Global Christian’s Pastor Seeks to Minister to All Races

From the county’s grandest cathedrals down to the small neighborhood churches, there’s one common denominator: They all had to start somewhere.

And not always with a gabled roof or stained-glass windows. I’ve attended church services in this county in Holiday Inns, small parks and industrial warehouses. Garden Grove’s Crystal Cathedral, you will recall, was born as a drive-in operation.

Now comes the Global Christian Center in Newport Beach. Its birth is derived from a Nigerian evangelist’s idea of a multiracial church that would appeal to those not always comfortable in Orange County’s more traditional church environments.

Saturday will be the debut of its new home. The pastor, John Ornguze, is inviting scores of nonmembers to attend what he calls its inaugural service at 3 p.m. that day.

Global Christian is a struggling, conservative, nondenominational church. It has just moved to a commercial building sandwiched between a children’s fitness center and a karate school at 3900 Campus Drive in Newport Beach, directly across from John Wayne Airport.

The decor right now is a single potted palm tree. There’s not much in the way of furniture; one of the church’s rooms, I noticed, was completely bare. But it has new carpeting and 200 new chairs for the sanctuary. What it lacks in furnishings, Ornguze believes it makes up in spirit, by bringing the races together to worship.

“We want to attract people from all races who, for one reason or another, have put church attendance on the back burner of their lives,” he said.

Right now the church membership of about 100 is about 70% white. The rest of the congregation is a mix of Latinos, African Americans, Africans, South Americans, Asian Americans and Jamaicans.

Ornguze, married with four children, was a minister here in the 1970s, but after a few years he returned to his native Africa to preach. He came back here as an evangelist in 1992 and soon began putting together plans for Global Christian.

“We’re not affluent yet,” said John Partridge of Fountain Valley, one of the church’s chief financial backers, who met Ornguze through another nondenominational church. “But we believe before too long we will be able to buy ground to build our own church.”

Fair Game: It’s a bit of a shame that many people who attend the county fair in Costa Mesa never make it into the Orange County building. To me, it’s an annual highlight.

You can find information booths there featuring genealogical groups, the Santa Ana Police Department, the Orange County Child Abuse Council and the county’s park rangers. The Costa Mesa Historical Society is there showing dozens of pictures of the city before the building boom. I got a kick out of a 1950s picture that depicts the location of the Times building on Sunflower Avenue just off Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa. Nothing but bean fields in those days.

When I was there Saturday, the Republicans at their booth had signed up 32 people to register to vote, the Democrats 25. An old joke, perhaps, but when I asked the Republicans if they knew where I could find the Democratic booth, two people said in unison: “They’re on the left.”

Fiddler, No Roof: “You’re going to see a lot of gray hair here tonight,” Sally Heckathorn of Long Beach warned me.

It was just a few minutes before fiddler Mark O’Connor played with the Pacific Symphony on Saturday night under the stars at Irvine Meadows. For the first time, the orchestra is offering discount packages to seniors--$69 each instead of $129 for the six-concert summer series.

More than 300 seniors took the deal--though several said they thought the $7 parking fee was too high. The audience included many other seniors who told me they were unaware of the package deal. (The remaining four nights of the concert will be sold to those 65 and older for $46.)

Arnold and Edith Kauffman of Leisure World in Laguna Hills got the discount, and were delighted with their tickets.

“Imagine, being here listening to great music at these prices,” Edith Kauffman said. “And with no bugs!”

The Kauffmans are New Yorkers. She explained that you can’t find a good outdoor concert in New York because the bugs eat you up.

O’Connor, as billed, was a master fiddler. When he played “Amazing Grace,” I could hear Heckathorn sitting next to me sigh with satisfaction. I felt the same.

Vienna’s Loss: A friend of mine feels quite strongly that we shouldn’t write about women just because they take on jobs we usually associate with men. “Lady plumbers” is always her example. In that spirit, I wouldn’t ordinarily make a point to talk about Elizabeth Stoyanovich, the Pacific Symphony’s assistant conductor. (She led the orchestra Saturday night because scheduled conductor Richard Westerfield dropped out after suffering a back injury.)

Except: She made the music so enjoyable, as I watched and listened I kept thinking about the Vienna Philharmonic, which performed here in March, and its balky attitude toward permitting women members. Bowing to recent pressure, it has reluctantly agreed to allow a few women musicians. Stoyanovich’s performance reminded me that the Vienna Philharmonic’s long-standing attitude was a joke.

The next in the Pacific Symphony’s summer series is “Mozart in Vienna” on Aug. 9. Regular conductor Carl St. Clair is scheduled to conduct that one.

Wrap-Up: Taking our two children to the fair is always a delight. But I have a suggestion for the fair board to consider for next year:

A smoke-free fair. Or at least no smoking by the ride operators. There’s nothing much more disgusting than having a ride operator shift his cigarette from one hand to the other to help my daughter aboard a ride.