Easter Crowd of 8,000 Expected for Shepherd of the Hills’ Service

On Sunday April 12, some 8,000 or more people may show up at the Cal State Northridge football field. Four CSUN coaches will greet the crowd and a 6-foot-5 hoopster will give a sermon.

For the Easter service of Shepherd of the Hills Church, the Rev. Dudley Rutherford--who plays in a couple of local basketball leagues--wanted to move the evangelical congregation to a larger venue without losing home-court advantage, so to speak.

The quartet of athletic coaches and two featured soloists from professional ranks all regularly attend the Porter Ranch church.

The only unpredictable element is El Nino. “The whole congregation is praying there won’t be rain,” said Rutherford. If a storm is likely, the outdoor service will be replaced by four services at the church on Rinaldi Street.

The plan illustrates the long strides taken by a nondenominational congregation that has reduced a $9.5-million debt inherited from a 1995 merger to little more than $6 million while continuing some of the ministries started under retired pastor Jess Moody.

One of those projects is the church’s annual “Passion Play,” a musical production which opened Friday night with a redesigned, 150-foot set and an expanded schedule of 10 shows this year.

“We are not doing this for ourselves; we want to make a difference for the whole [San Fernando] Valley,” said Rutherford, noting that many people with Christian backgrounds are not churchgoers except during the Easter season.

Whether visitors see the drama with a live orchestra inside the church or attend the outdoor Easter service at CSUN, Rutherford said, “We hope people will come away wanting to get plugged into a church, not necessarily ours.”

Last year on Easter morning, Christian recording artist Crystal Lewis sang before nearly 5,500 adults under a huge tent--”the largest anyone can rent, I’m told,” Rutherford said. In addition, about 1,000 children joined in their own service inside the church or were in child care rooms.

This Easter on the CSUN gridiron, featured soloists will be Cindy Herron, one of the three-member pop group En Vogue, and young singer Blake Ewing, who was an Ovation nominee for his role as the young boy in the musical “Ragtime,” which finishes its Los Angeles run the day before Easter.

Blake, a seventh-grader, will not be going on the road with the show, in order to return to Los Angeles Baptist Junior/Senior School and “lead a normal life, at least for a while,” he wrote in an entertainer friend’s newsletter.

Welcoming worshipers at the start of the 10:30 a.m. service will be head football coach Ron Ponciano, head basketball coach Bobby Braswell, head baseball coach Mike Batesole and assistant track coach Jeff McAuley.

Although he is not on the Easter service program, ex-UCLA basketball coach John Wooden is also an active member of Shepherd of the Hills, a church spokesman said.

Rutherford said that even when he was pastor of Hillcrest Christian Church in Granada Hills, which merged with Shepherd of the Hills, his role in the Valley sports scene enabled him to befriend many people he otherwise might not have met.

“Our church wants to set a good example and have a positive influence, and that’s not going to happen unless you reach the athletic world and the entertainment industry,” Rutherford contended.

The church is also striving for a multiethnic, interracial congregation, he said. “At our church the people on our ‘stage’ or altar area are not all white folks,” he said.

After the church merger in mid-1995, the average attendance was 1,600 people, Rutherford said. Attendance now averages a total of 2,700 at the one Saturday evening and two Sunday morning services.

“God has truly revived this church--it’s beyond what I’m capable of or smart enough to do,” Rutherford said.

The location of the church, just north of the Simi Valley freeway, was always a good one, but only with the economic recovery of recent years does the future look brighter for Shepherd of the Hills. “Another 2,000 homes are being built in Porter Ranch and a shopping center will go up across the street,” the pastor said.

In return for two years of prompt payments that covered the interest only, the bank holding the church mortgage forgave $2.5 million of the $9.5 million loan, Rutherford said.

“Also, we had saved $1 million at Hillcrest church in hopes of getting a new church, so we gave the bank roughly a million in January to reduce our indebtedness to approximately $6 million,” he said. “We are going to launch a campaign this fall [in hopes of being] completely out of debt in three years.”