Cornerstone Magazine

Cornerstone Festival, as of November 1 2005, has live forums! Sign up for the new Cornerstone forums (it is free) and join the conversation.

The forums are currently three:
Film
Music
Seminars (Cornerstone YOU)

Hope you'll drop in!

[For links to Cornerstone's blogosphere within the blogosphere, scroll past the below few paragraphs.]

As some of you may know, I (Jon Trott) have a number of blogs. Probably too many. What about Cornerstone magazine, the publication I edited for its last year or two and served full-time with for over two decades?

Cornerstone magazine's main website, http://www.cornerstonemag.com/, is now an archival site. That is, we do not upkeep the site with new material but have left a number of older articles online for history's sake.

Cornerstone began in the early 70s as a "Jesus movement" era newspaper. It evolved along with its parent ministry, Jesus People USA Evangelical Covenant Church, into a magazine "for those who like their truth raw." I think I'm fairly accurate, if not particularly modest, in saying the mag had quite an impact through the 1990s on topics as disparate as "Satanic Panic" (exposing fake evangelical ex-satanists such as Mike Warnke and Lauren Stratford), and homelessness and poverty in Chicago. Cornerstone magazine also helped spawn Cornerstone Festival, widely viewed as American Christianity's edgiest, most artistic, and most socially challenging event of its kind.

But forces were on the horizon that made publishing a full-color, arty magazine less and less 'doable' for our inner-city community. Just printing and mailing the magazine cost tens of thousands of dollars per issue. Meanwhile, many who had worked on Cornerstone's staff -- notably, Dawn Mortimer, Curt Mortimer, Sandy Ramsey, and Chris Ramsey -- became full-time members of the Cornerstone Community Outreach Shelter (CCO). CCO is a multi-faceted set of programs and outreaches to Chicago's homeless women, children, and two-parent families. Writing about homelessness had always come from our own experience attempting to minister to Uptown, Chicago's homeless population. Our impromptu sheltering of small numbers of homeless women and men became a multi-layered, highly developed support system.

As a community of believers, Jesus People USA has tried to remain in tune with what is needed in the present. Creating a magazine on line may be more about offering a loose-leaf notebook of sorts than the site we have been doing up until now, with its centralized, highly integrated feel. I really do hope old and new perusers of these pages enjoy them. And for faithful "old school" readers of Cornerstone, I think one feature you should particularly enjoy about this approach is how easily you can interact with us... er, me at least... just by posting responses to what you're reading.

Here are blogs and sites one can consider a "community" of pages making up the new Cornerstone magazine:

Are Men Really Human? - A personal reflection on feminism and womankind and mankind, from an egalitarian Christian male's point of view.

Blue Christian - Political riffs and rants, some quite short and a few nearly as long as old Cornerstone articles used to be.

Kaiz Replies - Glenn Kaiser's thoughts, lyrics, and reflections.

Ask Wendi - [coming soon] Wendi Kaiser deals frankly with questions on sexuality, dating, and relationships. (This old link will take you to her present site, which I'm hopefully going to talk her into abandoning in favor of a blog.)

Cornerstone Community Outreach Shelters:
CCOLife Blog - Here are the stories and reflections of staffers serving at the Chicago Shelters.
CCO Life MAIN - Get involved, donate, or research all the different facets of Cornerstone Community Outreach Shelter programs.
TeamCCO - The website for CCO's Fundraising Marathon Team.

ThinXperience - Tracks speakers and seminars from the annual Cornerstone Festival (link above).

RevRag - This is the JPUSA Evangelical Covenant Church bulletin we do weekly (or most weeks anyway); my dearling Carol Elaine edits it.

Project12 - An on-site "community intensive" majoring on missional, relational discipleship and incarnating Jesus. Site still under construction, so please be patient.


Friends of Cornerstone Blogs:

These blogs are posted to less often than those above, but we consider them an integral part of the choir of voices making up JPUSA...

Curt Mortimer's Clem's Place site.

Chris Rice (Chris Rice's This world and what I think of it)

Rebecca Hill's The Penelope Tree - Reflections on life with three wonderful little boys and a slightly pierced husband, all living in a Jesus commune.

Carol Trott's Scraps of Love - A self-described non-writer, she got talked into this by her husband, Jon.

Jesus is Coming Soon, blog of long-time JPUSA (on and off) Gary Booth, is a straight-up old school Jesus freak's celebration of salvation. Gary greatly damaged himself via alchohol and a destructive life before meeting Jesus many years ago. Since then, he's consistently street witnessed and led many to Christ.

Marty Phillips' blog, appropriately named "Marty." Watch for comments on everything from community life to birdwatching.

Other JPUSA Links:

Youth Mission Trips to Jesus People USA - Easily hook up for a trip to JPUSA where you and your youthgroup can serve, play, learn, and encounter Christ.

Friends & WebLinks:

Eric Pement's home page. Eric and his family lived at JPUSA for over two decades before being led elsewhere. He was involved in Cornerstone magazine's most famous (or infamous?) work, including the Lauren Stratford, Mike Warnke, Troy Lawrence, and John Todd exposes. Jon in particular misses Eric as the "Mr. Evangelical" of our staff. Eric currently works at Moody Bible Institute as well as attending North Park University.

Kevin Frank, at one time C-stone's comics / illustrator, now lives in Canada and still does cartooning and illustrating. We think he's awfully good.

[more links in all categories are very likely! So check back, or bookmark this page.]