Ministry Using Historic Church Is Ordered Out

A regional governing body of the Presbyterian Church USA is evicting a ministry to the mostly low-income Cantonese-speaking immigrants from a historic church in Lincoln Heights.

The Presbytery of San Gabriel, which is trying to sell the old True Light Chinese Presbyterian Church building on Griffin Avenue, said that will be much easier to do this way.

In a Feb. 6 eviction notice to Irvin Lai, a leader of the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Ministry that uses the building, the Rev. Thomas G. Rennard, interim executive presbyter, also said “all locks will be changed” in 30 days.

Lai, an elder who opposes the sale, said he could hardly believe the reference to the locks.

“They’re going to lock us out. Isn’t it something?” said Lai, a member of the church since 1958.

Rennard said he had no comment on the locks. But he said that Lai’s group has refused to discuss or look at a possible new home that the presbytery had located.

“It was a mortuary,” Lai said. “You know how Chinese people feel about that.”

“It was a former mortuary,” Rennard said. He said the presbytery was willing to entertain other locations, but that Lai wouldn’t talk about it.

“They should know better than to offer us a mortuary,” Lai said.

The eviction will also affect the True Light Chinese Language School and the Korean American Young Nak Presbyterian Church’s outreach ministry to Latinos.

About 70 Spanish-speaking adults and children attended Young Nak’s worship and Sunday school classes in the building.

True Light’s roots go back 126 years in Los Angeles, when the Rev. Ira M. Condit, a former missionary to China, founded it as Chinese Presbyterian Church. The ministry began with children whose parents worked in Chinatown’s laundries, produce markets and restaurants, much as Lai’s group does today.

In 1996, it became Alhambra True Light Presbyterian Church after merging with a dwindling congregation in Alhambra.

But Lai and a handful of other church leaders continued to minister in Lincoln Heights.

Rennard and the Rev. Peter Lai (no relation to Elder Lai), pastor of the merged church, have said that Lai’s group was not growing and that the old building is too expensive to maintain.

But Lai has disputed the characterization, saying that he doesn’t consider 30 people who worship there on Sundays, 20 youngsters who are tutored on weekdays and 80 students enrolled in the Chinese language school insignificant.

Only a Head Start school, whose lease with the presbytery is good until May 31, will be able to remain after March 7.

The Presbytery of San Gabriel governs 45 congregations of the Presbyterian Church USA in northeastern Los Angeles, San Gabriel Valley and surrounding areas. The presbytery has about 10,500 members, down from 17,257 in 1983.

Last November, a Korean congregation that had offered $1.1 million for the building withdrew its offer after opposition to the sale became public.

The Rev. Paul Kang, a mission pastor at Young Nak, whose Spanish-language congregation meets in the building, said he hoped an arrangement could be made to remain there a little longer.

“I’m praying,” said Kang, whose church’s $500,000 offer to buy the building last year was rejected by the presbytery.