picked up a flier that someone threw away at work. The flier advertised a free concert.

They hesitated to go in when they saw they would be the only “old people” in a group of teenagers. But just then, a couple from their pregnancy class arrived, so they came in and stayed… and answered the altar call.

In 1978, Frank saw the need for a ministry to children and mentioned to Pastor Warner that someone should really start one. Pastor Warner agreed, but nothing happened.

Frank remembers, “I told Pastor Mitchell that Pastor Warner had not yet started the ministry after I had prompted him several times, and Pastor Mitchell said, ‘Maybe that’s because God is calling you.’”

Children’s Church began in 1979 with Frank and Susan King, Herb and Cheryon Unruh, and twelve children sitting on the living room floor of a small duplex that the church had purchased across the parking lot.

The built-in bamboo bar was used as a puppet stage and the puppets were doll heads on fingers. Next Generation Ministry’s award winning puppet team grew from these humble beginnings.

Makeshift skits grew into acting troupes; simple object lessons grew into pastors’ sermons.

What has never changed, however, is the preaching of the Gospel at the kids’ level; kids getting saved; kids praying for each other; kids getting healed and filled with the Holy Ghost; and kids going out to bring in their parents, their friends, and the world.

“The church was in max growth mode at the time,” Frank said. “Over the next five years, Children’s Church grew along with it.” In the mid-1980s, as the children grew and teens were added, Next Generation Ministries expanded to serve other age groups.

Frank began Young Servants classes around 1990 to teach the older children how to minister to the younger; the ministry passed to Ralph Galindez and then to Ken and Bonnie Laue, who founded the yearly YS Faith Camp in 1992. The Laues continued in this role for some 16 years before stepping down for health reasons.

Tim and Cathy Martin took over YS in 2009. Some of the Young Servants eventually became adult workers on Children’s Church ministry teams.

The goal of NGM is and always has been to reach the next generation for Jesus, and to pass leadership to the next generation, as well.

“As we approached our 60th birthdays, we thought how weird that a couple of old people are leading kids,” Frank said. “I began to look around for workers who were faithful, creative, and at least one generation younger than we were.”

After much prayer on all sides and a series of vigorous tests, Tim and Cathy Martin were chosen to carry the baton for NGM’s next lap in 2013.

“They are eminently qualified,” Frank said. “They brought a new dynamic into the ministry: younger workers and diverse ministry that would not have happened with the Old Folks.”

Frank is now Door Church’s Family Evangelist and the Children’s Church’s Pastor Emeritus.

Frank and Susan now minister in family revivals and marriage retreats for churches throughout the fellowship, as God continues to move in and through their lives to other generations.

“God's church is eternal and generational,” Frank said. “We don't get saved just for us; we are saved because God can use us to reach others; some of those others are kids in our congregation. Susan and I were saved because God wanted to reach the children who are in the church today, and, if Jesus tarries, their children and grandchildren.”

In addition to children’s ministry, the youth ministry was soon born at Door Church Tucson.

“Youth ministry didn’t exist at the beginning of the church,” said Pastor Fred Rubi. “That’s because everyone in the church was young.” Pastor Fred and his brothers were part of a large group of high school students that got saved and came into the church during the year 1979.

After a few years, as the first converts began getting married and new converts were continually added from the high schools and colleges, a youth group gradually came into existence.

“A young disciple named Vince Dorsett would lead outreaches with the young men, and then he would sit down and have a discussion with them afterwards,” Pastor Fred remembers. “It was all very impromptu.”

Pastor Warner was working toward home Bible studies at the time, and one of those Bible studies was established as a Bible study for the youth.

“The first leaders weren’t much older than the rest of the people at the studies, but they were married and they were saved a little longer,” said Pastor Fred.

The first youth leaders were (Pastor) Richard and Yolanda Rubi, who served in that position for a few months in 1983 before going out to pioneer a church.

Pastor Fred took over from his brother at that time, and he and his wife, Norma began to mold the youth ministry into its present state. They held weekly meetings, but beyond that, they introduced important outreach activities.

A major component was the Bible studies that were established on several high school campuses, including Amphi, Tucson High, Santa Rita, and Pueblo. Many more high-schoolers came in because of these efforts, until the young people who were new converts outnumbered the church kids in the youth group.

“The focus was to reach those young people outside the walls of the church,” said Pastor Fred. “Some of the youth who locked into the church during this time period included Teresa Torres, Cathy Martin, Pat Seaman, Melinda Hauri, Carl Cooper, and Ed and Julie Gutierrez.”

By now, the group was running about eighty teens. The church was in revival.

(Pastor) Ed and Julie Gutierrez got saved in 1983 and joined the youth group at The Door. Married in 1985, they felt called to step up as youth pastors in 1988, when Pastor Fred and Norma were leaving to plant a church.

Initially, Pastor Fred had left (Pastor) Paul and Norma LaValley in charge, but they soon moved over to become leaders of the college ministry and handed the group over to Pastor Ed and Julie, who continued to serve as youth pastors for the next nine years.

The middle/high school youth group was named Vision Unlimited and the college/university group was named Alpha & Omega (now known as AO). The goal of both groups was to disciple others and to outreach.

Pastor Paul LaValley had the idea of establishing a boot camp based on what he saw in the Boy Scouts as he was growing up. Pastor Ed and Julie took the idea and ran with it, leaving The Believer’s Boot Camp as their enduring legacy to Vision Unlimited when they left to pastor in Fairfield, California in 1997.

“The fact that many churches in our fellowship still conduct boot camps today all over the world, and that they are still having significant impact in young people’s lives, is both humbling and rewarding,” said Pastor Ed. “I’m so grateful to Pastor Warner who gave freedom to me and the other volunteers (too many to name, but you know who you are) to succeed or fail in doing and trying. Pastor Warner never said no, even though not everything we did was a success.

“The parents of the teenagers basically trusted us to ‘experiment’ with their children in real time and not in a safe laboratory. At its peak, Boot Camp totaled over 400 students and counselors, and we loaded them into school buses, ventured off into campgrounds, had mini battles in the woods, explored with compasses that we didn’t know how to use – and even lost track of a student for one brief but scary moment.

“We locked ourselves into gymnasiums overnight to play games, conducted discipleship classes, and allowed some of the teens and counselors to teach in tag teams. And, who doesn’t like to eat cold pizza at 3:00 in the morning?!”

Pastor Ed likens those years to President Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena, “who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Back in Tucson now after serving the Fairfield church for sixteen years, he and Julie are blessed to see many of those same young people from Vision Unlimited raising their own children; to see their families and ministries still thriving in the church body.

“We didn’t do everything right,” he said, “but over the long haul, we did more things right than wrong. In the end, we are still standing and fighting the good fight of faith, and God will give this new generation its own visitation. Let’s celebrate together!”

The University of Arizona was another sector that saw revival back in the early years of the church. Bill Valine was part of that revival, having been saved in Sacramento in 1977.

“I was working in the snack bar at a neighborhood pool and I heard two lifeguards talking,” Bill said. “The man was telling the woman about Jesus, and I realized that he really knew Jesus.”

Bill decided that he wanted what that lifeguard had, and so he surrendered his life to Jesus.

Graduating CSU Sacramento in 1979, Bill was accepted into the Atmospheric Sciences Graduate program at the University of Arizona. He arrived a week early for the 1980 semester, and prayed for God to guide him to a church.

Two days later, the Holy Spirit moved as he sat in the bookstore, prompting him to go outside. There he saw a group of people “taking turns shouting to a crowd” outside the Student Union, and he knew instinctively that they were preaching.

“I knew God had answered my prayer about finding a good church,” Bill said. “I approached one of the men and got the address to The Door – and I have been going there ever since.” Bill also witnessed to (Pastor) James Wilkins, who lived in his apartment complex.

Others who got saved at the UA include (Pastors) Eric Strutz and Gene LaValley; Rick Smith, Tom and Ingrid Trebisky, and Rob Brand.        

“At that time, [Pastor] Eric Strutz worked on campus and headed up the outreaches,” Bill said. “Then Eric became Minister of Visitation and Billy Conrad, who was working on campus as a custodian, led the outreaches. He also began a Bible study on campus for Chinese students.”

Pastor George Meng was one of those students. People were open and receptive to the Gospel. God was moving at the UA campus, even though Alpha & Omega did not yet have a study there.

“The students and staff who attended the Door in those years put an emphasis on outreaching and street preaching,” Bill said. “I encourage this generation of students to be personally involved in preaching on campus, if they are not already.”

When Pastor Fred Rubi returned to Door Church Tucson as assistant pastor, he was involved once more in AO, which now holds a weekly Bible study on the UA campus.

He admonishes the youth: “Don’t let AO become just another good ol’ boys club. Be involved in outreach. Stay focused on winning the campus for Jesus.”

Larry Beauregard reminds us, “You don’t have to be a preacher to be a walking revival. The Jesus People Movement of the 1970s simply took the Bible at face value, and a lost generation of young people found Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. I was one of them.”

Revival is at the very roots of Door Church Tucson. For 50 years, God has used this local church to impact the world for Jesus Christ.

This church was born in revival and each of us can become that walking revival. I believe that God is doing a new work in this generation, reaching the church kids and those outside.

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out My spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams; your young men shall see visions” (Acts 2:17).

These are the days we are living in. Let us pray that the fire of revival burns on in us.