At Fast-Growing Church, Pastor Banishes Boredom

In a religion that reveres humble beginnings, it’s only fitting that Sonrise Christian Fellowship started small.

The church’s first services occurred in a musty middle school auditorium. As membership swelled, the evangelical fellowship pitched a tent in a Simi Valley strip mall, tucked near a Chuck E. Cheese’s and a K mart. The congregation’s latest digs are a converted warehouse across from a Bugle Boy factory outlet.

Even so, the spartan thousand-seat sanctuary--which next month will begin hosting four weekend services over two days-- has been a bit cramped lately. So Sonrise is hunting for 25 or 30 acres to call its own in the hopes of building a sanctuary and starting a religious elementary school and preschool.

Remarkably, Sonrise Christian Fellowship has evolved over seven years from a mom-and-pop church with a congregation of 65 to one of Ventura County’s few mega-churches, ministering to 4,000 members. Attended by local officials, the fast-growing church carries considerable political clout in conservative circles.

The secret to the Foursquare church’s mass appeal originates from a distinctive blend of scripture, self-help and pop culture. Services feature hip-swaying music, an emphasis on practical teachings over profuse Bible-quoting and “video melodramas” that emphasize sermon teachings.

Senior Pastor Ken Craft believes his fellowship offers the antidote to traditional church doldrums. It’s a “seeker-friendly” church, attracting lapsed Christians along with skeptical baby boomers and their children.

“I wanted to start a church that people would feel comfortable bringing their non-Christian friends to,” said Craft, a boyish-looking 34-year-old. “It’s very user-friendly. I want them to feel God’s presence, but the structure needed to be modified to meet the needs of people today.”

Witness a recent Sunday service.

Everyone who steps into Sonrise’s cavernous sanctuary is heartily greeted and offered a program. The church resembles an auditorium, with its stage, lack of windows and pink-upholstered chairs. There is not a pew, organ or hymnal in sight. Two massive video screens on each side of a stage flash upcoming church events and song lyrics.

Most congregants are younger than 40, families with children. They also reflect an ethnic diversity rarely seen in this suburban city. Church garb runs the gamut from baggy corduroy shorts, spiky blond hair and a discreet facial piercing to an elegant lavender silk sheath plus pearls. No matter. Children and teens socialize next to recovering drug addicts and former prostitutes.

The chatter stops when the music pastor, one of Sonrise’s 11 full-time ministers, starts to strum an infectious, Doobie Brothers-esque hook on his electric guitar. In kick the drums, synthesizer, other guitars and backup singers performing catchy, contemporary songs of praise.

After a video melodrama about a lonely teen who commits suicide, Craft segues into a pragmatic sermon about loneliness. Although he refers to a few biblical passages, Craft also cites pop culture: from the song “All By Myself” to the death of Marilyn Monroe to the Unabomber attacks attributed to hermit Theodore Kaczynski. In the audience, people follow along by filling out a loneliness quiz.

With humor and feeling, Craft tells his pupils that rejection, insecurity, a loss of perspective, selfishness and a depersonalized world cause loneliness.

The cure, he says, is Christ.

“Now aren’t you glad Jesus Christ is your personal savior, not a personal computer?” he asks. “Aren’t you glad Jesus calls you by name, not by a number?”

Rousing applause answers him.

Sitting shyly in the back row of the church for her first Sonrise Sunday service is Kellie Marquez. A Catholic, Marquez is a preschool teacher going through a tough divorce. She started attending a women’s support group at Sonrise a few months back and is now giving the church a closer look.

The sermon on loneliness could have been dedicated to her, Marquez said. She is more than a little impressed.

“What’s different here is that they talk about issues you deal with in real life instead of all those prayers that aren’t relevant,” said Marquez, 28. “It’s very helpful to hear that other people have the same problems as you. . . . This is almost therapeutic for me.”

In short, the 90-minute Sonrise service is engaging. By design.

“I made it my goal from the outset: You will not be bored,” Craft said. “We have this theme called ’52 great weekends’--not a big Christmas, not a big Easter, but just an excellent service every weekend.”

To accomplish that goal, Craft borrowed a technique more commonly associated with advertisers than preachers: market research.

His target audience was “Joe Simi Valley”--young and well-educated; fond of his job and where he lives; into contemporary music, health and fitness; and a bit skeptical of organized religion.

As he left Ventura’s South Coast Fellowship--where he grew up and served as a youth pastor--Craft set out to start a different church. Not necessarily a mega-church, just an accessible one.

Thus his fellowship bears little resemblance to most mainline Protestant churches, which have been losing membership in recent years.

But it is similar to other evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic churches that have experienced a corresponding boom, said Gus Cerillo, a professor of history at Cal State Long Beach who has studied the American evangelical movement.

In some ways, churches such as Sonrise mimic shopping malls in their scope and convenience, he said. Services are offered at varying times for people with crowded schedules. More esoteric needs --the needs of mothers of 4-year-olds to get together with other adults or the needs of Christian teens to skateboard with each other--are met in small groups.

On any day of the week, there is something going on at Sonrise.

Flu shots. A food pantry for the homeless. A harvest festival offered as a Halloween alternative. Evangelical outings in which church members give out Cokes or wash cars for free to spread God’s love. Small groups for college students, high-schoolers and middle-schoolers. Twelve-step programs for folks recovering from alcohol and drug addictions. Anger- and anxiety-management classes for men and women. A singles group. Bible studies. Parenting and divorce recovery classes. Softball games. Surfing and motorcycling outings.

Small wonder, then, that the Simi Valley flagship has spun off a Spanish-language church and branches in Camarillo, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks.

“We accept people where they are,” said Associate Pastor Dave Wilkinson, who leads the church’s recovery groups. “We’re a church full of exes--ex-wives, ex-husbands, ex-addicts, ex-prostitutes, you name it. This is a safe place for them. People can come here and not feel judged.”

Such a self-help, pop-culture bent has become exceedingly popular in evangelical churches over the last 15 to 20 years, Cerillo said. It is an outgrowth of evangelism’s pragmatic streak: Whether the medium is street meetings, radio shows or the World Wide Web, the message is spreading the Gospel.

“This is the kind of style of religion and sermon that’s impacting--and some might say infecting--a lot of evangelical and Pentecostal churches,” he said. “It’s the trend today--very different from the sermons I grew up with in evangelical Pentecostal churches, which were traditional Gospel. The sermons end up in the same place. But [the newer churches] aren’t preaching so much on the second coming of Christ.”

Not everyone is comfortable with such worship, though.

“The critics--both within and outside the church--will say this evangelicalism and marketing is pandering, catering to what is the fad of the day,” Cerillo said. “Part of that argument is that culture is shaping the church, rather than the church having a set of standards.”

The only other significant criticism leveled against Sonrise is that it reflects a narrow, conservative political viewpoint.

The church offers Christian Coalition voter guides to members at election time. And Craft made a few people uncomfortable when he introduced church member Glenn Woodbury--who was running for school board--to the congregation.

“I had a few people call and say Pastor Ken introduced him saying, ‘I can’t endorse anyone, but this is a man of good character and morals, and I’m voting for him,’ ” recalled school trustee Carla Kurachi, who visited the church a few times with her more conservative friend Woodbury. “They felt pressured, like they weren’t good Christians if they were supporting someone else.”

The conservative political image is one Craft seeks to dispel, because of its potential divisiveness. Once arrested while blocking access to an abortion clinic, Craft said he employs less radical methods to effect change.

“I encourage people to be active in the political process; I don’t tell them what to believe,” he said. “I tell them to read the Bible--that’s not Republican or Democratic. I tell them to get involved, vote. It doesn’t make any sense to bellyache about society if you don’t vote for people whose beliefs and values are close to yours.”

And he emphasizes that while church members must agree on essential doctrine, there is much room for differing opinions on other issues--which is why there is room in his church for a conservative married couple, a recovering heroin addict, a struggling, recently divorced mom and a “skate rat” kid. And many people in between.

“I realize that we are not the church for everybody,” he said. “I realized that the first week, when some people said we were too loud and too young. If someone is looking for a really traditional church, I can recommend a good dozen of them. But that’s not us.”