Spreading the Gospel : Van Nuys: Luis Palau brings his mass evangelist crusade to the Valley, hoping that quake-jolted residents will be open to the message.

The first-ever mass evangelism crusade in the San Fernando Valley begins five nights of rallies Wednesday with organizers hoping that earthquake-awakened spiritual needs and broad church backing will offset the low name recognition of the featured evangelist.

To be sure, Luis Palau posters, lawn signs and bumper stickers have been spread around the Valley with the zeal of a political campaign.

“I thought he was a candidate for a long time,” said one Valley resident.

But crusade leaders are not counting on the religiously unattached dropping by to hear Palau, an Argentine-born American respected in evangelical ranks. They don’t expect the same curious crowds that might come to hear celebrity preacher Billy Graham.

Instead, crusade managers hope to fill the 15,000-person capacity stadium at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys with members of more than 200 churches and religious ministries supporting the crusade.

“Basically, we hope to get church people who have been emboldened enough to bring family members, neighbors and co-workers to an event that will present Jesus Christ accurately, faithfully and persuasively,” said the Rev. Scott Bauer, crusade ministerial chairman.

Guest appearances of entertainers Pat Boone, Smokey Robinson and Dean Jones and a Saturday night Christian rock concert are included to lure additional numbers.

Palau, 59, has preached to an estimated 10 million people in 60 countries, second only to Graham. He is increasingly invited to conduct crusades in U.S. cities.

His organizers hope total attendance for this crusade will at least match the 55,600 who came to see him in San Antonio in 1991, if not the 72,000 who heard him in 1992 in Phoenix.

A relative unknown outside evangelical churches, Palau has earned the confidence of pastors because he has steered clear of sexual scandal, religious right politics and unconventional teachings. Palau follows a crusade format established by the Graham organization.

Preparations for the Valley crusade slowed in January and February after the devastating Northridge earthquake. But the temblor and its aftershocks are seen by some church leaders as a blessing.

“The quake heightens everybody’s awareness of a need for an anchor that goes deeper than job and family,” said Bauer, who is also senior associate pastor at Van Nuys’ Church on the Way.

“The timing of the crusade is providential,” said the Rev. Scott Hilborn, pastor of Canoga Park Presbyterian Church.

Hilborn said that he does not believe God wrought a 6.8-magnitude quake on the Valley area as a judgment--a view consistent with that of many other Christian clergy who do not portray the Deity as an ominous micromanager of all natural events.

“But it seems very clear to me that God has used this earthquake in very positive ways for the spiritual well-being of Los Angeles,” Hilborn said.

For a variety of reasons, pew-level interest in the crusade has exceeded hopes of both local organizers and staff officials from the Luis Palau Evangelistic Assn., based in Portland, Ore.

“We’ve trained twice as many people as counselors than we have for any other crusade,” said crusade Director Colin James, of Portland.

About 2,800 people turned out for classes to learn how to assist and encourage crusade attendees to commit themselves as Christians.

“The most people we ever had come to training sessions before was 1,400,” James said.

He said the evangelical association apparently won the large audiences by conducting live training sessions instead of videotaped lessons as in previous crusades. Of the 2,800 churchgoers who attended classes, about 1,800 became counselors, James said.

Queenie Walcott, a member of Lake View Terrace Baptist Church, is typical of the kind of person the crusade wants to attend the rallies. “I need more spiritual growth to learn about relying on Scripture to deal with different situations,” Walcott said.

But she also planned to bring a couple of friends along with her--people that she said have intermittently gone to church or Bible studies but have yet to make strong commitments.

Crusade organizers say that scenario is common.

“Eighty percent of the people who accept Christ at the crusades are brought by a friend,” said James, the crusade director.

One of the biggest criticisms of mass evangelism is that faith decisions at crusades tend to be emotional moments with meager or insensitive follow-up procedures.

“Left to themselves, they are going to drop away,” said Pastor Hilborn, who chairs the crusade’s counseling committee. “We are doing everything we possibly can to see that people who make decisions are assimilated into local churches.” The plans call for contacts up to a year later.

Another long-term effect anticipated by Valley-area clergy who have supported the crusade is a cross-denominational camaraderie that has formed from a year of preparation.

“It’s the single most enjoyable thing I’ve been a part of since I was ordained 10 years ago,” Hilborn said.

Most participating pastors and churches fall into the charismatic/Pentecostal and evangelical range of the Christian spectrum. Although three United Methodist congregations, three Episcopal parishes and two Lutheran churches--affiliated with liberal-to-moderate denominations--are among crusade backers, they are mostly theologically conservative congregations.

Nevertheless, as more than one pastor noted, even among the many socially and religiously conservative churches taking part, there are conflicting views on women’s ordination, baptism and other issues.

“We have churches that have put aside differences for the sake of unity,” James said.

Eighty percent of the churches and ministries involved are located within the San Fernando Valley and Glendale. Fifteen churches in eastern Ventura County are supporters, as are scattered evangelical congregations to the north and south of the Valley.

One conspicuous non-supporter is Pastor John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, which averages 8,000 people at its three Sunday services.

MacArthur is a fundamentalist in doctrine who has been critical of charismatic/Pentecostal churches because of their supernatural claims of healing and speaking in tongues, but the Rev. Lance Quinn, senior associate pastor, said that Grace Community elders decided not to become involved in the crusade because of their own effective ministry.

“We have 100 to 150 visitors each Sunday who have never been to our church before,” Quinn said. “We are not discouraging anyone from participating as individuals,” he added.

The decision by church elders forced the Rev. Daniel Lozano, pastor of a 400-member Spanish-speaking congregation meeting at Grace Community, to withdraw from the Latino committee for the Palau crusade.

“I knew Luis Palau back in Argentina some 30 years ago,” said the Lozano, pastor of Grace Community’s Spanish Department. “We preached in each other’s churches in Cordoba.”

Lozano and some other Latino Protestant leaders in the Valley have been disappointed that the crusade did not include bigger plans for Palau to preach in Spanish. All five evenings of the crusade are in English with simultaneous translation in Spanish for those who bring radios and earphones.

The one Spanish service linked to the crusade was held Saturday night at Church on the Way and attracted 2,500 people. Organizers limited the Spanish outreach because they were worried, they said, that holding rallies in Spanish and English on consecutive nights would be confusing to people.

The San Fernando Valley has no professional sports arena or major stadium, so the Palau organization had to be content with an unusual venue for one of their crusades--the bleachers and temporary field-level seating at Birmingham High School’s football field at the corner of Balboa and Victory boulevards.

Although Palau was invited to lead the Valley crusade by 50 pastors, the 8,000-member Church on the Way took the lead in crusade organization, providing office space for a year and the crusade’s honorary co-chairmen, church members Pat Boone and car dealer-philanthropist Bert Boeckmann.

The top administrator for the local crusade committee is also a Church on the Way member--the executive chairman, Lawrence Hoke, a vice president for finance of Litton Industries.

Hoke said last week that he expected the crusade budget to stay below $400,000. The expenses include stadium rental and salaries for the temporary staff, but were mostly for promotional materials.

Despite the expectation, based on previous Palau crusades in U.S. cities, that most people going to the rallies are churchgoers and their friends, crusade director James said that posters, bumper stickers and advertisements are necessary expenses for credibility.

“Especially in America,” James said, “you don’t have an event unless you have advertising to validate it.”