A Dream For Christian Higher Education In Europe
LA CHAPELLE AU RIBOUL, France — When nuns listed a vacant Catholic girls’ school for sale in this sleepy French village in 2017, American Jerry Jones saw an opportunity to expand Christian influence and higher education in Europe.
But his British wife, Zoobi Jones, gave a quick, succinct reply to his suggestion that the couple use their savings to buy La Maison de Perrine — “The House of Perrine” in English.
“No,” she said.
Undeterred, Jerry — a longtime minister for Churches of Christ in England and California — brought God into the conversation.
“Don’t you think we should pray about it?” he asked.
How could she say no to that?
“We did pray,” Zoobi recalled in an interview with The Christian Chronicle.
“And I was saying, ‘Please, Lord, don’t let this happen.’ And he was saying, ‘Please, Lord, if it’s your will, let this happen.’”
This wasn’t the first time the Joneses found themselves on different pages.
No ‘free ride’ for the American
Opposites attract.
“He’s the big visionary,” Zoobi, 73, said of her husband of 47 years. “I’m the practical one that nails it down. You need both. It’d be no good if we were both huge dreamers.”
In 1977, the American theology student met the British law graduate — she grew up two doors from future Beatle John Lennon in Liverpool — at England’s Oxford Church of Christ.
“The first Sunday I was there, I walked about five miles from outside of Oxford to find the Church of Christ,” said Jerry, now 71. “And she saw me, and I said, ‘Hey, can you give me a ride back?’ She said, ‘I’ve got a lunch appointment, and I can only take you half the way there.’
“It was true,” he added. “But it was also her way of saying, ‘I’m not going to let some smooth American just get a free ride.’”
The couple married the next year.
Caroline is Zoobi’s given name. Her nickname traces back to her childhood affection for Looby Loo, a character on the classic British children’s TV series “Andy Pandy.”
As a girl, Zoobi enjoyed vacation trips that took her family through France. So in 1992, the couple bought a summer farmhouse in northwestern France — about 20 minutes from the former convent they’d later own.
At the time, Jerry served as the evangelist for the Oxford church. Their three children — Oliver, Bethany and Austin — were all under age 10.
Jerry, who earned degrees from the University of Southern California and Yale University Divinity School and did additional study at the University of Oxford, used extra income from teaching theology courses to pay for the second home.
The farmhouse soon became a place both to make memories with their young family and host Vacation Bible Schools for area children.
“The whole village would show up to see their kids, their neighbors’ kids, their grandkids act out David and Goliath or Daniel and the lion’s den,” Jerry said.
The path to La Maison de Perrine
In 1995, the Jones family relocated to California.
For two-plus decades, Jerry served in various ministry roles in the Western state. For eight years, he also taught as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu.
Zoobi, meanwhile, chose to teach high school French instead of practice law. She began taking her California students on annual educational trips to the couple’s French farmhouse. Host families familiar with Jerry and Zoobi from VBS opened their homes to the students.
“As the host families’ children grew up, and they no longer wanted to host people, we had to think, ‘Well, what should we do?’” Zoobi said. “So we thought of buying a place where they could all come.”
That search is how Jerry came across the listing for La Maison de Perrine.
For three centuries, the convent school served as a center of education in La Chapelle Au Riboul, shaping generations of girls in the rural village about 165 miles west of Paris.
The institution took its name from Perrine Thulard, born in 1654. At age 18, she followed her parents’ wishes and married a man named René Thulard.
“She obeyed, as one did in the 17th century, even though she really wanted to lead a life of celibacy as a nun,” Jerry and Zoobi Jones wrote in a brief history of La Maison de Perrine.
When the wealthy René died at 26, his young widow pursued the religious and charitable work she longed to do, caring for the sick and educating girls in the village.
The first school building went up in 1682 but only lasted until 1730, when a fire claimed everything except three arched stone doorways.
The following year, the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Evron, the religious community Perrine founded, rebuilt the school. The reconstruction was finished in 1731, four years before Perrine died.
The French Revolution halted the school’s operations in 1794 when the government seized property and expelled the sisters.
According to local historical accounts, two of the order’s members — Françoise Trehet and Jeanne Véron — refused to denounce their faith and were executed by guillotine. The surviving sisters came back in the early 1800s when they regained the property, resuming the work Perrine began.
A 20,000-square-foot quadrangle surrounding a courtyard anchors the property. The main three-story building is a labyrinth of 24 bedrooms, six staircases, multiple classrooms, a large conference room, a chapel, a library, a recreation room, a banquet hall and a dining room. Many, many hallways connect them all.
A nearby four-story building — constructed in 1958 for agricultural studies after the convent school became coed — offers additional space for instruction and living quarters.
Another two-story building on the 3-acre site features two classrooms, stables and a garage, and it also encompasses a carriage house.
Ornamental and vegetable gardens, fruit trees and berry vines frame the property and occasionally provide room for the laying hens to roam.
A perfect fit
Jerry knew La Maison de Perrine would be a perfect fit to house students for Zoobi’s summer school program.
But he had a bigger dream: a new Christian university for members of Churches of Christ in Europe.
Thanks to wise investing by his late father and himself, Jerry said, he had financial resources to devote to such a project. But the amount the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Evron sought was more than they had to spend.
Jerry still wanted to submit a bid. Eventually, Zoobi gave him her blessing — only because she knew the sisters would reject it.
Or she thought she knew.
“Go make your offer,” she told him, “and I’ll make dinner, and life will go on.”
When Jerry met with the order’s representative in December 2017, he was informed the sisters had a higher bid.
Then the woman paused for three or four seconds.
“I’m thinking, ‘OK, we’re going to do something else with our retirement,’” Jerry said. “And then she said, ‘But because you are Christians … and you are both educators, we choose your offer.’ And, folks, that is a God moment.”
No more money worries
Jerry and Zoobi declined to disclose the purchase price.
They took ownership in August 2018 and — with the help of mission groups from the A&M Church of Christ’s Aggies for Christ in College Station, Texas, and the Legacy Church of Christ in North Richland Hills, Texas — began making repairs.
A new roof for the main building cost $125,000, they said.
“I used to worry about money and stuff like that,” Zoobi said. “I honestly don’t worry about it anymore because I know God’s behind it. And that’s a really relaxing, calming sort of feeling.”
Jerry said that doesn’t mean the Joneses are rich, but rather, “We’re very careful with our money.”
One example: They rely on old cars for transportation.
He drives a 1994 Nissan Sunny with 187,000 miles and no power steering on rural French roads that twist and turn.
“I’m not sure how happy I am about that (lack of power steering),” Jerry joked after picking up a Chronicle writer in Le Mans — a city known for its 24-hour auto race and frequent sightings of fast, expensive cars.
‘Loving restoration’
Seven years of “loving restoration by the current owners with a little help from their friends” — as Zoobi described it — has brought La Maison de Perrine to a point where the Joneses plan to open the Christian university with 26 students in 2026.
While the property has no debt, the Joneses said, they’ve exhausted their own funds. They need an estimated $400,000 to renovate the former agricultural building.
Even as they prepared to welcome students, the Joneses housed 18 Ukrainian refugees for months after the war with Russia started in 2022.
Pilgrims on walking journeys through the French countryside often call to inquire about staying the night and are delighted when the couple not only feed and house them but also spend time getting to know them.
Trevor Williams, a longtime minister for Churches of Christ in England, is among those praying for what the Joneses have dubbed the International Institute of Arts and Sciences. (If that name sounds generic, Jerry said he’s hopeful a namesake benefactor will buy into the vision.)
“The Joneses have a dream that can improve the minds and lives of young people,” said Williams, a leader of the Ilkeston Church of Christ in the East Midlands of England.
Like Williams, Sid Walker, an elder of the A&M church, has spent time with the Joneses at La Maison de Perrine, which is just south of the Normandy region and a two-hour drive from the U.S. cemetery where 9,400 World War II soldiers are buried.
“They not only have the heart and the soul and the vision,” Walker said of Jerry and Zoobi, “but they also have the experience.”
Mary DeMuth, a Texas-based literary agent and author of more than 50 Christian books, visited La Maison de Perrine recently.
She came away impressed both with the Joneses and the rural setting.
“It definitely feels like village life,” DeMuth said. “You’re not getting, like, the cosmopolitan French experience. It’s definitely more countryside.”
New life for old school
La Maison de Perrine sits across the street from an aging Catholic church where a roving priest — assigned to multiple parishes because of religion’s decline in France — celebrates Mass each Thursday.
Jerry and Zoobi worship each Sunday in the chapel of the former convent school. The Church of Christ service draws anywhere from eight to 25 guests and neighbors, depending on the time of year.
The Joneses seek recently retired Christian professors or those on sabbatical to donate time to the new school. They expect to charge about $12,000 per year in tuition and fees. And they’d love to hire a full-time president with extensive Christian higher education experience to oversee the university, which will offer studies in English but teach French to every student.
The school will offer courses in literature, languages, history, business, education and Bible, according to Jerry. As is typical with French universities, the institution will award a three-year undergraduate degree known in France as a “licence.” Jerry has had preliminary discussions about accreditation with an education ministry official.
An avid sports fan, Jerry also intends to incorporate athletics into the program. After all, he coached American football at Oxford for four years.
“We never lost to Cambridge, so I am legendary at Oxford,” he joked.
If young men and women meet and fall in love — as tends to happen at Christian universities — he and Zoobi are cool with that, too.
But their biggest goal is this: training students who can return to their home congregations in the more than 40 European countries and help lead the work of Churches of Christ.
“Atheism and secularism and materialism have gone so far in Europe that we need to have really well-educated members,” Jerry said.
Regardless of each student’s field of study, he said, “They’ll be able to teach a Bible class at their church. So when they go back to Switzerland or head off to Ireland, they’ll be able to say to the preacher, ‘I’m going to give you a break. You can take the next six weeks off, and I’m going to teach on Philippians.’”
Convent school founder Perrine’s spiritual testament was “to preserve charity, simplicity, unity and humility.”
Three centuries later, the Joneses pray that they can fulfill God’s mission in their own lives.
This article was originally published by The Christian Chronicle.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 20 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.