Badge of Faith

Nothing tells the story of Bob Kopeny more concisely than this: One Sunday he preached the Gospel to a congregation that included a quiet man placidly reciting prayers in his pew. And only days later, he was slapping handcuffs on his parishioner, arresting him for disorderly conduct.

A Placentia police officer-turned-preacher who for a time served in both roles, Kopeny often reflects on the ironies of his dual careers.

“A police officer is trying to bring consequences of the law into people’s lives,” said Kopeny, 41. “As a pastor, I’m seeking to help people find forgiveness for what they do wrong.”

He’s now head pastor of Calvary Chapel of Placentia, which has more than 1,000 members and is tucked in a stucco strip mall near a barbershop and a Greek restaurant. The church began informally with 15 friends sitting in Kopeny’s living room, studying the Bible and sharing prayers.

At one time, neither police work nor the ministry seemed likely careers for Kopeny. Growing up in Yorba Linda, he was a troubled teen, smoking hash and taking uppers, stealing from stores and lifting bottles of booze from his parents.

He attended a Lutheran church that he describes as a place with stiff doctrines and a detached congregation.

“I didn’t know God then,” he said. “I believed in him intellectually, but I didn’t have a personal relationship with God.”

He lost that spiritual apathy in 1971 after a friend, Fred Massari of Placentia, invited him to go to a Christian retreat.

“I asked if there would be girls there,” Kopeny said. “I wasn’t exactly spiritually minded at the time.”

But the retreat proved to be profound: He became a born-again Christian and pledged to devote his heart to Jesus Christ.

According to Massari, an electrician for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department in Santa Ana, Kopeny’s faith took root in a subtle way and he slowly shed his rebellious habits.

“I became quite concerned when I became aware of some of the things he was doing,” Massari said. “After that camp, he became more concerned with wanting to do the right thing.”

Kopeny said he felt God’s presence in his life slowly.

“The roof didn’t open,” he said. “There were no shivers, no music.”

But two weeks later, when he was sitting in a Fullerton restaurant eating a hamburger with his father, he said he felt a peace inside of him that came from his conversion.

“God had come to live in me,” he said. “He loved me, and I loved him.”

His older brother, William Kopeny, a high-profile criminal defense lawyer who lives in Laguna Hills, said he remembers when his brother returned from the Christian retreat.

“At the time, I was nervous about it,” said William Kopeny. “The charismatic Christian movement wasn’t very well known in mainstream America.”

At the same time, Kopeny returned to his boyhood interest in a law enforcement career. As early as the fourth grade, he wrote to the CIA and the FBI asking what qualifications he would need to join. He had loved law enforcement from the time he was a child and was glued to detective and spy shows on TV.

“I always had in the back of my mind that it would be a career of choice,” he said.

So, after graduating from Biola University in La Mirada, he joined the La Habra Police Department.

Later, after moving to the Placentia force, he was a founding member of the local police chaplain program, a blend of his two professional passions.

Capt. Chuck Babcock of the Placentia Police Department said Kopeny was someone the department could count on for assistance with a traumatic situation.

“He had a calming effect on people, which you would expect with his background,” Babcock said.

Although Kopeny approached police work with sensitivity, Babcock said he was tough enough to handle the difficult situations a cop has to face on the streets.

“In our selection process, we ask if they had to take a life in order to protect a life, would they be able to do that,” Babcock said. “We were satisfied with his responses to those kinds of questions.”

Kopeny remembers calling up a member of the Los Angeles Police Department who was a Christian to get advice about the spiritual perils of a sometimes gritty job: Would he become cynical? Would his lose his belief in God? Would he lose his faith in humanity?.

“I asked how he could be a police officer and a Christian,” he said. “They seemed mutually exclusive to me.”

Though the officer assuaged his fears, Kopeny began to consider a move to the ministry. He went back to school to earn his master of divinity degree from Biola’s Talbot Theological Seminary and then served as an intern with Calvary Church in Placentia--which belongs to a different denomination than Calvary Chapel.

Returning from a solitary retreat to the desert at which he fasted and prayed about what way his career should turn, he had an epiphany. There in his car, he felt a divine voice speaking to him, urging him to help others know God.

“From that moment on, I knew God was calling me into the ministry,” he said.

He got married and started the informal Bible classes at his home with his wife, Becky, now a secretary at his church. They have three boys named Jesse, Valor and Christian.

“He shares a lot of himself in his teachings,” said Massari, who is now a congregant at Kopeny’s church. “To me, it’s not that much different if I’m sitting in his living room, talking to him.”

It was that same casual approach that sparked Kopeny’s affiliation with Calvary. He liked Calvary’s emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and its dismissal of denominational differences.

Massari said he respects Kopeny as a man of God and that other congregants frequently comment on Kopeny’s down-to-earth accessibility. Even though Kopeny is now Massari’s pastor, the two friends still go dirt-bike riding at El Mirage like they did when they were in junior high.

“For some of the people at the church to see him popping a wheelie on his dirt bike, they’re kind of surprised,” Massari said. “They don’t picture a pastor being as active and aggressive as Bob is.”

Kopeny’s schedule is booked with his swelling congregation and his three children, but he’s still considering getting on the reserve list at the Placentia Police Department, which requires about 20 hours of duty a month.

But his commitment to teaching the Gospel is his priority.

“I have a love for the Lord,” Kopeny said. “I grow deeper in love with him every day.”