Carson Trend : Churches Grow in Shopping Centers

For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

--Matthew 18:20

The sun shines clearly through the windows of the Word of God Faith Center. There is no stained glass casting muted rays over hard wooden pews and cold stone floors. There is no lofty, cross-topped steeple.

Instead, rows of stackable chairs line a speckled orange carpet, and the members who fill them seem content to praise God in a room where dresses once hung from display racks. They have transformed a storefront into a sanctuary.

Once a Wise department store, the space, nestled between a small health clinic and a branch library, is now managed by a minister.

“The building is not the church,” said Allen Charbonnet, pastor of the Word of God Faith Center in Carson’s Scottsdale Center on Avalon Boulevard. “Jesus never died for a wood or brick building; he died for people. People are what make the church.”

‘Building People’

Charbonnet’s words were echoed by other ministers and members of the growing number of small churches that coexist with sandwich shops, toy makers and real estate agents in Carson’s commercial and industrial centers.

“Our emphasis is building people, not building buildings,” said Major Johnson, pastor of the Bread of Life Christian Center, one of two churches in the Emerald Commercial Center on Dominguez Street across from the Carson Mall.

Billed on business cards as a “church on the move,” Johnson’s 3-year old church came to Dominguez Street from a Carson industrial complex where it had rented space. To pay less rent and save for the purchase of a building large enough for its 300 members, the congregation uses the shopping center for church offices and evening meetings and rents the Carnegie Junior High School auditorium for Sunday services.

The two storefront churches are part of a growing number of mostly nondenominational Protestant congregations in Carson that have located in shopping centers. At least five of the city’s commercial centers have two churches; one center has four.

Some, unable to afford free-standing churches, come to the storefronts after using garages, school auditoriums, hotel conference rooms and other temporary locations. They plan to grow and ultimately to move into traditional church buildings.

Others have elaborately converted the storefronts to make them more like traditional churches and plan to stay there.

But churches don’t pay taxes as businesses do, and some city officials say the storefronts should be devoted to their highest commercial use. The proliferation of churches led the city Planning Commission in June to propose tightening regulations, said Adolfo Reyes, redevelopment project manager. The proposal, in effect, would have banned storefront churches by requiring them to be on lots of no less than 1 acre with setbacks on all sides, among other requirements.

After hearing complaints from several ministers, the City Council rejected the proposal recently and voted instead to enforce existing parking, building, and health and safety code requirements.

No ministers at the meeting spoke in favor of the proposal, but Dr. James L. Ford, pastor of the 35-year-old Judson Baptist Church in Carson, said in an interview that churches should not be allowed to open so close to each other.

“I feel that some regulation is in order,” said Ford. “I wouldn’t like to see four or five churches side by side, just like I wouldn’t want to see four or five liquor stores.”

Members of the small churches say they should be allowed to open wherever space is available.

“We have the same objective, and that is to overcome evil with good,” said Lefu Amperosa, an ordained minister who is secretary for Faith on the Rock Church, which rents office and meeting space in a Dominguez Street center and is one of 10 churches that hold Sunday services in rented rooms at Carson’s Community Center.

Like Amperosa, other ministers have a vision of eradicating crime and gang violence in Carson.

Charles L. Miles said he started a youth ministry in his garage eight years ago, conducting Bible studies and seminars in an effort to reach the young people who congregated on his street.

“We talked about things they wanted to talk about,” Miles said. Three moves later, the Good Hope Christian Center boasts a 150-member congregation and meets in a commercial center on Dominguez Street.

Cheaper Rent

Luanne Watts, a spokeswoman for Arvco Realty, which owns the Scottsdale and Emerald centers, agreed that small churches are opening in commercial centers because the rent--between 64 cents and $1.50 per square foot--”is much more inexpensive than free-standing space.” She did not have a figure for the cost of renting free-standing buildings.

Johnson, the Bread of Life pastor, agreed. He said properties in Carson are so expensive that small churches are forced to lease storefronts until they can raise enough money to buy buildings of their own.

Reactions from the churches’ commercial neighbors have been mixed. Two cited parking problems and said they agreed with a Planning Commission statement that having churches in commercial centers is not “good planning policy.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen churches in a center,” said an electronics store employee in the Scottsdale Center. “It just doesn’t seem right.”

Rob J. Hayden, owner of Custom Design Draperies in a center with two churches on Del Amo Boulevard, agreed.

“A place like this isn’t really equipped to have a church. This is all manufacturing.”

Hayden said his staff sometimes works on weekends and can’t find parking on Sundays because the lot is filled by churchgoers.

But William J. DeLuca, owner of Ultrasonic Field Services in the same complex, said he hasn’t had any problems.

“It’s actually somewhat beneficial,” he said, explaining that one of the pastors maintains the property and removes graffiti from buildings. “If it wasn’t for these two (churches), the lot would be more congested during the week with industrial users.”

Another neighbor, Remy Tan Fuentes, said she likes having the churches there and believes that the presence of members in the evenings and on weekends has decreased crime.

“I enjoy hearing them singing,” said Fuentes, who owns a toy manufacturing company and often works late.

Fuentes equated having churches in the complex to a folk belief about having an elder in one’s home: “It’s a blessing.”