Casting Nets

The Rev. Kenton Beshore will be a few minutes late for his next service. It’s Sunday morning--11:46, to be exact--and he’s literally between churches--one in Irvine and one in Newport Beach.

The senior pastor at the two-campus Mariners South Coast Church doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for his next service with a cup of coffee on the church patio, rocking on his heels, surrounded by doting parishioners.

He’s on the highway.

After the 8:30 a.m. Newport service, Beshore, often chauffeured by his oldest son, Beau, drives two miles to the first Irvine service at 9:40. Then it’s back to Newport for the 10:30, then back to Irvine at 11:40 for his fourth and final sermon of the day.

“Be nice to people out there,” he tells his congregations at the close of each sermon.

Since April, Mariners South Coast, one of a handful of nondenominational, evangelical “mega-churches” in Orange County, has operated out of the two locations. It is Beshore’s Sunday job, as senior pastor of the 4,600-member church, to deliver two sets of homilies and benedictions at each location.

Through it all, Beshore, 42, remains well-coiffed and unrattled. He thinks fast, talks fast and, when necessary, drives fast.

In Beshore’s 12th year as senior pastor, his goal is to make Mariners “a church for the 21st century,” one that stresses community, one that grows and can adapt and, in Mariners’ case, one that remains viable on two chunks of real estate, two miles apart.

In the process, Beshore has found himself an unofficial spokesman on the role of U.S. evangelical mega-churches. CNN and the BBC have brought their cameras to film services at Mariners;Beshore shared his thoughts on the church’s mission in a recent Atlantic Monthly cover story titled “Welcome to the Next Church.”

The Mariners congregation, drawn from two affluent, predominately white communities, has a generous sprinkling of the financially successful and socially prominent. Nearly half the parishioners are single, Beshore says. “They come because they want to be around families, to be part of the community. We work hard at that. We target people 28 to 34.”

Among the attendees are many who searched elsewhere for spiritual answers, Beshore says.

“Many of these people work in the business world. They’re pragmatic; either something works or it doesn’t. They’re aggressive, not passive, searchers. So they find out real quick if we’re real.”

The congregation includes local political leaders, such as Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach), who on a recent Sunday was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the foyer, where the service appears on TV monitors. He’d arrived too late to sit with his fiancee inside.

Baugh has been in the public eye a lot lately--last week he was reelected to his seat in the Legislature, and he faces allegations of campaign fraud in connection with his 1995 election.

A two-year church member, Baugh is among the many parishioners who admire Beshore’s style.

“Kenton does a couple things that make this a neat place,” Baugh says. “One is his thorough understanding and explanation of doctrine. The other is his understanding of human nature, human shortcomings, and how that truth blends with the message of Christ’s forgiveness.”

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Mega-churches--those defined as having more than 2,000 attendees--such as Mariners have become well-established in Orange County. To share ideas, Beshore meets occasionally with other area mega-church pastors--including Rick Warren of Saddleback Valley Community Church in Mission Viejo, Denny Bellesi of Coast Hills Community Church in Aliso Viejo and Chuck Smith Jr. of Calvary Chapel Capo Beach.

By design, these churches have an extremely casual worship style, the better to attract worshipers who may have left traditional churches feeling unequal to centuries-old ritual.

Where the altar stands at traditional churches, a five-piece band plays at Mariners. Offerings are taken not in collection plates but at pyramidal kiosks in the rear. The church’s benignly modern architecture, together with an absence of crucifixes, vestments and other trappings, have generated comparisons to a shopping mall.

And, indeed, tables set up on the church patio do offer a smorgasbord of classes, sports leagues, lectures, seniors groups, women’s groups, teen groups, four singles groups (one has more than 400 members), recovery programs, voter registration and more. The goal is to provide a sense of community that Beshore says is often lacking in the outside world.

Among the outreach programs at the church is support of overseas missions.

Beshore recently returned from a two-week trip to the Middle East, where he interviewed representatives of 17 Christian missionary groups. Of those groups, he says, five have been picked to be funded by Mariners.

“Only 0.6% of Christian missionary dollars now go to that part of the world,” Beshore says. “We need to do something in that area. Very few churches are interested in it, maybe because they have stereotypes of Arabs. We tend to see only the Yasser Arafats, but Arabs, in fact, are humble, gentle, wonderful people.”

Together with a board of elders, Beshore manages a budget of $5.7 million and a staff of 80. Too much of his workweek, he says, is taken up with meetings, the least favorite part of his job.

“Kenton likes to move fast, and that will frustrate the elders. It scares everyone to move so fast,” says Laurie Beshore, his high school sweetheart, wife of 18 years and the church pastor in charge of outreach ministries. “He doesn’t hold to traditions--styles of worship, kinds of music--just because it’s always been done that way. He really is a visionary leader who does rely on God for guidance.”

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On Sundays, impeccably tailored, Beshore stands onstage before almost 1,000 parishioners, a wireless mike in his lapel.

Ministering to executives and other high-powered parishioners brings its own challenges.

“They’ve got a lot of moxie. They’re not followers. I have friends who work at large churches, and they can do the ‘I feel called by God; let’s do things this way’ approach,” Beshore says. “But here, we have leaders of companies, and leaders demand good reasons. You have to motivate and explain your rationale.”

Money, too, is a sensitive issue.

“Our people value the things they have, the wealth and position, but know they don’t feed the hunger in your soul,” Beshore says.

His sermons are spiced with one-liners. On this particular Sunday, with his focus the early Church, he is discussing the birth of his first child to draw comparisons to the history-making, irreversible acts of the early followers of Jesus:

“You go through the experience of having a spouse going through hormone storms.” (Polite chuckles from the congregation.) “The doctor handed me my son, and I looked at him and knew right away . . . there’s nothing that’s going to be the same again. You look at him, and you think, ‘Ah, this is great, but there’s no putting him back.’ ” (Uproarious laughter.)

His congregation places a high value on Beshore’s ability to tie his own experiences into his Bible lessons. But until about 1989, he says, his sermons lacked it; he delivered straight analysis, the way he’d been taught at Talbot Theological Seminary in La Mirada in the mid-1970s.

“A big defining moment for me was when I discovered that the message and the messenger are the same,” he says. “I was taught to take the truth of God, then bring those principles forward to today, from the 1st century to the 21st.

“What I wasn’t taught is to take it through your own life. If the message doesn’t square with the messenger, if I’m not being honest, people can tell, and it will turn them off.”

Beshore’s busy home life--he has four sons--provides endless fodder for sermonizing. Activity is nearly constant at his Newport Beach home:In the space of an hour on a recent afternoon, the front door was like a turnstile, admitting a stream of neighbors, friends, boys and parishioners.

Laurie Beshore says that despite the expectations some people have of a clergyman’s family, “we still have human nature and we wrestle daily with it. We’re fighters in our own marriage. We raise our voices. There are frustrations with raising children.

“We all have similar guilt. Kenton tells these stories on Sunday, and people know that he has struggled with exactly the same things they struggled with all week. They come up to him and say, ‘It’s like you were in my living room.’ ”

Such emotional honesty is a far cry, Kenton Beshore says, from the attitudes of the church he was raised in. His father, Fred, was a Baptist minister who worked in Oceanside when Kenton was born.

“Good Christian people weren’t sad, didn’t have despair, didn’t struggle or get disheartened. A lot of emotions weren’t legal,” Beshore says of his religious upbringing. “It was spiritual to be on an even keel all the time.”

Fred Beshore, who now attends Mariners, was of the tradition that frowned on movies, dancing and mixed bathing, his son recalls.

“But we kids beat it out of him. We pushed hard at it, we laughed at it. He’s mellowed a lot now.”

Beshore, who has one older and one younger sister, recalls his conversion experience at age 6.

“I remember where I was sitting in the den as my mother was talking to me about the essence of faith. And I had awareness of meeting God and an awareness that he cared and was concerned about me. . . . I was aware it was mine, that I was not just accepting my parents’ views.”

Two years later, the family moved to Denver for a while, then to La Canada-Flintridge, where Beshore went to public school. At about age 11, Beshore met Laurie at his father’s church, Faith Baptist in South Pasadena.

A wide receiver in high school, Beshore for a while thought his career might have been in coaching. Dave Sprowl, a high school friend who now serves as an elder at Mariners, recalls Beshore as a straight shooter but not intolerant.

“He was one of the few guys who was real popular but who didn’t get involved in peer pressure,” Sprowl said. “The first thing that attracted me to his religious side is that he wouldn’t compromise his character, but he also wouldn’t preach at friends. If we said, ‘Let’s get some beer and go party,’ he’d say, ‘I’ll just go check out a movie and see you tomorrow.’ I was used to religious people who’d say, ‘Don’t drink, you’re wrong.’ ”

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Becoming a minister was an idea that gradually came into focus. In 1973, as a freshman at Biola University, also in La Mirada, Beshore drove twice a week to First Baptist Church in Newport Beach to serve as youth minister to Newport Harbor High students. He discovered he was good at it: The small group quickly ballooned to 150 kids, a number that equaled the church’s adult population. Beshore found himself in the thick of the Jesus Movement of the time and decided to enter the seminary.

“People responded to me, and I got a sense of what God had in mind for me,” he says.

They were heady days for Beshore. Michael Risley, one of his roommates at Talbot Seminary, recalls him as spontaneous, creative and rambunctious. Once, bounding into the bedroom, Beshore leaped onto Risley’s bed with such force that he broke it.

“Things came very easy to him,” says Risley, who is associate pastor at Rolling Hills Covenant Church in Rolling Hills Estates. “Sometimes I’d get on Kenton a little bit because I felt he should study more. He felt like he could do a good job without all the prep that other people did. But he was able to do a really great job, and it shows in his great insight into how to approach ministry.”

Ordained in 1975, Beshore began his professional ministry as youth pastor at Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena.

Three years later, he was hired at Mariners in Newport Beach as college pastor. In 1984, he became senior pastor at the relatively young age of 30.

At that time, Laurie Beshore recalls, the congregation numbered about 250, its lowest level in years. A turning point came in 1988, when Beshore, in an effort to build attendance, made a controversial decision.

“We pulled out the church organ and brought drums in,” he says. “It was painful for a lot of people, and I took a beating on it. The family that donated the organ was real ticked.”

Beshore went to the older people in the church and tried to explain his decision.

“‘Here’s your choice,’ I told them. ‘I can give you the church you want, and you can pass off your grandkids to another church. Or we can have a church that your grandkids and kids will like. If you want a church that has a big cross-section [of ages], and if you’re wise enough to know how important that is, just make the sacrifice.’

“I told them, ‘I know the hymns you like, but I’m not giving them to you. I’m not giving you what you want, but I’m giving you what you really want.’ And they figured it out.”

By the mid-’90s, nearly 3,000 adults were attending Sunday services.

“A rule of thumb for churches is that you can minister to 100 people for every one acre,” Beshore says. “We had 9 1/2 half acres, so once our church got over 1,000 people on Sunday it got to be real hard, too many cars and people. We were landlocked.”

But a couple of miles away in Irvine, South Coast Community Church was facing declining membership, Beshore says, and was in talks with the Irvine Co. to sell its 15 acres and move elsewhere. So Beshore went to his board of elders and proposed that the two congregations merge.

Easter 1996 was the first Sunday for the combined churches. But crowds and limited parking remain a problem. At the Newport campus on Sundays, dozens park illegally on a neighboring street.

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Despite his years of speaking experience, Beshore insists he is shy. He struggled with stage fright during his first two years as senior pastor; friends say his perfectionist streak has mellowed in recent years.

Says Doug Wilson, a neighbor, church member and Beshore’s jogging partner: “He used to be a little tougher, less patient, more impetuous. He’s really developed as a team player and not too fast ahead of people. He used to be way ahead of people.”

Beshore says that a few years ago, one of his church’s 12-step programs helped him identify some destructive personality traits.

“I found all these ‘relational viruses.’ I was too perfectionistic,” Beshore says. “I was passing on those same viruses to my kids. If they didn’t do something well, I’d get tense.

“If I got close to failure, I’d work night and day. Everything I was doing was to demonstrate that failure’s wrong. And failure isn’t wrong. If I do something right and just dumb-luck into it the first time, I don’t know anything. I just know that it works. But when I go out and make mistakes, those are lessons I learn.”

Beshore also says he tends to steer clear of politics in his sermons. On Sundays, parking lot volunteers are told to remove any flyers placed on parishioners’ windshields by political activists.

“We don’t endorse candidates. The Christian Coalition wanted me to put my name on a thing for Elizabeth Dole. I don’t want to do it, I don’t think the church wants me to do it. I believe people should vote their morality, but I would never try to legislate Christianity [as the official U.S. religion];it goes contrary to how the country was founded.

“I personally believe that the church is the great hope for society. I don’t think politics or business or education can be the answer. They do things well, but they won’t change people’s hearts.

“When you see people with hate in their hearts, or people corrupt in business, what will transform their heart are spiritual issues. And the church is working at the very essence of that.”

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Kenton Beshore

Background: Age 42. Born in Oceanside; lives in Newport Beach with wife Laurie and sons Beau, 17; Cole, 14; Casey, 12; and Bryce, 10.

Passions: Bible study, skiing, scuba diving, vacationing with friends.

On outside commitments: “I turn down a lot of invitations to speak at seminaries and gatherings. People are really surprised because most pastors really like to speak. I enjoy just being with my church and leading and talking to them.”

On spending time with sons: “I want to do things that will make them be here [at home]. I want to influence their life; I want to see who they’re hanging with. I want them to know I care about their life.”

On the drawbacks of a big church: “There’s no way I could get to know everybody in the church. And I don’t like meetings. I slash through meetings as much as I can. . . . You get better product working with people, but meetings can become an end of themselves.”

On his goals: “Anyone can tell you about the church of past, but what should the next church look like? You have to find a new way all the time. By the time I’m 50, I want to have found a pastor of 35 who can become the next pastor.”