A small Pentecostal church in Torrance, which...

A small Pentecostal church in Torrance, which draws about 100 adults for services, collected the usual amount of donations one Sunday several weeks ago.

But instead of using the money for Jubilee Fellowship’s $4,000 weekly expenses, Pastor Randy Rhoades did what he had told his congregation he would do. He took a check for $3,772.30 across the street to Ascension Lutheran Church and dropped in on Pastor Alan A. Wyneken. Rhoades handed his friend the check, explaining that he had read in Ascension’s newsletter that the 500-member Lutheran congregation was having financial difficulties.

“His eyes lit up, his mouth dropped, and he gave me the biggest hug I’d received in a long time,” Rhoades recalled.

“I was speechless,” Wyneken said. “I know of nothing like this . . . in more than 28 years in the ministry.”

Wyneken told the regional newspaper of his denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, that he could “scarcely comprehend” the generosity of his neighbors, a church affiliated with the Assemblies of God.

Wyneken personally thanked the Jubilee Fellowship the next Sunday morning. One week later, Jubilee churchgoers were greeted in the parking lot with an 18-foot-long, thank-you note signed by the Lutheran congregants.

As it turned out, Ascension Lutheran still has about a $30,000 deficit, a spokesman said. Wyneken preached his final sermon last Sunday after accepting a Chula Vista pastorate. Ascension may delay hiring a senior pastor until finances improve.

Nevertheless, the gesture is fondly remembered. In Wyneken’s words, Jubilee Fellowship is “a small congregation that struggles and has difficulties. . . . It is not at all that they have an abundance of wealth. But they also have an abundance of God’s grace and love.”

PRIESTS

About 575 priests, or 95% of the Catholic clergy involved in pastoral work in the Los Angeles archdiocese, will be in Palm Springs for five days next week. The first Los Angeles Priest Assembly, starting Monday at the Radisson Hotel, was authorized by the archdiocese’s Priests Council as a means of getting the largest number of priests together for discussions about ministries and priorities in the next decade. A United Methodist minister, the Rev. Kenneth Mitchell, was hired to be the conference facilitator because of his experience with priest retreats and conferences. Father William Kerze, who coordinated the plans, said some 1,470 priests live within the archdiocesan borders, but many are retired or are in teaching or administrative positions. Many of them will fill in for colleagues next week at parishes that have daily Masses.

MEETING

As many as 5,000 university-level religion teachers and researchers will gather next Saturday in Anaheim for the annual joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. Thousands of papers will be given and discussed in seminars at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel, starting at noon Saturday and ending Nov. 21. Author Salman Rushdie’s controversial book, “The Satanic Verses,” and its effects in inflaming the Islamic world will be examined by a panel Nov. 19. Producer Norman Lear, founding chairman of People For the American Way, will address a later session on the lobby’s support for efforts to restore religious history in public school textbooks.