The Crenshaw Christian Center, a 14,000-member congregation...

The Crenshaw Christian Center, a 14,000-member congregation that moved to the one-time Pepperdine University campus in Los Angeles two years ago, has finally sold its former church complex in Inglewood and will break ground Sunday for a large new sanctuary.

Pastor Frederick Price announced this week that the old church property, whose Crenshaw Boulevard location gave the predominantly black congregation its permanent name, was sold for $3.5 million to the First Church of God.

The purchasing church, pastored by the Rev. Benjamin F. Reid, will hold its first service there Oct. 12, a spokesman said. The 2,500-member congregation is affiliated with the Church of God, based in Anderson, Ind.

Crenshaw Christian Center attracts about 5,500 people to three Sunday services in what was the Pepperdine campus’ auditorium, spokeswoman Victoria Pipkin said. One of those services is videotaped each week for television syndication under the name “Ever-Increasing Faith.”

Although the congregation is still waiting for building permits from the city, Price said a ground-breaking ceremony will be held Sunday afternoon for the $8.5-million, 10,000-seat sanctuary. Completion is expected next year, Pipkin said.

HOLIDAYS

The Jewish High Holy Days will begin Friday at sundown with the observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Services, for which reservations are made, will be held Friday evening and Saturday morning at synagogues and, in some cases, hotels and other large auditoriums to accommodate worshipers. The 10-day period ends Oct. 13 on Yom Kippur.

PEOPLE

The Rev. John Killinger, who assumes the pulpit at 119-year-old First Congregational Church of Los Angeles on Sunday, spent 15 years as a professor of preaching at Vanderbilt Divinity School before taking on a major pastorate in 1980. That happened to be the First Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Va., where he eventually critiqued another preacher in town, the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist Church. Killinger delivered a series of sermons and made television appearances in discussing Falwell from the mainline church perspective. Just before leaving Lynchburg First Presbyterian, Killinger stirred up church members in a frank report that called the congregation “pretty lightweight,” one that relied on church staff to make it work and indulged itself too much in trivial criticisms of the pastor. Killinger, whose latest book about pastoring is “The Tender Shepherd,” told the Lynchburg News and Daily Advance that his criticism of the congregation was intended to be “caring” and “constructive,” though he acknowledged that for some “it was just a red flag . . . (and) quite the talk piece around the cocktail party circuit.”

One of the most important new faces at the Chancery, or headquarters, of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese on 9th Street is Father Stephen Blaire, recently appointed as moderator of the curia and chancellor. Blaire, 44, a former high school principal in Mission Hills, said his position will be roughly comparable to that of an executive vice president in the secular world. Earlier, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony had named Father Fisher Robinson, 56, one of only two black Catholic pastors in Los Angeles, as vicar for black Catholics.

DATES

A U.S.-born Orthodox priest who has served 10 years at the St. Catherine Monastery of Mt. Sinai is showing a video of the isolated monastery, which houses valuable early Christian art and manuscripts, this evening and Sunday at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles. Before the video showings, Father Makarios will participate in cathedral services, including the 10:15 a.m. Divine Liturgy on Sunday.