RELIGION : In God’s New House : Worshipers congregate in mini-malls and do ‘Praizercize’ aerobics to gospel rock.

The faithful among you have probably already noticed the change: The style banner that has graced this page for the last two years is gone.

I could make the reason sound complicated, but it’s really not. When an editor suggests that it might be time to expand and broaden--to take a closer look at the issues, ideas and things that matter most to people around the county--it’s about as ambiguous a message as God sending a burning bush.

And everyone knows how rare burning bushes are these days. You just don’t see them much any more.

Maybe it’s because they are too old-fashioned to be relevant--kind of like Morse code compared to cellular phones. Or a Victrola compared to a CD player.

Or a traditional church compared to the Rev. Ken Craft’s congregation.

Craft, dressed one recent afternoon in the same fashionably baggy pants and a Patagonia shirt that he is likely to wear to any Sunday sermon, doesn’t put much stock in archaic things such as pews, stained glass or organ music. Surroundings, he says, are equally unimportant.

“If the spirit of the Lord is present in a garage,” he says, “you can worship in a garage.”

Craft looked out through the horizontal blinds of the Sonrise Christian Fellowship in Simi Valley to the Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant a few feet away. A guns and ammo shop is next door. A Kmart store is at the other end of the strip mall’s parking lot. Occasionally, someone dropping clothes off at the cleaners a couple of doors down stops in to take a look.

Moving his congregation out of a local junior high school and into a former doughnut shop wasn’t Craft’s first choice. He really wanted a hotel. But it would have been too expensive, he says. So he simply did what several other churches around the county have done when faced with impossibly high land and building costs.

They have converted former real estate offices, storefronts and office suites to meet their religious needs. One has been meeting in a bank. Another has been gathering at a Howard Johnson’s.

“The important thing today is for churches to be relevant to people’s lives,” says Craft, adding that in just over a year, the Sonrise congregation has grown from a handful to about 600 mostly young singles and families.

“It does lack the Gothic tradition that many of the European churches have,” he says, surrounded by plastic plants on the walls and fold-up chairs that can be moved for “Praizercise” classes--aerobics to gospel rock.

“But who needs that today?” he asks. “It’s a waste of time and money.”

Now, a lot of you stuck-in-the-past people may think that reducing a church to the level of a Kmart is a little like putting a McDonald’s next to the Sistine Chapel. That we have basically tossed about 600 years of culture out the window. That an entire generation has somehow lost an appreciation for the sort of great architecture that inspires awe.

But if you think about it, Craft may have a point. After all, just consider all those supposedly great cathedrals of Europe.

In today’s busy world, who has time to lug huge blocks of marble around or figure out how to get a two-ton gargoyle up on some pretentious flying buttress? And what about heating and air-conditioning costs? Wouldn’t there be an annoying echo with all those unnecessarily high ceilings?

There’s also the whole issue of personal commitment. In the 1300s, it was probably pretty easy to find a guy who would agree to work for 30 years of his life on something like the Prague cathedral clock, which still displays Jesus and his disciples every hour on the hour. But not anymore. I mean, how many guys do you know who after completing a work of art would agree to be blinded as a guarantee that the art would never be duplicated?

No, Craft is on the right track.

Let’s forget about aspiring to any kind of architectural greatness around this county. It costs too much. It takes too long.

Things of delicacy, grace and beauty just aren’t relevant anymore.

Besides, there’s already plenty of real estate around that could be converted to meet just about any church’s needs.

Church groups could meet at the local bowling alley after hours if they didn’t mind distinguishing between the thundering voice of God and someone throwing a strike.

They could gather at the community pool, where full-body baptisms on a hot summer day would be a certain draw.

They could listen to sermons at closed dental offices, where they could learn that wrong living leads to moral--and tooth--decay.

But one day, at any one of them, there may come a quiet knock on the door. It will be someone they don’t know. He probably won’t speak their language, but his purpose will be clear.

He will be very old, blind and willing to build a clock.

For their sake, I hope they let him in.

* THE PREMISE: Attitudes is a new column about current trends and issues.