Building on Faith : Churches: Despite quake and recession, expansion plans at several sites are moving ahead.

The congregation sat outdoors Sunday on folding chairs for a chilly morning service on a Pacoima knoll.

They weren’t forced outside by the Northridge earthquake--which has damaged dozens of houses of worship in the San Fernando Valley. The occasion was the congregation’s first service on the site of what will be a new, $1-million building.

“You’re outside because you want to be, not because the ground is shaking,” Pastor C. Jessel Strong told 100 members of Parks Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The lingering recession and the destructive earthquake have put the expansion plans of many churches on hold, but Parks Chapel AME is among at least three black congregations in Pacoima with ambitious building plans.

“You are witnesses to the God who has brought us to this point and who has faith in us,” Strong told churchgoers.

The service and a groundbreaking ceremony later in the day celebrated the persistent hope of Parks Chapel AME Church congregants to overcome seven years of frustration to build a new church and eventually leave their cramped rented quarters at the Oddfellows Hall in San Fernando.

Another congregation closer to such a goal is Paradise Church of God in Christ, which is one month away from opening its $245,000 building in Pacoima. The Jan. 17 earthquake broke two windows in the 500-seat Paradise church, but Pastor Emmanuel Knight said if anything, the quake helped the church by bringing people closer together.

And at Greater Community Missionary Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dudley Chatman is senior pastor, the congregation has hired a contractor to build a two-story building for educational and community activities on two large lots that the Pacoima church bought and paid off over the last five years.

“The church community will go forward,” Chatman said. “The churches are confident that the community is solid, virile and worth the risk.”

It is not unusual for a congregation to be planning for new buildings----Chatman mentioned two Baptist churches in nearby San Fernando and Lake View Terrace raising money for building funds.

But the church is widely acknowledged as a vital social glue in African American communities, especially congregations with their own buildings and the image of a stable institution. By building new houses of worship despite hard times, these churches are making a statement about the roles they intend to play.

“Once this church is built, then we have to build lives,” Strong reminded his open-air congregation Sunday. “Unless the church is healing and raising people from the muck, we sit here in vain, we are worthless.”

Parks Chapel AME, like the large First AME Church of Los Angeles pastored by the Rev. Cecil (Chip) Murray, is part of a denomination with a strong social ministry.

Strong said that Los Angeles city officials have approved architectural plans for a building that will include a 350-seat sanctuary, classrooms and a fellowship hall at 11070 Borden Ave. A contractor was hired last week, but no starting date has been set for construction, the pastor said.

In 1987, the 300-member Parks Chapel AME bought the present site overlooking Pacoima and planned to build a church there within 18 months, but a dispute with a contractor dashed those hopes, said Strong, who has been the pastor since 1991.

“This is the closest we’ve ever been to a new church,” said Charolyn Jones of Pacoima, a member since she joined the church as a youth in 1957. “I believe it is going to be built.”

Over at Paradise Church of God in Christ on Herrick Avenue, barbecues are held every Saturday and the 200-member congregation holds a variety of fund-raising events in anticipation of moving into its new home March 13. Members will march that day from a gymnasium at a city park where they have been renting worship space for $1,000 a month.

Although the rent payments will end, Knight said that the congregation has $2,900 monthly payments on a high-interest mortgage plus payments on another lot and utility bills.

“It’s a great test of our faith,” said the 48-year-old pastor, whose congregation is affiliated with the nation’s largest Pentecostal denomination. Knight said that the 500-seat church, which has no separate rooms for classes or other meetings, was built partly with volunteer labor because the church’s $100,000 loan did not cover all building costs.

“The earthquake was only a minor worry compared to the financial part,” Knight said.

“In fact, attendance and membership has been up since the earthquake, and people are showing more love and concern for each other since then.”