A Pastor’s $20-Million Last Hurrah : Transformation: The push is on to increase membership in one of the largest Protestant churches in Los Angeles, as it relocates to Chatsworth.

The Rev. Jess Moody slumped in his chair, his usually upbeat demeanor momentarily dragged down by the strain that goes with trying to set new roots for a congregation that, until last year, had stayed put for nearly four decades.

Membership is dramatically down and it’s no small task to establish a new identity for his congregation--even for one that once was among the largest Protestant churches in Los Angeles--now that it has changed its name from First Baptist Church of Van Nuys to Shepherd of the Hills, he allowed.

Moreover, construction of a planned new church complex in Chatsworth is nearly a year behind schedule and the man he thought might one day succeed him as pastor has stepped aside, a victim of burnout.

“This is a precarious time in the church’s history,” Moody said, a certain weariness evident in his voice. “You know, this is probably my last hurrah. I’m 64 years old and I’m trying to make it happen one more time.”

Moody, however, is not one to dwell on the negative. Without missing a beat, the Texas-born pastor with a penchant for building large churches sat upright, and in a voice turned strong, launched into a discourse on his plans.

“Look at that,” he said, pointing to a large aerial photograph of the west San Fernando Valley that graces a lobby wall outside his church office. “A million people live west of the 405. That’s two Fort Worths!

“People tell me we’ve got the best site for a new church in all of Los Angeles, maybe even in America.”

Moving a long established congregation is hard enough. Long-time members tend to be upset by the move and many can be counted on to drop out, noted C. Peter Wagner, a church growth specialist at Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary. At Shepherd of the Hills, membership has dropped by almost 3,000 while Moody tried to move the congregation over the last few years.

What makes Moody’s move doubly difficult is the emphasis on reaching the “unchurched” that Shepherd of the Hills has claimed as its mission. Rather than trying to lure new members from existing West Valley churches or limiting himself to keeping his old congregation intact, the people Moody said he wants are the ones who profess to have no interest in going to church.

“I’m looking for people who don’t have a Bible in their homes or any time for it,” Moody said with characteristic flair. “But it ain’t my style to go around with halitosis breath grabbing people. If we create interest, people will come.”

The site Moody has bet his congregation’s future on is a 14-acre plot boasting a third of a mile of Simi Valley Freeway frontage between Corbin and Winnetka avenues adjacent to the massive Porter Ranch development. Grading is under way and Moody hopes that the first phase of the $20-million relocation project will be completed by late fall.

For the time being, though, Shepherd of the Hills’ home is 17,500 square feet of space in two Chatsworth industrial buildings across the street from each other and about three miles from the freeway site. Since January, Sunday services have been conducted at nearby Chatsworth High School or at the Mason Park Recreation Center. An outdoor service is, however, planned for the new site on Easter Sunday.

When Moody describes the plans for the new church complex, the one-time college radio sports announcer sounds almost as if he is describing a country club. The first building to be constructed will be a $6-million, 65,000-square-foot structure that will contain a 1,900-seat auditorium and several classrooms and offices, plus a full-scale health club open to non-church members as well, he said.

Plans also call for later construction of a half-mile jogging trail complete with a par exercise course, a 400-seat theater for cultural events and lectures, and a 3,100-seat sanctuary in a building with a wrap-around wooden deck, adjacent man-made lake and indoor and outdoor baptisterys.

In an effort to have a “universalist appeal,” not a single cross, Christianity’s principal symbol, is planned for any of the building exteriors.

And everything, Moody insisted, will have “a Connecticut farmhouse-feel to it,” even down to the proverbial white picket fence.

“We’re trying to avoid traditional symbols that may turn some people off,” he said. “What we will have will say to people that we’re relaxed about life. Today, we have too many churches that are against everything, including breathing. The people on the outside hate them.”

Attracting “church outsiders” has long been Moody’s focus. After earning a doctorate in theology, he served as pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Owensboro, Ky., then moved on to another in West Palm Beach, Fla. It was there that he first made his mark.

Under his direction, the church grew to 6,000 members. He founded Palm Beach Atlantic College, created a 25-station church television network and became a nationally known church figure.

At the same time, though, the network fell more than $300,000 into debt, a debt that was assumed by First Baptist Church of Van Nuys after Moody arrived in 1976.

First Baptist, which began congregational life in a railroad car in 1914, was, in its heyday, the preeminent Valley religious institution. Over the years, it spawned a host of other local churches.

The church relocated to 14800 Sherman Way in the early 1950s, and under the leadership of the Rev. Harold L. Fickett Jr., became a 12,000-member mega-church. Fickett resigned in 1975 to assume the presidency of a Christian college back East.

Almost from the beginning, Moody was in and out of hot water with some members of his congregation over his attempts to reorganize church administrative procedures and his desire to affiliate the then-independent church with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Nearly 300 dissidents broke away and organized Chatsworth’s Faith Evangelical Church, which Fickett later returned to the Valley to pastor.

The Rev. David W. Miller, Faith Evangelical’s current pastor, noted a “certain irony” in Shepherd of the Hills also relocating in Chatsworth, but he said he welcomes the move.

“There’s a half-million unchurched people within 30 minutes of here. There’s plenty of room for a whole lot of churches,” said Miller, whose church now attracts about 2,000 worshipers.

In recent years, Moody has gotten his share of negative publicity. In 1985, he admitted losing $40,000 in an investment scheme perpetrated by a former church member. Hundreds of other investors, including many from First Baptist and Faith Evangelical, also were victimized.

The following year, while trying to secure a new church site, Moody publicly stated that it was “God’s will” that his congregation move to the “promised land” of the West Valley to keep that area “from Satan’s grip.”

Moody later said his use of “church language” had been misunderstood. Nonetheless, his remarks gave Monteria Estates homeowners an additional edge in their eventually successful fight to keep First Baptist from relocating on 12.5 acres adjacent to the exclusive Chatsworth neighborhood.

A decade of struggle to relocate First Baptist appeared at an end when the freeway frontage site was acquired and First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys agreed to purchase First Baptist’s 10-acre Sherman Way property for $11 million.

But then First Foursquare scuttled the agreement and an attempt to sell the land to a commercial developer also fell through. First Foursquare eventually re-entered the picture, but it cost First Baptist $1 million more to vacate the property than had been expected.

In the meantime, delays resulting from having to meet a host of city requirements snowballed at the new church site, postponing the planned move-in date from late 1989 to late 1990.

All of this took its toll on the Rev. Jim Rives, Moody’s right-hand man and the church’s business manager. At 48, Rives has quit the ministry to enter real estate sales and political fund-raising, although he remains a paid consultant to Moody and a member of the congregation.

“I sort of thought Jim would some day take my place,” Moody said. “But he’s changed his tune.”

Rives said, “my job was to take the heat on everything involved with the move so Jess could remain the pastor. But it started to affect my attitude. I burned out.”

The move has also taken its toll on membership. Rives said “several hundred” congregants have left the church, which Moody admitted is down to “7,500 names on the membership roll,” a great percentage of whom never attend services.

With membership off, so is church income. “It’s a little down, but we’re not breaking our hearts over it. . . . We have plenty of money. It’s just in the members’ pockets,” Moody said. “We have 1,750 people who are regular givers to the church. Perhaps 800 tithe 10% of their income,” he said.

John Jauregui, a 20-year church member who chairs Shepherd of the Hill’s board of trustees, also insisted that church finances and membership remain strong.

“The Lord has given us a good, solid base. Plus, new people are starting to show up at services. For a church in transition, that’s very good,” said the Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Corp. executive.

However, Herb Hollinger, editor of the California Southern Baptist, the denomination’s state newspaper, noted that “Jess seems real weary. He’s had to fight a lot of battles and he’s getting tired. They may not have been ready for the magnitude of this adjustment.”

Still, Hollinger expressed confidence that Moody’s latest gamble will pay off. Wagner, the church growth expert, added that demographically speaking at least, Moody’s plans for Shepherd of the Hills make good sense.

“Churches, like everything else, are in the marketing business as well,” Wagner said. “As American culture changes, the churches that fare best are the ones that change with the culture.”

Moody, Wagner said, is merely following a course pioneered by the Rev. Robert Schuller, pastor of Garden Grove’s highly successful Crystal Cathedral, whose appeal to suburban baby boomers has garnered him a 10,000-member congregation and an international reputation.

“It’s the baby boomers, young parents in their mid-20s to 40s who respond best to this style of ministry. Affluent, suburban areas like the West Valley are full of them,” he said.

Wagner also noted it was common for “old-timers” to leave in such circumstances for more traditional churches. “That’s OK. That’s just how churches evolve,” he said.

Shepherd of the Hills remains affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, but one that has been racked with bitter in-fighting in recent years between fundamentalists and moderates. Both factions generally consider the Bible to be the inerrant word of God; however the moderates, with whom Moody has been aligned, tend to be more accepting of limited dissent and are socially more liberal.

But there is no hint of this denominational affiliation in the congregation’s new name.

Mark Wyatt, the Fresno-based spokesman for the California Southern Baptist Convention, noted that “a number” of newer Southern Baptist congregations around the state have opted not to include the denomination’s name in their congregational name “for strategic reasons.”

Doing so, he added, “eliminates one more reason for someone to avoid the congregation. A lot of people don’t want to affiliate with a particular congregation.”

“In California, the name ‘Baptist’ is a negative. It conjures up images of Jerry Falwell,” Wagner added.

For his part, Moody insisted that the Valley’s changing demographics and church scene left him no alternative but to move to Chatsworth. More than half of First Baptist’s existing congregation--most of them white and middle class or upper middle class--had already moved to the West Valley, he said.

Moreover, in the central Valley he was forced to compete for members with both Van Nuys First Foursquare and Sun Valley’s Grace Community Church, two fast-growing but decidedly more conservative congregations.

“Just give us a few years,” Moody insisted, smiling. “You’ll see. We’re going to be the church of the 21st Century in the West Valley.”