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New churches 'planted' to draw new worshipers

By Kirsten Flagg

Every Saturday night, Stanley Reyes recites the Lord's Prayer while kneeling in a pew at a Catholic Church. Sunday morning, he's a drummer with an eight-piece rock band at Hope Christian Church.

"I got involved here because I wanted to learn," said Reyes, fresh from the preservice rehearsal on a stage at Nipomo High School -- the church's place of worship. "Going to Catholic church, I was just being there. I wasn't involved. ... I felt more at home here. It's almost like 'Cheers,' where everybody knows your name."

A more fitting television analogy for the 18-month-old church might be "Friends." Attendants show up well before the 9:30 a.m. start time wearing everything from Wranglers jeans to Converse tennis shoes. They gather around an assortment of free coffee and pastries before seating themselves two to five to a table.

Pastor Chris Canclini plays lead guitar in the band. Last Sunday, he delivered his sermon -- with a PowerPoint presentation on "Four things we need to do spiritually" -- in a Hawaiian-print shirt.

When the band plays, the congregation sings along with words projected on a blank screen in what Canclini jokingly called "Christian karaoke."

Hope Christian is one of about a half-dozen Protestant churches that have popped up in school cafeterias and shopping centers in Nipomo over the last few years -- a transient status some pastors call an advantage.

"I don't really think it holds us back all that much," said Pastor Mark Valadez of New Beginnings Community Church of the Nazarene, which has met in Dana Elementary School for the last two years. "I think some people actually come to the church because it doesn't feel like a church."

Like the majority of other new churches, Valadez's offers a worship service designed to attract new churchgoers -- upbeat, contemporary, unorthodox.

"We've met a lot of people in the community that are disconnected, and the last time they went to church it was boring; it was rules and rituals," said Canclini. "We don't compromise the message, but we make it fun."

These churches are evangelical both in ideology and by necessity -- new congregations are built on the word-of-mouth of their members. Nipomo may not be the easiest place to find a steeple, but judging by the stability of these churches' memberships, it is a good place to search for a new believer.

Emerging community

Between 1990 and 2000, Nipomo grew from a community of 7,109 to 12,626, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But it takes only a short drive through Nipomo's limited commercial core to notice that the number of church buildings in Nipomo hasn't kept pace with the growth of the population.

Those facts combined were enough for Stadia New Church Strategies to identify the town as an "emerging community."

Based in California, the nondenominational organization has selected 102 such communities in the Unites States for church plantings, with the aim of reaching out to people it calls "unchurched." It recently added two more Central Coast locations to that list -- Santa Maria and Paso Robles.

In exchange for the organization's funding and support, a male pastor agrees to move his family to an unidentified community. Within two years, he is expected to have built a self-supporting church.

Although Stadia formed in 1954, the majority of the church's plantings have taken place within the last five years. Mark Leeper, regional director for the Sierra Pacific Region, which stretches from Northern California to Santa Barbara, said that was largely because of a shift within the organization, but he acknowledged that church planting is the latest trend among evangelical Christians.

"I do think that church planting has become the rage right now. It's kind of the thing to do," said Leeper, adding Stadia's success rate for churches after that two-year period is about 90 percent. "I think it's because it does work. It's the most effective way to reach people for Christ, bar none, and because of that, it's catching on in popularity."

Canclini left his job as a youth pastor and a new home on 6 acres in Placerville two years ago for the self-selected Nipomo, where neither he nor his wife had any connections.

"We really didn't know anybody and we have two years to make this church go or we're homeless," said Canclini. "It was make it or break it. And it makes you really hungry. If you don't go out and meet people and greet people, you're in it deep."

Now, after a $125,000 investment from Stadia, a direct-mail campaign, numerous barbecues and other hosted activities, his membership in Nipomo Rotary Club and wife Rita's community involvement through her management of Hunter's Landing Coffee in Nipomo, Hope Christian Church averages about 130 worshipers per Sunday, with a yearly growth rate of 30 percent.

The newness factor

Pastors and parishioners cite many reasons for the popularity of new evangelical churches, but chief among them is an alienation with the method and message of orthodox Christianity.

Pastor Scott McGee of Stadia's New Life Christian Church in Santa Maria said his abandonment of the Presbyterian Church, in which he grew up, became final when some churches began allowing gays and lesbians to practice the ministry.

"They were going places where the Bible really denied them access," said McGee. "When they condoned the homosexual lifestyle, that's when I put down the gauntlet and said that's not OK."

Although Stadia has no official statement on homosexuality, abortion, women in the ministry, Israel or any of the other hot-button topics of today's Christian world, Leeper did say pastors are vetted for adherence to a conservative interpretation of the Bible.

Irene Erwin of Nipomo said she left the Presbyterian Church after attending it much of her life because of critical stances its ministry took of Israel. But what prompted her to commit to Hope Christian Church isn't the apparent lack of political agenda; it's the atmosphere.

"It's very different. It's upbeat," said Erwin, who brought a friend with her on her fourth Sunday at the new church. "It's very intimate sitting together at tables like this."

For many pastors, keeping their congregations engaged means striking a balance between entertainment and serious content. Although the evangelical churches eschew most rituals, they seem to agree on the importance of a participatory service that translates scripture into useable, everyday advice.

Pastor Ray Morawski planted his first church back in the late 1970s. Eighteen months ago, he moved from an assistant pastorship in Arroyo Grande to start the nondenominational Nipomo Bible Church and Christian School.

Since being in Nipomo, he's watched four church plants fail, which he attributed to those churches' inability to reach out to those new to worship.

"I know as I grew up in high school, you often came out of church and said, 'My, that was good. I wonder what he meant,'" said the pastor who grew up in the Baptist faith. "You've got to make it practical and enable people to say, 'How does this apply to me, 2005, here in Nipomo?'"

However, both pastors and Stadia officials agree: The goal is to introduce Christianity, not to steal parishioners from other churches.

"As the community grows, lots of new things like churches will also appear," said Father James Henry, the priest at the long-established St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Nipomo, who said his congregation has also grown in recent years. "But we're not in competition. ... There are some people who by nature like a more upbeat, casual approach to church, but then there are many people who like a very traditional, reverent approach, and we have to accommodate both."

Although his Catholic service must remain as packed and rich with ritual as ever, Henry said that in his 30 years of ministry, it has become more important for other church activities, like youth groups, to become more contemporary and hip.

For Reyes, the smiling drummer of Hope Christian Church, there's no need to forsake his ritual for his coffee-shop-style worship.

"I get the best of both worlds," explained Reyes, before hopping on stage to "start playing for God."

Staff writer Kirsten Flagg can be reached at 739-2206 or kflagg@pulitzer.net.

April 29, 2005