Education Aids Churches Facing Changes

Congregations struggling to adapt to changing neighborhoods are more likely to succeed if their membership has a high average level of education, a newly published study has found.

Education provides skills to handle conflicts that result from change, wrote sociologist Nancy Tatom Ammerman in “Congregations & Community” (Rutgers University Press).

“Most congregations are accustomed to thinking about conflict as a sign of distress,” Ammerman said. But churches that systematically avoid debate and disagreements are unlikely to change, she said.

In addition, “education bridges cultural barriers, offering common ground on which people of different sexual orientations and different races can stand,” she said.

The findings were drawn from a nationwide study of 23 congregations, four of them in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Most of the churches were discovering ways to adapt, Ammerman said.

Long Beach Congregational Church and St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Long Beach were both considered to be successfully adapting because of a commitment to innovations and their positive responses to gay and lesbian residents in their communities, she said.

In the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles, Holman United Methodist Church carved out a “niche” for serving well-educated African American churchgoers, while Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church was having difficulty expanding its core of black Adventists, Ammerman said.

“A pattern of decline has been in place, and an older leadership seems reluctant to let go,” she said, referring to a period about 1992-1993.

However, in an interview this week, Berean Pastor William T. Cox, who started at the church in August, was optimistic. He said that the older members “have become more flexible in responding to the community, which we think will be more than 50% by the year 2000.”

The congregation has also begun a youth choir, which has grown to 50 members, and other youth-oriented programs, Cox said.

Ammerman, who teaches at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, said that strong leadership by pastors--effective managers and visionaries--is typical of the adapting congregations in the study.

Old-fashioned church commitment, however, is not the key.

“If commitment is measured in terms of regular attendance and giving high percentages of their personal incomes, the members of declining congregations are, on average, the most committed,” Ammerman said, referring to four churches outside California that she said were in substantial decline.

Problems of survival facing Christian churches in the Middle East will be discussed at a two-day conference starting Friday at Southern California College in Costa Mesa.

David Neff, executive editor of Christianity Today magazine, will give the keynote address and Nancy Heidebrecht, director of the Middle East Studies Center at the college, will head the meeting. Neff and Heidebrecht are president and vice president, respectively, of the conference’s main sponsor, Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding.

Other speakers will include the Rev. John Huffman of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, and board chairman of World Vision International, and Gabi Habib, founding general secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches. Registration at the door is $60, $25 for students. (714) 668-6142.

DATES

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Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Sartoris will celebrate a Mass and anointing of the sick at 2 p.m. Sunday in Redondo Beach that will be open to anyone affected by HIV/AIDS and their families and friends. The Mass, sponsored by the Catholic AIDS Network of the archdiocese’s San Pedro region, will be at St. Lawrence Martyr Catholic Church, 1900 S. Prospect Ave.

* A Lenten choral concert featuring a choir, string quartet and oboes will perform Bach Cantatas 22 and 23 and Haydn’s Mass in G minor at 7:30 p.m. today at St. George’s Episcopal Church, 4467 Commonwealth Ave., La Canada. $10 and $8. (818) 790-3323.

* The new Waken Ray Tseng Buddhist Temple in El Monte, which normally conducts its services in Chinese, will have its first English-language service today at the regular 7:30 p.m. time. Led by Master Allen Hou, 29, a recent UCLA graduate, the service will emphasize Tibetan Buddhist meditation principles. A free Chinese dinner buffet at the temple, 11657 Lower Azusa Road, will precede the service. (818) 455-0077.

* Bishop Charles E. Blake, pastor of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, will give the sermon Sunday at 3:30 p.m. during a service at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, which is honoring its pastor, the Rev. E.V. Hill, for 36 years of service at the church at 1300 E. 50th St., South-Central Los Angeles. (213) 235-2103.

CLARIFICATION

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The lecture by Rabbi David Saperstein, director of Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center in Washington, will take place Friday during Shabbat dinner at Temple Isaiah, 10345 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 277-2772.

FINALLY

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Catholicism and Hollywood. From the 1930s into the early 1960s, the power of the morals-watching Legion of Decency loomed large with its threat of condemning movies it deemed immoral or illicit.

Nevertheless, an island of good will for Catholics once flourished in the industry, and another has formed in recent times. Both groups have upcoming events:

* One priestly ambassador from 1947 to the end of the 1960s was the late Father Patrick Peyton, “the Rosary Priest” whose Family Theater attracted the services of more than 100 stars for 550 programs in a dramatic radio series from 1947 to 1969 and 58 television programs.

In a 50th anniversary dinner tonight at the Beverly Hills Hotel, actresses Jane Wyatt, who is scheduled to attend, and Loretta Young, in absentia, will receive awards for their service. Actresses Gigi Perreau and Margaret O’Brien will perform a re-creation of a Family Theater radio program. Actor Joseph Campanella will emcee and Cardinal Roger M. Mahony will speak.

* Catholics in Media Associates, a Hollywood-based group of Catholic professionals in the industry, will hold its fourth annual Lenten retreat next Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Immaculate Heart High School in Hollywood.

Television production executive Ralph Sariego and Father Ken Deasy, pastor of St. Agatha’s Catholic Church in Los Angeles will lead the six-hour event on “Achievement, Adversity and Faith.” Guest panelists from varied sectors of the entertainment business will participate. $10 donation. Reservations: (818) 907-2734.

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CONGREGATIONS

Three of four congregations in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area have relatively high average levels of education among their members.

The four churches studied in “Congregations & Community,” their average attendance and educational average were:

* Long Beach First Congregational Church, 300 average attendance, 75% college-educated.

* St. Matthew’s Catholic Church, Long Beach, 450, 60%.

* Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church, 250, 41%.

* Holman United Methodist Church, 600, 64%.