RELIGION / JOHN DART : Officials Begin Planning for 1st Crusade in Valley : Evangelism: A group of 130 churches pledges support for the Billy Graham-style event next summer in Van Nuys. Luis Palau will be featured.

In a first for the San Fernando Valley, a Billy Graham-style crusade will be staged in Van Nuys next summer.

A broad range of 130 evangelical churches in the Valley area have pledged support for the June 1-4 event, which will feature evangelist Luis Palau, an Argentine-born American who ranks second behind Graham in mass evangelism success and is regarded by some pastors as a natural successor.

The crusade is not officially set, but organizers said the high response rate virtually assures the event will take place.

“It’s definite,” said Crusade Executive Director Lawrence Hoke, a Litton vice president for finance based in Woodland Hills. He said the crusade budget will fall between $300,000 and $400,000.

The Valley has not hosted a large-scale crusade in the past, partly because the region has no professional sports stadium or major indoor arena.

Chosen as the site was the football stadium at Van Nuys’ Birmingham High School, which can accommodate 10,000 people in the stands and 5,000 more on the field, crusade officials said.

It was no coincidence that the field was used for an outdoor Easter morning service this year by the large Church on the Way, a Foursquare Gospel congregation in Van Nuys pastored by charismatic-evangelical luminary Jack Hayford.

Hayford and his executive pastor, the Rev. Scott Bauer, initiated the move to invite Palau and his Portland, Ore.-based organization to the Valley. Named as honorary crusade co-chairmen were members of Church on the Way--actor Pat Boone and business executive Herbert F. (Bert) Boeckmann II of Galpin Motors. Boeckmann, recently named by Mayor Richard Riordan to the Los Angeles Police Commission, is also on the finance committee for the crusade.

A nominating committee of ministers tapped another member of Hayford’s church, Hoke, as the crusade’s top executive. “I’m very excited. I’ve been very impressed with the cooperation we’ve received from various religious leaders in the area,” Hoke said.

In Portland, Colin James, director for the Valley crusade and a staffer for Palau, said that “only if something cataclysmic happens” would Palau decline the invitation. “It looks very positive at this point,” James said. The official announcement will come in late September, he said.

Palau backed away from a crusade planned for the heart of Los Angeles in April, 1991, after the evangelistic association found months earlier that, in the words of a spokesman then, “there weren’t enough churches solidly interested in it.” Instead, he held a series of rallies that April in the Palm Springs area, drawing 10,800 people over six days.

Better known abroad, Palau conducted his most successful U.S. crusade five days last fall in Phoenix. About 72,000 attended the rallies in the America West Arena and nearly 15,000 volunteers participated as choir members, ushers, counselors and other aides, said Fred Baye, director of public affairs for Palau.

No evangelist has approached the 110 million people that Graham has claimed to preach before. But Baye said that Palau, 58, is thought to be second with his 300 crusades over 25 years of preaching before an estimated 10 million in 60 countries.

“I believe the mantle of Billy Graham is probably going to fall on him,” said the Rev. David Miller, pastor of the Church at Rocky Peak in Chatsworth and chairman of the crusade’s ministers committee. “A man like Luis Palau is going to have more impact because of changes (in the ethnic makeup) of society,” Miller said.

While popular in Latin America, Palau also held large rallies in Romania in 1990 and 1991, and scored a first for western evangelists in the old Soviet Union by conducting open-air revivals in five Russian cities in September, 1989.

More U.S. invitations started coming Palau’s way in 1990 after Graham was injured in a fall and trimmed his crusade schedule and staff. As a courtesy, Palau checked with Graham and the veteran evangelist encouraged him to accept whatever invitations he wanted, said Baye, who worked for Graham’s association in the late 1980s.

“Admittedly, his name is just not that well-known in this country,” Baye said.

Is that a problem for Valley organizers?

“I don’t think that people are as impressed as they were a decade ago with charismatic personalities,” said the Rev. Terry Inman, pastor of the North Hollywood Assembly of God and chairman of the crusade’s prayer committee.

The enthusiasm for the crusade apparently derives not so much from securing an accomplished evangelist, he said, but from a newly cooperative spirit among area pastors in the evangelical Christian camp.

“There seems to be a consensus that churches need to come together and project a positive visibility for Christ in the Valley,” Inman said.

The initial list of supporting churches includes many Baptist, Pentecostal and independent congregations but also has a sprinkling of Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist churches. Most are San Fernando Valley churches, but several are in the Santa Clarita, Simi and Conejo valleys.

Although Palau, born of Spanish-French-Scottish parents, has lived in Oregon for three decades, his name and bilingual ability is expected to appeal to Latino residents in the region. (No decision has been made on whether he will preach one night in Spanish.)

Crusade planners have invited participation from the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese so that Catholics stirred by the crusade may be referred to Catholic parishes or organizations.

“Speaking personally,” Inman said, “I am not at all interested in trying to proselytize Catholics, but to increase their faith.”

Father Vivian Ben Lima, the ecumenical director for the archdiocese who was contacted by crusade organizers, said he referred the matter to a charismatic group within the archdiocese, the Southern California Renewal Community. A Renewal Community spokesman declined to comment.

“I think we should get involved on some level,” Lima said, indicating that his reservations lie in theological differences between Catholicism and evangelical Christianity. Nevertheless, the priest said, “These crusades provide some people with an emotional boost, which hopefully would get them to go back to a parish.”

Church leaders no doubt see plenty of evangelistic opportunities among the religiously unaffiliated in the San Fernando Valley.

One of every five adults in the Valley said that they had no religion in a December, 1991, survey by The Times Poll of religious activity and beliefs. The poll also found that only 39% belonged to a religious congregation (whether Christian, Jewish or another faith), compared to 69% in national surveys.