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Jones briefly attended Indiana University in Bloomington, but left for Indianapolis to preach and later form his own church. He went to night school at Butler University there, and ten years later he finally won a degree in education. At matriculation, he listed his religion as Unitarian, and for a time linked himself to the Methodists, but the first church he founded, called the Christian Assembly of God, had no affiliations. It was in a poor neighborhood, and he won worshipers by distributing free food and helping people find jobs. He raised money by importing monkeys and selling them for $29 apiece. He eventually made enough to pay $50,000 for an old synagogue in a black neighborhood.
He had one son and adopted other children, ultimately eight in all, including blacks and Koreans. He once heard an affluent black doctor at an adoption agency reject a child because he was "too black." Snapped Jones: "Well, I'll take him then." The mayor appointed him the first full-time director of the Indianapolis human rights commission. Jones became increasingly embittered at the racism he encountered. His wife was spat upon while walking with their black child, and when one of his Korean children was killed in a car accident, he later said, he could find white undertaker to bury her.
These frustrations were accompanied, in late 1961, by a kind of vision of a nuclear holocaust destroying Indianapolis. Having read a magazine article listing a selection of the best places in the world to avoid an atomic war, Jones took his wife and three children to one of them, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Belo Horizonte did not present many opportunities, however, so Jones moved to Rio to teach at the American school there. "Jim was no fanatic," said a woman who befriended him there. "He had no wild streak at all. They were just normal, rather naive and provincial Mid westerners. They led a simple life, and Jim's main concern was always for those people he saw suffering. He used to stop children in the street and talk to them, help them if he could."
But the church in Indianapolis, now called the Peoples Temple, was suffering from a lack of a charismatic leader, and Marceline was homesick, so Jones decided to return. He affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, a 1.3 million-member denomination, and in 1964 was ordained a minister by that group. But he still considered Indianapolis narrow and racist. A good friend, the Rev. Ross Case, also of the Disciples of Christ, had moved from Indiana to California, and Jones decided to follow him. He eventually brought more than 100 supporters to Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, north of San Francisco. Robert Kauffman, a former bank executive from nearby Ukiah, recalls that Marceline Jones walked into his bank and opened an account of nearly $100,000.