The City of Angels won’t be lacking...

The City of Angels won’t be lacking for prayers next week.

By coincidence, evangelical and charismatic Christian groups will hold two large local prayer gatherings and five national conferences in the Los Angeles area over the next seven days.

Two national conclaves will share the newly enlarged Los Angeles Convention Center. One--a three-day event organized by Campus Crusade founder-president Bill Bright--will bring together many names in the evangelical world including broadcaster Pat Robertson; Don Argue, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, and Randy Phillips, president of Promise Keepers.

Rather than bemoaning the conflicting schedules, local church leaders have seen the happenstance as providential and even added to the list of gatherings.

The local events:

* Clergy and members of American Baptist congregations in Los Angeles will gather at 3 p.m. Sunday for a festival of prayer at Trinity Baptist Church, 2040 W. Jefferson Blvd., featuring a sermon by the Rev. Thomas Kilgore Jr., who was president of the American Baptist Churches and the Progressive National Baptist Convention in his long ministry.

* A three-night, citywide revival at First Church of God, 9550 Crenshaw Blvd., Inglewood, sponsored by Bread for the World-Los Angeles will hear the Rev. Benjamin Reid of the host church Wednesday; the Rev. Carolyn Tyler, regional presiding elder for the African Methodist Episcopal Church on Thursday, and the Rev. William Epps Sr. of Second Baptist Church on Friday.

The national events:

* About 1,400 ministers will attend a pastors seminar at the Rev. Jack Hayford’s Church on the Way in Van Nuys Monday through Thursday. They will be joined Tuesday by Los Angeles pastors for the periodic “Love L.A. Shepherds’ Prayer Gathering.”

* Aglow International, a charismatic organization (formerly Women’s Aglow Fellowship) based in Lynnwood, Wash., expects up to 9,000 women at its four-day conference at the Long Beach Arena, starting Thursday.

* Sports Outreach Los Angeles, a ministry in Pasadena that evangelizes at major sports events, is holding a one-day meeting for church leaders next Saturday at Biola University in La Mirada.

* A Global Conference on Prayer and Evangelism, sponsored by the San Jose-based Harvest Evangelism, will run four days at the Los Angeles Convention Center, starting Wednesday. Its emphasis is partly on so-called “spiritual warfare” against evil forces bedeviling urban areas.

* Bright’s relatively unstructured gathering, Fasting & Prayer ‘95, may attract nearly 3,000 Christians from Thursday night to the noon closing next Saturday. It is a follow-up meeting to one in December that drew about 600 evangelical leaders to Orlando, Fla., the present headquarters city for ex-Southern Californian Bright.

Seizing the opportunity to muster even more prayer power, leaders of the March for Jesus movement have called for a “unity march” next Saturday that will leave the Los Angeles Convention Center at 1 p.m. and return for a service from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.

In addition, Church on the Way and like-minded congregations are urging members to walk through their neighborhoods “during the early morning hours” on Thursday, Friday or Saturday next week. “Lift Up L.A.” organizers are asking churchgoers to “pray for peace and unity in our city, healing of our families, and for an outpouring of God’s grace and mercy on our nation.”

BUDDHISM

The American Buddhist Congress will open a two-day meeting at a Koreatown temple Friday to adopt a new constitution aimed at involving more lay people in the 8-year-old national body and to discuss the challenges facing the organization’s nine ethnic Buddhist traditions, including U.S.-born converts.

The number of Buddhists in the United States is believed to be in the millions. The Los Angeles-based Sangha Council counts more than 250 temples, many of them small, in Southern California alone. The Venerable Havanpola Ratanasara of Los Angeles has been executive president of the congress since its inception.

The opening ceremonies at Kwan Um Sa Temple, 4267 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, will start at 6 p.m. Friday with chanting and meditation. The evening’s events are open to the public, though seating is limited, Ratanasara said. Former Sri Lankan Ambassador Ananda W. P. Guruge of Huntington Beach, a vice president of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, will give the keynote speech Saturday.

CONGREGATION

* The 93-year-old Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Los Angeles, which had a peak of 1,200 members in the 1950s and 1960s, will hold its final service at 3 p.m. Sunday--a victim of inner-city population changes. Bishop Paul Egertson will preside. “With a declining church membership . . . the effort to maintain a large, aging facility became too great a burden,” noted a recent newsletter of the 75-member church at 4270 W. 6th St.

The building was sold to a Korean congregation, said Bea Masters, president of the church. Technically, the Our Savior’s congregation will merge Dec. 3 with St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church on the Westside, although it is expected that many members will transfer to other churches.

SOCIAL CONCERN

* Ground will be broken at 2 p.m. Sunday in South-Central Los Angeles for affordable apartments to house 30 families with children. The project is a partnership of Faith United Methodist Church, 1713 W. 108th St., and Beyond Shelter, a nonprofit agency, with major support from the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust. When completed in 1997, the Umoja Apartments, at 74th and Main streets, will have “a services coordinator who will work with residents and the community to help tenants participate in building management and connect with community services,” said Faith Pastor M. Andrew Robinson-Gaither.

DATES

* Humanities scholar Rene Girard of Stanford University will give the inaugural lecture Thursday night to mark the establishment of the new UCLA Center for the Study of Religion. Girard will speak on “the crucial role of religious studies in [attaining] cultural and historical understanding,” said David C. Rapoport, the center’s acting director. The public lecture, which is free, will be in Room 149 at UCLA’s Dodd Hall.

* Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan will speak at the 7:30 p.m. Sabbath service Friday at Temple Israel of Hollywood, 7300 Hollywood Blvd. His topic: “Is the City of Los Angeles Better Off Than It Was Two Years Ago?”

* The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, will speak on “Religious Right: Radically Wrong” at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Temple Emanuel, 300 N. Clark St., Beverly Hills.

* Novelist Chaim Potok, author of “The Chosen” and “The Promise,” will speak at 8 p.m. today at Congregation Ner Tamid, 5721 Crestridge Road, Rancho Palos Verdes. Reservations: (310) 377-6986.

* To help clergy respond more effectively when called to deal with the terminal illness or imminent death of children, a daylong conference will be held Tuesday at Loma Linda University’s Seventh-day Adventist Church sanctuary and education building, 11125 Campus St., Loma Linda. Also sponsored by Fuller Seminary and the School of Theology at Claremont, the conference features talks by the Rev. Herbert Anderson of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and the Rev. Ray Anderson of Fuller. Conference fee is $39. Information: (909) 824-4367.

* More than a dozen faiths--from Bahai to Vedanta--will be represented today from 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. at the UC Irvine Student Center for the second annual Orange County Religious Diversity Faire. Nearly 600 people turned out last year, said the event’s organizer, Rabbi Allen Krause of Aliso Viejo’s Temple Beth El. Admission is $15.

FINALLY

Actor Charlton Heston, long identified with his classic screen portrayals of such biblical giants as Moses, is telling Bible stories again, this time on a CD-ROM disc for home computers.

Produced by Jones Digital Century and directed by Jean-Pierre Isbouts, the disc, which reaches software stores this week, is a multimedia presentation of New Testament stories from the birth of Jesus to his Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Heston takes viewers on a tour of holy places in and around Jerusalem. Viewers can click on icons to access great works of religious art or listen to segments of sacred musical compositions.

Then there is Heston the storyteller, seen on video against the backdrop of Jerusalem. At times his image is juxtaposed with still scenes from great masterpieces, as he retells the epic stories of Jesus. For example, when Heston recites the lines of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, he appears to be questioning Jesus, who stands silently on trial, as depicted in a still painting.

Heston calls his narrations, which he wrote, redactions because he does not always read from the Bible verbatim. At times he paraphrases and embellishes the scriptural accounts for dramatic effect. But the stories remain faithful to the biblical accounts, he said.

“It is my firm conviction,” Heston said in an interview, “that the Bible has never been properly dealt with as performance art--and it is superb performance art. . . . There’s a reason why they call them the greatest stories ever told, because they are.”

But do not expect to find critical biblical scholarship or the latest and often controversial scholarly insights into the historical truth of Bible stories. Heston sticks to the text and the traditional Christian teaching about Jesus Christ.

“I am not a priest, not a scholar,” Heston says in opening the presentation. “I’m an actor. I tell stories.”