After Kansas City businessman James J. Lynn died in 1955, his widow gradually sold pieces of his 120 acre estate. In 1966, parts were acquired by Research Hospital and Nazarene Headquarters (our property east of Woodland, adjacent to the main property). Mrs. Lynn continued living in their home near Headquarters until her death in 1969. In 1970, Sertoma International purchased it from Research Hospital for its headquarters. A spacious house just east of Nazarene Theological Seminary, faces Meyer Boulevard and is one of two residences Lynn built on his property. (The other was destroyed by fire in 1956. The one occupied by Sertoma was on the edge of Lynn's personal 9-hole golf course).

J. J. Lynn was born in Louisiana in 1892 into a family of cotton farmers. After grade school, he went to work for the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company. In 1909, he moved to Kansas City to work as an accountant for the railroad, and in 1910 transferred to Bell Telephone. He earned a high school diploma by attending night school, earned a law degree in 1914, and in 1917 became a leading figure in U.S. Epperson Underwriting Company, which he eventually purchased.

By 1924, he was recognized as one of the city's one hundred leading businessmen.

Lynn's business acumen is evident today in the Lynn Insurance Group and Universal Underwriters Insurance Company, among other companies. Lynn's reputation would be confined to the annals of U.S. business history except for one thing: he joined the Self Realization Church, one of the two dominant branches of Hinduism in the U.S. (the other is Vedanta), and rose to become its leader upon the death of Swami Paramahansa Yogananda, its founder.

A native of India, Yogananda founded the Self Realization Church in the early 20th century after a successful lecture tour through America's cities. The church headquarters and its primary spiritual center were eventually founded in Los Angeles. In January 1932, Yogananda spoke in Kansas City at the Athenaeum Auditorium. J.J. Lynn attended the lectures and immediately began practicing meditation under the yogi's tutelage. Lynn began funding the sect's magazine, East-West, and later stated his conviction for doing so: "Today the Western man is in dire need of a spiritual technique for developing his soul resources. That technique is Kriya Yoga, an ancient science brought to us for the first time by a master from India."

He became a dedicated follower and practiced Self Realization for the remainder of his life.

Yogananda died in 1952. Lynn, now known within the sect as Rajarsi Janakananda, succeeded him as the movement's primary teacher and leader until his own death three years later. It is unclear whether Mrs. Lynn shared her husband's religious views. It seems unlikely, for when she died in 1969, her beneficiaries included several religious organizations but not the Self Realization Church. Besides University of Missouri, Kansas City, her will included the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (the builders and original owners of the convent immediately west of Nazarene Headquarters), and $5,000 (U.S.) each to Youth for Christ Kansas City and the Church of the Nazarene.

Stan Ingersol is manager of the Nazarene Archives at the International Headquarters of the Church of the Nazarene.

Holiness Today, May/June 2005

Please note: This article was originally published in 2005. All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at that time but may have since changed.