On Faith Alone

The truck and its cartons of free food--this morning a collection of oranges, grapes, raisins, bread, celery and green beans--arrived at this corner deep in Echo Park at 9:30 and people were already waiting. Now, an hour later, the line still stretches around the corner. There are Asian and Anglo faces in line, but most are Latino, mothers with a child or two in tow, a few old men. No one in line is saying much, the air unusually muggy.

In the back of the truck, where everyone is sweating profusely, the workers have an assembly line going: hands flying, bodies twisting as they put food into containers and hand them down to the waiting people. It was all moving smoothly until about a minute ago, when the worker whose job it is to pass out the food got involved in a convoluted conversation with a broad-faced, middle-aged woman in black.

He’s a slight young man in sweats and running shoes, with wispy blond hair and the features of an earnest teenager. He’s a head shorter than the woman, who is attempting to reply to his rudimentary Spanish with rudimentary English. It’s clear neither has much idea what the other is saying, and they’re both laughing about it. In the back of the truck, the workers are growing impatient. Finally the girl in charge of the grapes plucks one from the bunch she’s holding, cocks her arm and beans the slight young man in the back of the head.

“You’re holding up the works, pastor,” she says.

The assault brings laughter and catcalls from the people in line, from the workers in the truck and from other church workers busy sweeping the sidewalks and cleaning up this poor and dilapidated neighborhood. Matthew Barnett grins, wipes grape juice from his hair and thrusts the food into the woman’s arms. The 28-year-old is the pastor, founder and prime motivator of the Dream Center, which is impressing church-growth experts and is being hailed as a model for how to conduct a massive inner-city social ministry while also appealing to throngs of worshipers. The church has drawn accolades--including one from President Bush--and at the same time has raised red flags among some more tradition-minded religious authorities. None of which matters at the moment.

“How many people love Jesus today?” Barnett calls out to all around. They call back:

“I do!”

“I do!”

“I do!”

John Vaughan is the director of church growth today, a research center in Bolivar, Mo. As one of the country’s foremost church-growth experts, he calls the Dream Center one of the fastest-growing churches in the U.S. Playing a numbers game is a little tricky, though. Barnett’s church has no membership rolls, which more traditional churches use to gauge their size. What can be said is that the church regularly draws more than 5,000 people to its several worship services each week, a startling increase over the initial 30 congregants it had seven years ago. Even more striking is Vaughan’s prediction that the church could become one of the largest in the country; Barnett hopes for 100,000 worshipers in the not so distant future.

Megachurches are not a new phenomenon. Southern California is home to several that arose during the past two decades, including Faithful Central Bible Church, which had a congregation of about 200 in 1982. It purchased the Forum in Inglewood in December 2000 and this year drew a crowd of 15,000 for an Easter Sunday worship service and reenactment of Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem.

What distinguishes Barnett’s church, though, is the staggering array of 200 ministries that operate from the former Queen of Angels Hospital, towering above the Hollywood Freeway near Alvarado Street, just a few miles from the new $200-million Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Some of the ministries conduct church services for different ethnic communities, but the vast majority are social-service programs targeted at gang members and other at-risk youth, prostitutes, AIDS patients, the homeless, the hungry, drug addicts--the list goes on. There’s even a ministry for transsexuals.

Building a church by focusing on the immediate, temporal needs of potential worshipers--”customers,” as Barnett sometimes calls them--isn’t new. What some call the New Church Movement has been employing the technique for years, striving to build large congregations by creating a user-friendly atmosphere. But for the most part the resulting megachurches sprouted In affluent suburban communities and provided services designed for upscale congregations.

Barnett’s church, however, has grown up in the heart of the city, in one of L.A.’s poorer neighborhoods, where the “customers” for whom its programs are targeted are those on the margins of society. Its ministries reach 500,000 people a month. This surprises no one more than Barnett, who nearly quit in frustration months after coming to L.A. to be a pastor.

In 1994, the 20-year-old Barnett--who once wanted to be a sports announcer and who, as a teenager, spent weekends going from church to church as a traveling evangelist--found himself the pastor of Bethel Temple in Echo Park. Once one of the vibrant centers of the religious revival that swept Southern California in the early 1900s, Bethel Temple had fallen into a long and sad decline. Barnett’s job was to turn that around. That task alone was enough pressure for a young man taking up his first major position. But Barnett also bore the weight of his father’s dreams: For 35 years the senior Barnett, Tommy, a famous preacher who had pastored large and well-known churches in Iowa and Arizona, had cherished the notion of building a church in L.A.

At Bethel Temple, the young Barnett’s congregation consisted of just 30 people--Filipinos, most over the age of 60. But he was confident that with the traditional tools of church building--creating a great choir, refurbishing the building, preaching rousing sermons--he eventually could establish a thriving church. Events took a different course. During his first several months in the job, Barnett’s flock lost interest one by one. One Sunday Barnett peered out from the back of the church to gauge his congregation. What he saw, sitting there, patiently waiting for the service to begin, was a congregation of exactly two. Recalling the embarrassment of that moment eight years later, Barnett still gives a little shudder.

Watching his flock desert him was bad enough for the preacher’s son accustomed to the thousands who crowded his father’s services. But Barnett also faced a mutiny among the young people from his father’s church in Phoenix who’d volunteered to help out. They had held a private meeting and concluded that it was time for them to move on. “I just went home and wept,” Barnett recalls. “It was all down to absolutely nothing. I was ready to go home and tell my father I’d failed. Instead, something in me said to go out and take a walk in Echo Park.”

Barnett is sitting at his desk in his spare, businesslike office at the Dream Center, just off the conference area they call the War Room, where part of the church’s weekly TV program is taped--it airs on the Trinity Broadcasting Network--and where people brainstorm, pray and study the Bible. He looks like a kid who wandered in by mistake and decided to try the pastor’s chair. Leaning forward and eager, he describes how, after his moment of doubt and despair, he developed a plan to turn things around. “We had set out to establish a traditional sort of church,” Barnett says. “We wanted to minister to the inner city, but basically it was a traditional kind of church. And we thought that’s what success was, building a big, traditional church.” He smiles. “Fine, except it didn’t work.”

So that night he walked around the neighborhood, past the bodegas, the little mom-and-pop stores, the Chinese and Mexican restaurants, past the grimy apartments, the little bungalows with peeling paint. The gangbangers were out doing their thing. There were homeless people pushing shopping carts, drunks mumbling to themselves. Barnett took it all in. “And suddenly it came to me,” he remembers. “I came alive to the idea that we should be a blessing to this community, not a church that had set itself apart like many other churches had. And to be able to be a blessing, you have to put yourself into the lives of the people.”

If this was the community he wanted to serve, he realized, then the people who lived in it were his “customers.” Like a businessman with a start-up, he set out to learn what they needed. First, he literally moved his office out to the sidewalk and greeted anyone passing by. He started going door to door in his free time, introducing himself, inviting the residents to the church and, most important, asking questions: What can we do to serve you? What do you need?

Barnett eventually expanded on this idea. Every Saturday morning, he and a couple of assistants and local volunteers would pick a nearby block and knock on the door of every home and apartment. “It took awhile for people to open up, overcome their doubts,” says Barnett. “They’d have too much pride to say they needed something. Or they’d look at me like they didn’t really believe me, like, ‘Hey, you’re just some kid.’ We had to earn the right to be heard by them. We had to gain the consumers’ trust.”

The first breakthrough came a few months later. Behind the church was a dirt lot with a basketball hoop; a church member had added benches and weights. One day a couple neighborhood teenagers approached Barnett. “You the preacher going around the neighborhood asking what people need?” the boys wanted to know. Barnett said he was. “OK,” they said, “what we need is a place to lift weights.” They seemed extraordinarily insistent.

Barnett told them they were welcome to use the weights and the dirt lot. But he was curious about their urgency. Well, the teens explained, we need to bulk up quick. We’re getting to that age where we can expect to be going off to prison.

Seeing those boys planning for the time when they would be sent away gave Barnett a perspective he probably could have acquired no other way. “As a pastor,” he says, “I think you prepare yourself to meet people who lost their way. But to listen to those kids who just had no hope of anything else, those kids--” He shakes his head. “I’m not going to tell you it was some really major revelation. It was more like just realizing that this is really what you’re called to do.”

Barnett built on the breakthrough with the weightlifters by organizing other ministries. Aided by a handful of volunteers, he put together parcels of food--some of it donated, some purchased out of his own pocket--and delivered them to local people who were hungry. Homeless people were bused to the church, fed from the donated supplies and urged to attend services. Many people in the neighborhood faced immigration difficulties; they were directed to advice and assistance from legal clinics and pro-bono attorneys. Bethel Temple owned some vacant houses in the neighborhood; these were turned into residential support centers for addicts.

Over the next six months or so, into 1995, attendance at services steadily rose to more than 500, approaching Bethel Temple’s limit. What’s more, new programs were constantly being added. Many days the area around the church would be jammed with homeless people and others coming for help. Congestion and the general bustle around the place were increasing and Barnett was afraid neighborhood nerves would begin to fray.

Gloria Sanchez, who lives in an apartment near Bethel Temple, attended services there and then followed Barnett to the Dream Center. She remembers walking to services one day and finding herself in the middle of what she thought was a demonstration: “People everywhere, buses stopped in the middle of the street, cars, cars, cars. What’s going on? Well, somebody had forgotten to unlock the door!” She laughs. “Pastor had to go out and direct traffic!”

Clearly the church needed a new--and bigger--building.

A couple of miles up the freeway from Bethel Temple rose the white towers of Queen of Angels Hospital, its buildings sprawled across nine acres, empty, dilapidated and smeared with graffiti. Driving around one day, still thinking in terms of a traditional church building to house his growing congregation, Barnett stopped at Queen of Angels for a look. Allowed by a watchman to tour the 1926 building, Barnett became entranced by the litter-strewn labyrinth of decay.

Wouldn’t these rooms be perfect for the homeless? Couldn’t this tower shelter volunteers from all over the world? Wouldn’t this meeting room make a perfect medical center?

The whole notion seemed crazy. What use could they possibly make of all that space? And besides, the building’s owner was asking for more than $10 million for the property--a considerable sum for anyone to contemplate, let alone the young pastor of a church whose congregation was composed in large measure of street people. But the more Barnett thought and prayed about it, the more perfect it all seemed. He infused his initially skeptical father with an equal zeal for the old building. Negotiations commenced and eventually the owner agreed to a sale price of $3.9 million, the kicker being that it had to be paid within 18 months. Should the deadline go unmet, the collateral--Bethel Temple--would be lost.

“Talk about going on faith,” Barnett says.

The Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal Protestant denomination to which the Barnetts belong, swung into action. More importantly, Barnett’s father swung into action. It was the senior Barnett who, on a visit to Los Angeles nearly 35 years earlier, had driven past Angelus Temple, Aimee Semple McPherson’s grandly extravagant Echo Park legacy, and conceived his own vision of building an inner-city church. In the decades since, the senior Barnett had become one of the foremost pastors in the Assemblies of God, a dynamic and sought-after speaker, nationally known from his books and TV appearances. Now he began crisscrossing the country, tapping into an extensive network of acquaintances and potential donors and preaching at every church that would have him, with that day’s offering being dedicated to the cause.

Money began trickling in. “There were times when we really didn’t think we were going to make it,” the younger Barnett remembers. “We would pray, but it would just seem impossible. My father was exhausting himself. We’d talk on the phone every day and sometimes both of us would just cry.”

But contributions began to flow more strongly, bolstered by the occasional large check from a major benefactor. Those seemed to arrive just at the moment when everything seemed most hopeless. In the end, the deadline was met, the contract fulfilled. On that day, Barnett stood on the roof of the hospital, beneath which lies the whole sweep of Los Angeles from the hills to the downtown towers. He prayed, thanking God. And then he leapt into the air, pumping his arms, like one of his basketball heroes who’s just made a game-winning three-pointer. (Bethel Temple remains an Assemblies of God church but is not part of the Dream Center.)

Today, the Dream Center is a $10-million-a-year operation, with much of the equipment, supplies and vehicles donated, the programs supported by offerings, donations from benefactors and the untiring fund-raising of the senior Barnett. There’s a paid staff of 25 and a volunteer staff of 200. All of this is overseen by Barnett, who draws a salary of $60,000 a year.

Jesus Alva is a longtime resident of the neighborhood surrounding the Dream Center. “Having the hospital there, that was one thing,” he says, watching a church bus pull up and disgorge a load of worshipers. “But then this church. There were all these new people everywhere. Cars and buses everywhere on Sunday. We didn’t know if we liked it.”

Like those neighbors leery of the congestion and commotion associated with what Barnett had created in their midst, some religious leaders are uneasy about the needs-based approach to building a congregation. Differences of opinion over what a church should be are nothing new, of course: In broadest terms, they date back 2,000 years to the church-planting journeys of Paul and the other Apostles. But the debate has gained fresh energy during the past 20 years with the growth of the New Church--or, as some call it, the Next Church--Movement.

In many ways an American phenomenon, the New Church Movement has set aside centuries of Christian European tradition and many of the generations-old trappings associated with it. In place of hard pews and kneelers, solemn hymns and pipe organs, rote prayers and doctrine and fire and brimstone, the New Churches feature a relaxed atmosphere, contemporary music that is often rock-inspired and a message that cuts across denominational lines. It also focuses on solving contemporary problems, and emphasizes both the temporal and spiritual needs of the flock.

The New Churches that have sprung up as a part of this movement are often huge, often independent and often firm believers in using secular marketing strategies to attract more loyalists. The largest and best known of them sometimes supplement worship with, for instance, sports leagues, workshops in drama and dance, classes in “divorce dynamics,” “women in the workplace” and “life development” and ministries aimed at their suburban members.

“The emphasis on a consumer agenda by churches in many ways merely represents a part of the larger society’s emphasis on consumer rights with 24-hour supermarkets and enhanced customer service and so forth,” says Lyle E. Schaller, an author and independent scholar of the New Church movement.

By focusing on service over services, critics say the New Churches may risk overlooking some elements that should be at the heart of their faith, including awe, reverence, fear of God’s judgment for sins, and redemption through Christ--in short, the fire-and-brimstone parts.

“Yes, churches should be out working for the social good,” says the Rev. John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley and a well-known author, teacher and broadcaster, “but they also need to remember that their primary responsibility is for the soul. The message must always be the Gospel and salvation, and the problem is that importing too much of the everyday culture risks diluting that central message. Church has to be about substance and not just style.”

“The point is never numbers,” says Marva Dawn, a theologian, author and teaching fellow at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. “The point is being faithful. If we don’t focus on helping people deal with sin and redemption, then we are losing the essence of why Christianity matters. The so-called New Churches have to remember that.”

The Dream Center shares characteristics of a New Church, but “it is a unique place,” says Donald Miller, director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC. He’s also familiar with the Dream Center through one of his former students, a one-time drummer in the church’s band. “It’s one of what I call the new-paradigm churches that are flowering with the use of nontraditional methods and a real openness to the Holy Spirit. But what they’ve done is added this whole dimension of an incredible social ministry. It’s distinctive, a very attractive model. It’s a church, but it’s also something more.”

While Barnett wants the Dream Center to be thought of as “That Church,” or “The 24-Hour Church,” he allows it’s really more like a movement. About 130 other churches around the country have affiliated with the Dream Center, almost like franchises, by taking on the name and the desire to plunge heavily into social ministry.

Barnett says he takes to heart the criticisms that have been raised about the New Church Movement. “I know that it’s possible to get too sold on, too involved in, trying to reach out to secular needs, even if those needs are critical, like breaking addiction. I know that and I want to make sure that every ministry we start points back to Jesus Christ.” He says he intends to stay focused on prayer. “I know that I have to stay vertical.”

Across the sprawling campus of the former hospital there’s activity seven days a week, nearly 24 hours a day.

People are everywhere, the parking lot always filled with the buses used to transport volunteers or haul worshipers. The center has nearly 500 residents, some in rehab for various problems, some in the AIDS hospice. Volunteers come from across the country to spend a year working on the streets. There’s a bookstore, a cafeteria that serves 1,500 meals a day, a martial arts class, a Christian school for grades 3-12, several Bible study programs, a vocational training center, a wellness center that provides medical treatment and also sends a mobile clinic out into the neighborhoods. Off to one side is the brightly painted Metro Kidz truck that drives out into the community and puts on a combination variety show and worship service for kids. The Dream House Studio, a professional-quality recording studio, is run by David Hanley, who oversees the production of Dream House CDs and also directs the band and singers.

You’ll find offices for the Cambodian ministry, the Filipino ministry, the El Shaddai ministry for the transsexual community, the food ministry, which oversees the distribution of 65,000 pounds of donated and federal surplus food every week; the Dream Street ministry, which dispatches volunteers to Skid Row; the discipleship program whose members, former street people, head back to the streets to preach and counsel. Many of the ministries were the inventions of community members who saw a particular need and came to the Dream Center for office space, financial assistance and guidance. All of the activity, of course, has brought to the surrounding neighborhood of modest homes and apartments a level of commotion that escalates on Sundays or during special events such as the Christmas program, when toys and food are given away to needy kids and families. Barnett is aware of the importance of keeping the neighbors happy, so every day young residents of various programs at the Dream Center are dispatched to sweep the streets and sidewalks, tidy the lawns, paint out graffiti and do various chores for homeowners.

“It’s good for the kids and it’s good for the residents,” says Barnett. “And, sure, it’s good public relations for us.”

Watching the Sunday buses pull up, Jesus Alva agrees. “All this started up and we weren’t sure about it. Was this a good thing or not? But people from the church would come around and knock on the door and say who they are and did I need something. They were out there sweeping and painting. They wanted to be good neighbors. Nice and polite and happy. Now I go there myself sometimes.”

Barnett and the dream center have embarked on another great leap into the unknown. Seeing Angelus Temple had inspired the senior Barnett’s dream of establishing an inner-city Los Angeles church. That circle closed last fall when the Dream Center took over Angelus Temple and the younger Barnett became pastor there in addition to the Dream Center. He set in motion a project to refurbish by this month the temple’s main auditorium.

This is a major step toward further growth, finally solving what proved

to be a problem with the former hospital’s floor plan: Its only large meeting space was a gymnasium that could seat just 700 people. The only way to accommodate the growing congregation was by adding more and more services; sometimes there simply wasn’t room for everyone. But beneath its soaring dome and eight magnificent stained-glass windows, the main auditorium of Angelus Temple will allow 3,500 people to worship at once.

As a manager, Matthew Barnett’s style continues to develop but seems characterized by calmness and a real desire to empower others. “It’s all based on giving permission,” says Aaron Jayne, an associate pastor and one of Barnett’s earliest staffers. “Pastor is not into micromanagement at all.” Instead, says Jayne, Barnett’s notion is that “if you encourage people to have their own dreams and then release them to carry those dreams out, they remain enthusiastic and loyal. He’s a great CEO.”

As he moves from one meeting to another or gives precise instructions to an assistant, Barnett does seem the young executive, engrossed in the business of his company. But he says he is determined to keep himself rooted in the Dream Center’s mission; on many Saturdays he goes knocking on doors as part of Adopt-a-Block or participates in food programs. And every service at the Dream Center ends with an altar call, when those facing some particular trial or those simply feeling a special presence of Christ are urged onstage to kneel and pray.

On this particular Sunday, as soft music plays and the lights dim, people come forward, old and young, in fine clothes or jeans. They pray. Dream Center pastors move among them, joining their prayers. Kneeling by the lectern is a crying young woman, thick, dark hair falling forward to cover her face, her shoulders trembling. Barnett kneels beside her. He places his hand on her head and leans close.

“Oh, Lord, lift this burden. Oh, Lord . . . Oh, Lord . . . “ he prays. The woman takes his hand and holds it for a moment. Then Barnett stands and raises his hands. “Praise the Lord,” he says above the murmuring of prayer. And on his face there is a look of pure, serene joy.

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Bob Emmers is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.