RELIGION / JOHN DART : Church Marks Its 90th Birthday : Chatsworth: A 25-family Anglican parish restored the building. Roy Rogers, past congregation member, will attend Sunday celebration.

The oldest Protestant church building in the San Fernando Valley was saved from destruction in 1965 when it was moved to a cemetery knoll in Chatsworth.

Despite its picturesque bell tower and its New England-style architecture, however, the building known as Pioneer Church became a vacant, neglected eyesore over the next 16 years.

“It was in disrepair, looking forlorn and derelict, its windows all broken by vandals and boarded up,” said Zena Thorpe, who recalled how she and other parishioners of a small Anglican parish adopted the church in 1981 as their place of worship.

Together with Oakwood Memorial Park, which owns the church and rents it for a nominal fee, the 25-family parish has extensively refurbished what was built as the Chatsworth Community Church in 1903. “They have really kept it up well,” said Norman Ruppert, Oakwood’s executive vice president.

In preparation for Pioneer Church’s 90th birthday celebration Sunday, the last replacement stained-glass window was installed one week ago near the entrance.

Onetime Western film star Roy Rogers, who was an active member of the church with wife Dale Evans in the 1940s and 1950s, is expected to be present for a 4 p.m. program at the church.

“Dale used to play piano for the nursery children at the church,” said Virginia Watson of the Chatsworth Historical Society and a parish member. “They lived in Chatsworth when this church building was the only one in the northwest part of the Valley. They also donated the first $1,000 to move it to the cemetery.”

The Catholic-run San Fernando Mission predates all churches in the Valley, but Watson said that Methodists, who helped develop the northern half of the Valley in the late 1800s, established churches in San Fernando and what was known then as Chatsworth Park.

“The Methodist church in San Fernando is older, but that building has only one remaining original wall,” Watson said.

The Chatsworth congregation was organized in 1888 and met in members’ homes. The church building was erected 15 years later with labor donated by both church members and men who were digging the Southern Pacific railroad tunnel through the nearby hills. It functioned as a community center as well as a church for several decades.

By 1952, when Watson moved into the area, the building served the religious, wedding, funeral and other needs of Catholics and a variety of other religious denominations, she said. “It was on the west side of Topanga Canyon Boulevard between Devonshire and Lassen, with orange groves all around it,” Watson said.

The post-World War II housing boom brought more residents to that corner of the Valley, and the building was renamed the Chatsworth Methodist Church in 1959. Soon afterward, however, the congregation built a new facility further north on Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the old church stood silent.

The new owner of the property wanted to tear down the building for a shopping center (although condominiums presently stand there). The Chatsworth Historical Society formed in 1963 and persuaded the new Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board to designate the building Historical Monument No. 14. The owner eventually donated the church to the historical society with the proviso that it be moved within 30 days.

It took longer than a month to make the arrangements, but in January, 1965, with television cameras recording the event, the church was on its way.

The late Frank Enderle of the family-owned cemetery provided the land and contracted for the concrete foundation and electrical lines. The Oakwood owner also replaced the leaky roof.

But without a congregation, the building started to deteriorate and became the victim of vandals. “One Sunday morning, several local boys were discovered in the church and found to have systematically destroyed the church’s windows and light fixtures,” Watson said.

“During the height of the hippie movement, strange rituals went on at the church site, including one attempt to burn down the church,” she said.

In November, 1981, the congregation of St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Catholic Church took up residence in the church. The parish is aligned with the largest of the traditionalist Anglican movements that broke from the Episcopal Church over that denomination’s vote in 1976 to ordain women priests and revise the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

A sign on the church notes that the parish uses the 1928 prayer book.

Father Anthony Rasch, the third rector of the parish, said that a pontifical Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Sunday by the American Catholic Church’s Bishop A. David Seeland, who currently lives in Downey.

Rasch, 54, who supports himself through a variety of jobs, once was rector of a Placentia parish, serving as a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

Confirmation and baptismal rites are also planned during the morning service, Rasch said. Tours of the building will be given between 1 and 4 p.m.

“We can seat 75 people comfortably in our assortment of donated pews,” said Zena Thorpe, who is the parish secretary. “We have folding chairs for larger gatherings.”

Because of the church’s attractive setting near the reddish boulders and rock strata characteristic of the Chatsworth area, the parish once frequently rented the building for weddings, Thorpe said.

But weddings were soon restricted to families and friends of parishioners, not only because of the burdens those arrangements placed on members, but also because of concerns of cemetery officials.

“The problem is that most of our burials take place in that area and there is limited parking available,” said Ruppert, the Oakwood executive vice president.

The cemetery receives occasional requests from film companies to shoot scenes at the church--and indeed one company was filming sequences early this week.

“We get fussy about films if the content is something degrading or violent. I do refuse some requests,” he said.