Koinonia Farm, a Christian commune started a half-century ago in rural southwest Georgia, has survived arson, bombings, and drive-by shootings in a stand against racial intolerance. Now a new foe is threatening the community: a $600,000 debt.
The 1,400-acre farm, five miles southeast of Jimmy Carter's hometown of Plains, is still a nonprofit ministry, but it is no longer a common-purse colony. Today the farm has 22 full-time and around three-dozen part-time employees.
Throughout the past 50 years, goals have remained the same: nonviolent, peaceful solutions to society's problems and empowerment of the poor, neglected, and oppressed.
The Koinonia community has had difficulty adapting to changing times, causing financial stress that led to ministry cutbacks. The youth ministry outreach program has been suspended, staff salaries have been frozen, and timber on the property is being sold to raise money. Koinonia also is trying to rejuvenate an ignored donor list.
"It's going to be a real challenge to make it," says Ted Swisher, a former executive director who lived at Koinonia from 1970 to 1983 and is now a board member. "It's important to get on a viable footing on an annual basis; then we can address the long-term debt."
"Finances are a grave concern," admits Lenny Jordan, chair of the eight-member board and 42-year-old son of founder Clarence Jordan. "As is the case with all nonprofits, giving is down."
Acting coordinator of activities Betty Jean Jones, an African American who has been at Koinonia for 13 years, is in charge while the ministry, with a $1.5 million annual budget, seeks a new executive director. Fer-Rell Malone was fired in September, Jones says, because of "an inability to manage according to Koinonia's guidelines." Many at Koinonia call Malone an excellent preacher. (He continued to pastor a church in Americus, eight miles away, during his two-year tenure.) Yet they acknowledge he did not possess the business acumen to stem the flow of red ink. Lenny Jordan says Koinonia needs a visionary leader.
"The crisis is mostly one of morale and leadership," says board member Don Mosley, Koinonia coordinator from 1974 to 1979.
A TUMULTUOUS HISTORY: Hard times are nothing new at Koinonia, which has faced struggles since Clarence Jordan began the integrated community among Georgia's red-clay cotton fields. In the late 1950s, a Koinonia roadside market was torched, buildings on the grounds were strafed by machine-gun fire, and the Ku Klux Klan paid a threatening visit.
In the early years, almost no merchant within a 30-mile radius would do business with Koinonia, and a bomb destroyed an Americus feed store that violated the boycott. As a means of economic survival, Jordan began a mail-order fruitcake and nut business.
Although the business succeeded, the tense climate deterred many prospective Koinonia residents. By 1968, the commune had only two families left.
Jordan was considered a deft theologian, translating portions of the Greek New Testament into the popular Cotton Patch Gospel, which creatively sets gospel narratives in rural Georgia culture. But he was not as gifted in administration and business management.
In 1968, Millard Fuller, a self-made Alabama millionaire lawyer who had given away his money to help the poor, brought a new vision for Koinonia Farms: partnering.
Fuller, now 60, devised a three-pronged approach to living out the gospel: farming, industry, and housing. While farming and industry remain staples at Koinonia, the housing concept has taken on a life of its own. Koinonia started its affordable-housing ministry by replacing ramshackle dwellings with new, modest homes, sold at cost. Koinonia holds the mortgage on the homes via long-term, interest-free loans that required a down payment of only $750.
In 1969, a year after Fuller's arrival, Jordan died at age 57 of a heart attack while working on his translation of the Gospel of John. He is buried in a pecan grove on the farm's grounds.
Jordan's lifelong quest for racial reconciliation was perennially unpopular. The deacons at the Baptist church Jordan attended in Americus consistently refused to allow him to bring African Americans to the service. After he tried to bring Asian Indians through the doors, the church banned him.
"Clarence was for reconciliation when reconciliation wasn't cool," says Timothy George, dean of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham. "He was a prophetic figure, not just for Baptists, but for all Christians, particularly in the South."
After Jordan's death, the housing program blossomed under Fuller's leadership. To date, Koinonia has built 60 homes on village property and another 140 in the surrounding area. Fuller left Koinonia to launch the successssful Habitat for Humanity, based in Americus, in 1976. Habitat has built a total of 35,000 houses in 44 countries.
TIME OF UNCERTAINTY: Koinonia's communal system seemed ill-suited for a changing American culture. In response, Koinonia made a philosophical leap by abolishing its "common purse" of pooled financial resources and in 1992 switched to paying salaries to its workers.
That reversal had some unanticipated consequences. "There's been a change in the kind of commitment people have," says Coffee Worth, a 75-year-old Koinonia worker for 19 years and a board member. "People want to have security, but salary is not what makes relationships," Worth says. "We can make it go if everybody doesn't quit."
Racism is one reason cited for dissolving the intentional community two years ago and replacing it with a corporation.
Although the ministry started as a beacon of racial equality, some at Koinonia believe a paternalistic attitude toward home ownership and jobs had been at work in recent years.
While whites tended to be in leadership before, Jones says authority now has been spread out.
"Now it is essentially a black-run operation," says board member Swisher, who joined Habitat for Humanity in 1983.
Rather than racism, Fuller believes, the problem involved a clash of values and cultures. "Koinonia has always been a bastion of interracial activity, but it hasn't been immune from the larger racist society in the Deep South," he says. "People who come from two different cultures create tension."
SELF-SUFFICIENCY: Today's seasonal support staff—a mixture of retirees and young people—come looking for concrete ways of expressing their Christian commitment.
Young interns receive free lodging in simply furnished dormitories and $120 a month for living and meal expenses. The well-stocked library is a popular place in the settlement, where cars and television sets are out of place. At lunchtime, staffers gather for a common meal, accompanied by Bible reading and prayer requests.
Most of the food is grown in organic gardens supervised by 34-year-old Bob Burns, who worked in Bangladesh for three years with the Mennonite Central Committee. Chickens are used to reduce the insect population, duck manure is used as fertilizer, and pecan shells eventually become compost.
Burns is contemplating marketing organic crops, but for now, much of Koinonia's income still comes from mail-order candy, nut, and fruitcake sales.
PRISON OUTREACH: While the days of boycotts are a distant memory, ill will toward the farm has been revived because of Koinonia's prison and jail project, started in June 1993.
"This is a bold ministry for Koinonia to take," says coordinator John Cole-Vodicka. "It has dredged up a lot of old animosity."
Recently, Cole-Vodicka filed a complaint against magistrate John Southwell. The magistrate meted out a 60-day prison term for a black student who used profanity in a public-school classroom. Cole-Vodicka has asked a Georgia judicial commission to investigate the magistrate's allegedly racist behavior and to remove him from office.
Through the outreach effort, Cole-Vodicka and volunteers visit county jails in a 40-mile radius, where he says there are 5,000 inmates—99 percent of them black—in seven county jails and eight state prisons. "Race plays a major role in who gets locked up and for how long," he says. Cole-Vodicka, who has been banned from visiting two jails, says, "We're seen as rabble-rousers and troublemakers. "It hasn't endeared us to a lot of folks."
Looking into the future, many Koinonia staffers are keeping their options open. Cole-Vodicka is searching for a foundation grant to support the prison ministry in the event that Koinonia folds.
Lenny Jordan, who lived at Koinonia the first 19 years of his life, is guardedly optimistic about the experiment founded by his father. "We've gone through periods when the financial outlook has been worse," Jordan says. "The financial side has to be faced, but if we keep a spiritual side, we can find a way to make it."
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