No Bumper Crop?

They appear on Southern California freeways about this time of year in tandem with the purple blooms of jacarandas: Harvest Crusade bumper stickers, spreading word of a revival meeting in Anaheim that draws about 150,000 each year.

But the bumper stickers--more than a million have been distributed over the last decade--are more than just advertising. To many they are an expression of faith and an art form in themselves.

“I can’t wait to see what they’re going to look like” each year, said Rick Bullard, 37, of Costa Mesa. “I’ve collected every sticker. I put them on my truck to get the word out about Jesus.”

But this year, many Harvest Crusade participants are disappointed in the plain, new design. Their unhappiness is over more than aesthetics: They’re concerned that they’ll lose lots of free advertising if people fail to display the stickers in their cars.

The crusade, a four-day Christian rally held at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim in late July, was founded by Riverside pastor Greg Laurie in 1990 with financial help from his mentor, Calvary Chapel founder Chuck Smith Sr.

Every year for a decade, the colorful bumper stickers generated by Harvest Crusade’s marketing minds have been displayed on local automobiles with relish.

Appreciation of the stickers reached a high point in the mid-1990s, when the adventurous designs inspired many Southern Californians to take scissors in hand and create their own free-form car decorations by cutting the stickers into pieces and putting them together into Christian collages. Two years ago, the theme of the crusades was retro, so the sticker design included 1970s-style flowers and beads.

The custom became so popular that Laurie started a contest in 1996 at his church, Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, and offered a prize--a black leather Harvest Crusade jacket--to the winner.

Freelance graphic designer Debbie Newton, 34, won the contest with a collage on her red Jetta, and she still enjoys toying with the stickers, chopping up letters into eye-catching designs and using her computer to create similar-looking letters so that she can make up whatever message she wants.

“Everybody cuts up their stickers and tries to make theirs the most unusual,” said Newton, who lives in Corona. “It’s really fun to play with.”

In fact, the stickers now are made out of a rubber material--instead of paper--and are glazed with sun protectants, so the sticker won’t fade or damage the car.

More recent years have brought tamer designs, however.

This year’s design--in bold red and yellow and silver--has been called the “McDonald’s design” by some of the Harvest staffers because of its red and yellow blocks of color.

Organizers admit they changed the design mainly because they were worried that the basic message--where and when the revival will be held, for example--could be obscured.

“The reason we’re not doing contests now is that the logo is getting too chopped up and you can’t tell what it’s supposed to say,” said Mark Hammar, communications manager for Harvest Crusades. “The logo in its incomplete state is hard to read.”

Organizers, who expect about 180,000 to attend the Anaheim crusade this year, say that the crusades combined have now reached more than 2 million people with their messages of Christian fellowship and forgiveness.

“Just wait a couple of weeks and people will have them all doodled up,” said Brian Lewotsky of Tustin, attending a Bible study led by Chuck Smith Sr. at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. “Every year, the stickers are just everywhere.”

He said that every summer, the church’s parking lot--like highways throughout Southern California--is inevitably flooded with car bumpers bearing the new Harvest tags.

Similar rallies also have been held in Seattle, Honolulu, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, San Diego and other cities.

Harvest Crusade’s director, John Collins, said he has gotten more complaints this year from people that they don’t like the bumper sticker. It’s an important issue to Collins.

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“We need a lot of advertising at a good rate,” Collins said. “The best rate we could find was on people’s bumpers because they don’t charge anything to advertise.”

Staff members generally agree that they’ve seen fewer of the stickers on the roads this year, but a late return of the stickers from an out-of-state printer contributed to the dearth.

“We debuted the bumper stickers late this year, so there are less of them right now on the roads,” said Pat Mazza, resource manager of the Harvest Crusades, who nonetheless admits that this year’s design isn’t his favorite.

Organizers aren’t worried that the change in graphics will hurt the crusade long-term.

“Every year, we hear negative opinions of every sticker,” Collins said. “Art is subjective. We just don’t worry about it. It never seems to stop people from putting them on their cars.”

Diana Sampson of Riverside found her Harvest sticker a lifesaver after her van got a flat a few years ago on the way home from Palm Springs.

It was hot--really hot--and her sister, her mother and her kids were with her, several of them sick with the flu. Soon a man pulled over to change their tire. He had seen her colorful Harvest Crusade sticker, Sampson said, and stopped to help out a fellow Christian.