Easter’s Tentful of Miracles

Church tent meetings conjure up images of old-time religion in the Bible Belt--revivals held by itinerant evangelists and rousing Pentecostal healing services.

But as Easter arrived Sunday in the San Fernando Valley, the tent took on new meaning to suburban churchgoers displaced from their usual pews by the Northridge earthquake.

The wind blew gently as the sun and the clouds took turns greeting the worshipers at St. James Presbyterian Church in Tarzana, where a green-and-white tent that arrived on Saturday served as an outdoor sanctuary. Matching white balloons with the words “Christ is Risen Indeed Alleluia!” inscribed in green ink decorated the rope that anchored the tent.

The tent was last used by a congregation in New Jersey whose church had burned down. It arrived in Tarzana in the nick of time, brought by a truck driver from a congregation in Massachusetts who was making a trip to California.

The tent was erected with help from homeless and low-income people who patronize a soup kitchen run by the church.

For some, the day brought back memories of their childhood.

“It kind of reminded me of the old camp meeting days because that’s what my mama used to do,” said Carole Hartman, 40, whose mother was a missionary in a small town in Washington.

In Woodland Hills, the First Baptist Church moved back into a reinforced, renovated sanctuary Easter morning after using a rented, white tent for most of its services after the Jan. 17 temblor.

About 80 congregants worshiped at the Woodland Hills church, where retirees and members who took time off from their jobs worked together to complete repairs by Easter.

During his opening and closing prayers, however, interim pastor the Rev. Willis Lucas reminded those assembled of the real significance of the day.

“While we rejoice in being back in the sanctuary for the first time, we understand what is infinitely more important--that we are here to meet the living, risen Christ,” Willis said.

After the service, worshipers viewed a pictorial history of the church’s reconstruction in the Christian Education Hall which, though structurally sound, is still undergoing renovation.

Congregants viewed the photos in amazement as they progressed from red- to green-tag stage. The destruction at the Woodland Hills church was described as the most dramatic among 30 American Baptist churches suffering damage in the Los Angeles area.

In Chatsworth, volunteers at the heavily damaged St. John Eudes Catholic Church put up a white tent just in time for Holy Week and Easter Masses.

At two of the four morning masses held Sunday, crowds of congregants reached nearly 1,000. Until the tent arrived, the congregation had been crammed into a fellowship hall that only held 400 people.

“Today was like we rose again,” pastoral assistant John Kopp said in an interview. “Everyone that wanted to come to church could come to church. Today was kind of a symbolic resurrection that we did come together again as parish.”

For Kopp, the white, domed tent--which sat on the church’s school soccer field and was decorated on the inside with palm trees--evoked special feelings.

“You feel like you’re looking toward heaven. You always look up,” Kopp said.