Preacher’s Funeral Mirrors His Spirit : Memorials: Thousands attend service for evangelist Robert W. McMurray, recalling him with singing and dancing.

In the end, Pentecostal preacher Robert W. McMurray needed all that space that he spent three decades carefully assembling in South-Central Los Angeles.

The huge church pulpit that he built was crowded with more than two dozen clergymen from across the United States. His sprawling sanctuary’s 2,000 seats were filled by a gathering that spilled outside into a large tent and filled two other meeting halls down the street.

And Hoover Street--which bisects the four city blocks that he purchased to turn into an innovative housing project--was closed down, lined with cars and filled with knots of people talking quietly about McMurray and his vision for the future.

More than 3,000 church members, political officials and religious leaders gathered Tuesday at the Greater Bethany Community Church to mourn McMurray, 67, who died May 29.

The ministers were there to honor McMurray as a bishop of Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, as pastor of the church that grew from 119 members to more than 5,000, and as a spirited evangelist who helped create 16 other churches in Southern California along with more than 50 specialized ministries.

The politicians remembered him as an open-minded man who opened his church to them and opened his heart to those in need--organizing a relief effort that fed 2,500 families for weeks after the 1992 riots, providing living quarters for men recovering from alcoholism and creating the Greater Bethany Economic Development Corp. to start construction of 115 units of affordable family housing near the church.

Church members remembered him as a unique spiritual counselor. And as a friend.

“He took me in, almost as a son,” said Kevin Williams, 31, a music producer who has attended the church for 15 years. “He provided the vision for me to keep a level head. I could have very easily taken the gang path.”

McMurray sought peace between warring gangs and often invited gang members to the church in hopes of teaching them “how to be gentlemen.” Apostolic Church Bishop Arthur Brazier of Chicago said he once asked McMurray, who was visiting, to please not walk on the new pews that Brazier had installed in his remodeled church sanctuary.

“He said all right. But in the middle of the service he jumped up on them and stopped and flashed a big smile at me.”

McMurray enlivened his Sunday services with his singing and dancing, said Lois Johnson, an associate minister at Bethany. He walked around as he preached, sometimes stopping to pick up a fussing baby from the congregation. Once, she said, he surprised teen-agers by showing up at one of their roller-skating parties--on skates.

State Controller Gray Davis said McMurray had kidded him about Davis’ lack of rhythm. “He’d say: ‘You can’t dance. But you can write checks.’ ”

The crowd in the sanctuary, the tent and the two meeting halls leaped to its feet when Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said she wanted to see some dancing at McMurray’s funeral.

“Yes, he was feisty. He was his own man,” Waters said. “He dared to build this church. He dared to build this block, to build this community.”

The service lasted five hours and was followed by burial at Forest Lawn in Glendale. McMurray is survived by his wife, Jeannette, three daughters and a son.

Paul Bowers, presiding bishop for Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, said those who did not know McMurray might have been puzzled by the singing and dancing. “Pardon my language, but it ain’t what’s wrong with us. It’s what right with us,” he said.

Bowers said the congregation and the clergy were painfully aware of the loss McMurray’s death represents. “We know what’s happened,” he said, “but we’re looking beyond this.”

Robert McMurray would have understood.