New Senior Pastor Settling Into Role at Sonrise Church

Pastor Joe Woodruff is so new to his job at Sonrise Christian Fellowship that he hasn’t yet found a house in Simi Valley for his wife, Natalie, and their three children. They are still in Spokane, Wash.

“But I’m looking,” said Woodruff, Sonrise’s new senior pastor. “They’ll move down as soon as possible.”

Perhaps it’s appropriate that an upstart 10-year-old church has a 36-year-old senior pastor who dresses in a polo shirt and jeans.

Traditional, this church is not. Sonrise got its start in a Simi Valley living room in 1990; today, it needs every inch of its 36,000-square-foot building to accommodate its 4,000 congregants.

Even that astounding number would be larger if not for the fact the Simi Valley church has spun off fellowships in Camarillo, Moorpark and Thousand Oaks and is about to break ground for the first Sonrise Christian Fellowship outside Ventura County, in San Diego. It has also launched a Spanish-language fellowship in Simi Valley.

With an operation of this size, Woodruff would seem to have his work cut out for him. But he will have lots of help--he is the senior of nine full-time pastors at Sonrise, where the ministers specialize in everything from peer counseling to a children’s program to worship.

Woodruff, who started preaching at age 16, last ministered at a Foursquare Gospel Church in the Spokane area.

Although the Sonrise fellowship is a relative newcomer as churches go, its roots are in the older Foursquare Gospel denomination, and Woodruff is an ordained Foursquare Gospel minister.

“Foursquare belongs to both the evangelical and Pentecostal associations,” Woodruff said this week. “In evangelism, the emphasis is on the Bible. The Pentecostal aspect emphasizes life in the spirit.

“Foursquare has always sought to be a bridge between the two.”

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In fact, Woodruff sees the role of Sonrise in terms of bridge building, using the diverse backgrounds in his own congregation as an example. Many church members come from other Christian denominations; others have never before had a church experience.

“Part of the phenomenon today is that these different streams are converging back into one,” Woodruff said. “People are realizing that the focus needs to be on Jesus, and that we all have more in common than we do differences.”

The pastors at Sonrise respect their congregation, said Woodruff, who was born in Kirkland, Wash., a suburb of Seattle.

“The emphasis is that we want to serve people so they can express their giftedness.”

One way of listening to the congregation is to build a church that people want. In 1990, Sonrise’s original pastor, Ken Craft (who resigned a few months ago after telling his congregation about an extramarital relationship) decided to do a door-to-door survey to find the top five reasons why people didn’t go to church.

“He found out too,” said Dave Wilkinson, who today oversees the church’s vast peer counseling ministry.

“No. 1, people said church is boring,” Wilkinson said. “No. 2, people said all churches talk about is money.

“No. 3, people said they didn’t know anything about who was teaching their kids in Sunday school. No. 4, church was irrelevant to their everyday lives. No. 5, people said church is not friendly.”

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Not in the top five, but close, was that people didn’t want to have to get dressed up on their day off, Wilkinson added.

The church then set out to address all those concerns.

“We decided it would be fast-paced, with drums and guitars instead of organs,” Wilkinson said. “There’s no reason church can’t be fun.”

The tithing aspect was played down, and staff members for all the youth programs began to be professionally trained.

As for irrelevancy, workshops in everyday life problems are commonplace today. There are support groups for mothers and for those suffering chronic illness, workshops for depression and anger management. There is home Bible study, men’s mentoring, friendship counseling, recovery programs, drama and music activities for all ages. Even a Y2K workshop begins Sunday night.

More relevancy--Sonrise holds two worship services on Saturday night, in addition to the Sunday 8:45 and 11 a.m. services.

The weeknight youth groups do things that young people like to do, Woodruff said. “On Tuesday night, our high school group had 368 in this auditorium. They play games, then have worship with their own high school band, then maybe they’ll watch a video on the giant projection screens with the high school pastor, James Craft.”

Wilkinson added that there really is nothing sacred about church on Sunday morning only. “People like Saturday night church. They often go out to eat afterwards.”

He added that it’s a good thing people like to attend on Saturday night, since accommodating an average of 2,500 members on a Sunday morning would be a tight squeeze, even in the huge Sonrise sanctuary.

For Easter weekend, the church has decided the only way to handle the volume of churchgoers is to schedule six services.

What with the casual dress, the rock bands, the Coca-Cola machines, the industrial park setting, the videos, Nintendo and computer programs, one would never confuse the Sonrise Christian Fellowship setting with even a Foursquare Gospel church of, say, 20 years ago.