Gospel Singer Lifts His Voice : Pop music: While still recording, Andrae Crouch takes position of senior pastor in his family church.

It would seem perfectly natural for a gospel singer to follow in the footsteps of his father and older brother as pastors in the family church. But it wasn’t only a sense of duty that moved seven-time Grammy winner Andrae Crouch to accept the position of senior pastor at the Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ in Pacoima.

It was also a fear that, as a globe-trotting gospel music superstar, the 45-year-old singer had cut himself off from his oldest friends.

“After so many years of traveling, I would come home and not know anybody,” Crouch says in a gravely voice during an interview in his homey church office. “I’d get to the airport and have to call a limo to pick me up. In the church where I grew up, I didn’t know anybody’s phone number.”

Isolated no more, Crouch officially assumes his new title during installation and consecration ceremonies Saturday at 1 p.m. at the church that was founded by his late father four decades ago.

A gala weekend to mark the occasion kicks off Friday at 7 p.m. with a benefit reception and banquet at the Century Plaza Hotel that is expected to draw an international audience of more than 700 from the entertainment and religious communities. The festivities will end with a free concert featuring many of the artists Crouch has known and worked with during the last 25 years, Sunday at 6 p.m. at the church.

Unofficially, though, Crouch has been on the job and behind the pulpit since May, when he was appointed to the post after the cancer deaths of his father, Bishop Benjamin Crouch, and his older brother, Benjamin Crouch Jr., who served as pastor for about a year before his death in February.

“I’m here from 6 o’clock in the morning to about 1 o’clock at night, but I love it,” says Crouch, whose mother, father and brother all died within a 2 1/2-year period. “I wouldn’t have to be here, but people are popping in all the time. I know it’s hard work, but you have to be called to this, and I can’t wait to get here each day.”

His twin sister Sandra, a Grammy winner herself and executive producer of this weekend’s events, is not surprised by her brother’s enthusiasm.

“It’s pretty much his nature to be a shepherd, because he’s always had a shepherd’s heart,” she said in a separate interview.

Crouch, who says he has slept only about four hours a night since May, has moved from his posh Woodland Hills home into his parents’ more modest home in Pacoima, about a mile from the church.

Eager to make Christ Memorial, which is affiliated with a Pentecostal denomination, a strong social force in the community, Crouch has helped to implement a drug recovery program and an outreach ministry for gang members. He also hopes to buy up property around the church and build a home for battered women.

But, despite the increased demands on his time, he does not plan to curtail his music career.

“What’s amazing is that when you pray, it’s the closest thing to receiving song,” he says. “Every single morning, I have a person sitting right there next to me in prayer with a tape recorder--and a song comes up every day.”

Crouch, who won his most recent Grammy for last year’s “Mercy” album, has stockpiled about 400 unrecorded songs, including “Behold the Lamb,” a rollicking number that had the congregation clapping its hands and singing along during a recent marathon Sunday service.

Crouch is an effective and often emotional speaker at the pulpit, but it’s as a vocalist, not surprisingly, that he is most evocative.

“The thing I try to bring is the dynamics of a concert,” he says.

That’s why his weekly services regularly draw visitors, black and white, from all across the Southland--and other parts of the world.

It’s also one reason why Quincy Jones’ Qwest Records, which signed Crouch in 1992, does not believe that the singer’s added responsibilities will hurt his career. Crouch hopes to have a new album in stores early next year.

“Initially, this might slow him down,” says Mike Stradford, vice president of artists and repertoire for Qwest, “but I think he’ll be more impassioned, and he always has been a passionate writer and performer.”

Crouch, a lifelong Valley resident, made his musical debut in a church, playing piano for his father’s congregation at age 11.

Considered a groundbreaking pioneer in contemporary gospel music, he began his professional career in the 1960s, fronting Andrae Crouch & the Disciples, and has earned 16 Grammy nominations.

His songs have appeared on albums by Elvis Presley (“I’ve Got Confidence”) and Paul Simon (“Jesus Is the Answer”), among others, and his other writing, producing and arranging credits include work on the animated film “The Lion King” and the title theme from the television comedy “Amen.” In 1986, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his musical contributions to Steven Spielberg’s “The Color Purple.”

Crouch also served as vocal arranger for Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” and Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” singles during a 10-year hiatus from recording that ended last year. He also was vocal arranger for Jackson’s current smash, “You Are Not Alone.”

“I want to do it all,” says Crouch. “People think that because people do religious stuff, that’s all we’re supposed to do. But with God’s help, everything that he wants me to accomplish, I’m going to do it. It’s all about pacing.”