IN PERSON : Real-World Advice for Dying Churches : Irvine Trustee Helps Religion Cope With Waning Interest in Its Institutions

Ordained Presbyterian minister and Irvine school board member Michael B. Regele is a deeply religious man--and he’s got the flowcharts to prove it.

Regele employs the use of all things statistical--flowcharts, demographic research and opinion polling--in his quest to bring churches and regional religious organizations closer to the real world of their surrounding, often disinterested communities. It is an exercise in myth-breaking, an appropriate role for a man who defies his own stereotype.

The 43-year-old, blond-haired, blue-eyed political conservative is a minister who has never had a congregation; a school board member and father of five school-age children who is opposed to mandatory school prayer; a consultant who has earned the trust of religious leaders by pointing out their irrelevance to a growing segment of the American public.

“In purely human, statistical terms, the churches are dying. In most mainline churches in America, the average age is 65 if not older,” Regele said. “The average age in the United States is 36. There’s been a lot of hoopla about the baby boomers coming back to the church, and it’s just not true.”

At the beginning of his spiritual odyssey, Regele was a 16-year-old high school dropout in Corvallis, Ore., with a jet-black, 1957 Ford Fairlane and little concern for the future. His father, an auto mechanic, owned and operated a gas station where Regele spent a lot of time working on his engine.

“I was not raised in the church at all,” Regele said. “I was aimless. I knew my life was going nowhere, but I didn’t know what to do about it.”

He is now a trustee of one of the country’s top public school districts and co-founder of Percept Group Inc., an 8-year-old Costa Mesa company that provides research and strategic planning to 150 regional religious organizations and churches across the country.

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Regele is hoping to take his myth-breaking message to a larger audience with his first book, “Death of the Church,” planned for publication in November by Zondervan Harper Collins. With reams of research data in hand, Regele is sounding the clarion call that America’s traditional religious institutions are headed toward extinction. Throughout the country, according to Regele, attendance is falling at mainstream churches whose parent organizations are slashing budgets and closing local churches by the thousands.

“Too many churches are unwilling to listen to what is going on in their communities and bring their messages to people in a way that makes sense,” he said. “That is the issue that is killing churches in America today.”

And contrary to the view of Orange County as a stronghold of religious fervor in an increasingly irreligious world, Regele cites a 1993 survey that found that one out of every two Orange County households, 51.8%, report no involvement with church or faith, compared to an average 37.7% rate for all American households.

“There is this perception that Orange County is a religious center,” Regele said. “The data doesn’t support that. But it works too well for the religious conservatism that is part of the political power base of Orange County.”

Regele’s exit from teen-age aimlessness began with his return to school, guided by a high school teacher. His pursuit of faith was encouraged by high school friends.

“It was during the ‘Jesus people’ movement. I was 18 and someone said to me, ‘If you’ll turn your life over to God, everything you’ve done will be forgiven,’ ” he said. “That reset my trajectory.”

After graduation from Seattle Pacific College, he taught inner-city kids in the Seattle public school system for three years. During that time, when Regele also was working with single’s groups at a local church, he saw evidence that the emerging American culture was not being reached by traditional churches.

“Baby boomers as a generation have always been looking for the ultimate reason for things and tend to be spiritually inclined. But the church was more concerned about its own institutional life than the spiritual needs of people. That hasn’t changed to a certain degree.”

Hired as an associate pastor at Mariners Church in Newport Beach in 1980, where he led a single’s ministry, Regele left after four years because he found the theological environment too conservative. At 32, Regele enrolled in the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena to pursue a career with the Presbyterian Church, which he considered a better theological fit.

The Presbyterian Church was more interested in Regele’s organizational skills than his potential as a local church leader. He had successfully organized a Bible conference for the Presbyterian organization in 1986 at Anaheim Convention Center where Watergate co-conspirator-turned-prison-evangelist Charles Colson was a guest speaker.

As his organizational duties increased, Regele co-founded Percept in 1987. The company has since sold research data and strategic planning materials to about 15,000 churches nationwide.

“Many of the people in the mainline churches know that they’re in deep trouble,” Regele said. “They know if something doesn’t change, they’re not going to be here.”

As passionate as Regele is about the direction and future of organized religion, he has been equally passionate about the separation of church and state since his 1990 election to the Irvine school board.

“He probably sees that boundary more clearly than most of us on the board,” veteran school board member Margie Wakeham said. “He’s one of my favorite people. He’s a person who has found a great balance, but who is also very difficult to throw into a category.”

Regele is less certain about the world and himself than what one might expect from an ordained minister and Orange County conservative.

“Believing has always been a struggle for me,” he confesses. “I am genetically wired to be a skeptic. But at the end of the day, it still makes the most sense to me. And when tomorrow comes, I wrestle with it all over again.”

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Profile: Michael B. Regele

Age: 43

Hometown: Corvallis, Ore.

Residence: Irvine

Background: Taught elementary school in Seattle for three years before quitting to earn degrees from two California seminaries

Ordination: As a Presbyterian minister in 1988

Business interest: Co-founded Percept Group Inc., a Costa Mesa consulting firm for religious organizations, in 1987

School interest: Elected to Irvine Unified School District board in 1990

Family: Wife, Debbie, and five children age 7 to 18 in Irvine schools

New world: “Orange County was culture shock for me. I’m a relatively conservative guy, but there is a kind of prevailing conservatism here that I had never encountered.”

Source: Michael B. Regele; Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times