Church Has Much Firmer Foundation After Quakes : Construction: Sanctuary is reinforced after damage from Whittier and Sierra Madre temblors.

When the congregation at First United Methodist Church in Pasadena sings, “How Firm a Foundation” this morning, the hymn will ring true.

The foundation--literally, the 70-year-old, neo-Gothic sanctuary--has been reinforced to equip the grand old structure for future temblors.

The work was started after the Whittier quake in 1987. Just as Phase One was completed, the Sierra Madre quake hit last year.

“It has really been a struggle for the congregation, but it’s also been a blessing because it brought people together,” said Jim Halverson, a lifelong member and chairman of the committee that raised the money to rebuild. “Rather than being something that pulls the church apart, it’s invigorated the congregation.”

While the $3.1-million structural and rehabilitation work was being done on the sanctuary, the 1,200-member congregation has been meeting in the church gymnasium or in a chapel next to the main sanctuary. This morning’s service marks the first time members have worshiped in the sanctuary since the June 28, 1991, Sierra Madre earthquake.

The sanctuary, at the corner of Oakland Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, was built in 1923. The Methodist congregation was founded in 1875, and membership peaked during the 1950s at about 3,500, said the Rev. George Mann, senior minister for 19 years.

The congregation began to repair and reinforce its church campus after the Whittier earthquake knocked one of the sanctuary’s cathedral-style gables into the street. An early-morning aftershock caused an old chimney to crash through the ceiling of the 1-year-olds’ Sunday School classroom.

No one was in the room at the time, but the incident “pointed out to us graphically that we had to do something,” Halverson said.

Over the next year, congregation members debated whether they could afford to save the old church. They thought about tearing it down and rebuilding, moving to a different site and even disbanding the church.

“We all knew the building was worth saving,” Halverson said. “It has a lot of significance to us and to the community. We knew it would be too expensive to try to duplicate this kind of Gothic structure.”

The sanctuary has $1 million worth of stained-glass windows, solid oak doors, and intricate wood carvings, panels and moldings. All those touches have been saved in the rebuilt church.

Once it was determined that the church buildings could be retrofitted to withstand earthquakes, the congregation knew that was the way go to, Mann said. Members raised much of the needed capital and took out loans of about $1.5 million to pay for the remaining work.

The project started in September, 1990, with reinforcing of the education wing, where the Sunday School classrooms are housed and where the church runs its Epworth Preschool.

Phase One was completed in April, 1991, at a cost of $1.3 million. But no sooner had feasibility studies been ordered for retrofitting the sanctuary than the Sierra Madre quake hit.

The revamped education building sailed through that quake with only a few chips in the paint. But the sanctuary sustained $500,000 worth of damage, including walls that were broken at the roof line.

“We had to close it immediately because it was in danger of falling apart. You could tell that if it had shaken a little while longer, the walls would have fallen down,” Halverson said.

For 15 months, the old sanctuary has been strengthened from floor to ceiling. The thick brick walls were reinforced with steel, then tied together at the top with a bond beam of reinforced concrete. Inside the attic, a “diaphragm” was put in place that connects the walls so they will all shift together the next time the earth rumbles.

In the process, the building was gutted. “It looked like a bomb crater about a year ago,” Mann said.

While the church was being retrofitted, the congregation also decided to revamp the front of the sanctuary, improving the acoustics, bringing the choir loft and the pulpit closer to the congregation, and adding more room for weddings and baptisms.

“It used to be the altar was very high and mighty and removed,” Mann said. “Now, it will be a more flexible area that’s in the midst of the people.”