Special Week for Some Brand-New Congregations

Christmas is a time of hope, expectation and gratitude for Christians everywhere. But for members of churches that began this year, those sentiments are multiplied with the anticipation of celebrating their first Christmas as a congregation.

They’re starting new traditions and hoping to attract new members with worship services Sunday and on Christmas Eve. They also are building dreams for the future.

“I am just radiating with excitement,” said Erika Long, a member of the Revolution Church, a new and unconventional church in Long Beach. “There are so many things being planned. It’s just going to be amazing,” said Long, a Long Beach City College student.

Founded in September by David Trotter, a 30-year-old pastor who believes in “using the tools of the culture” to reach the younger generation, the Revolution Church has grown from 50 to 175 members in four months.

Tonight the church is offering “The Gift,” a 75-minute multi-sensory presentation of the story of Christmas, at 6 and 8 p.m. in El Dorado Park Community Church, 3655 N. Norwalk Blvd., Long Beach. Trotter hopes the free event will be repeated annually.

Visitors can walk through rooms of yuletide scenes in which people will be baking cookies, stringing popcorn garlands and frantically shopping at a make-believe mall. In the fourth room, a white light will shine on the “The Gift,” a symbol of the Christ Child wrapped in red. Then the visitors will walk through a tunnel to a final destination, where they will experience pulsating music and an inspirational Christmas message.

For weeks, dozens of church members have spent evenings and weekends with their pastor to prepare for the event. They have built and painted stage sets, rehearsed music and invited thousands to come see “The Gift,” using yard signs, window decals, a Web site and “pop-out” invitation cards with a DVD.

“Millions of gifts have been given throughout time, but one gift dramatically changed the world,” said Trotter. “We want to help people discover and experience ‘The Gift’ -- the very reason we celebrate Christmas to begin with.”

Though affiliated with the conservative Reformed Church in America, one of the oldest denominations in the nation, Revolution is anything but formal.

Trotter preaches in casual attire. “Wear whatever you want -- shorts, T-shirt, it doesn’t matter to us. At Revolution, church isn’t just a once-a-week event. It is about relationships,” he said.

For now, Revolution meets at El Dorado Park Community Church. But members believe that, given Trotter’s track record of helping to plant the successful Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa, their church will soon outgrow its borrowed, 250-capacity Fellowship Hall at El Dorado.

No central record is kept on how many new churches were established in Southern California in 2003, but some of the biggest growth is believed to have been in Pentecostal churches; in Spanish- and Korean-language congregations, and nontraditional churches like Revolution.

Other new churches are trying to capitalize on their first Christmas to attract new members. But their efforts tend to be more modest than Revolution’s.

“We just don’t have the wherewithal this year,” said the Rev. Sang-Ho Yi, pastor of Torrance Korean United Methodist Church, which he started in July.

“Just getting to this point has been difficult,” he said. “The first Sunday we opened the church, I preached to a congregation of one: my wife.”

Serving as pastor to a congregation of 14, all of them first-generation immigrants working long days, left little time for any big Christmas outreach.

“We would very much like to have a Christmas play for children, but it is out of question. We only have two children in the church: my two sons,” Yi said. Next Christmas, he promises, there will be a play.

Still, true to Korean tradition, his congregation will hold a Christmas feast Sunday after the 1 p.m. service at the church, which meets at Walteria United Methodist Church of Torrance, 3646 Newton St. The Korean congregation pays a modest rental fee to Walteria. Occasionally, the two congregations get together for services, though language can be a barrier.

Yi, who holds a doctorate in divinity from Claremont School of Theology and was previously pastor to a Korean church in Anchorage, says he is hopeful about his church’s future, in part because of the large Korean population in the South Bay.

On Sunday, he will baptize a new believer.

“The Lord told me the important thing is not numbers but how I live out my faith with the few who come,” Yi said.

At the Centro Christiano Familiar, a Spanish-language congregation of Assembly of God in Alta Loma that began in January, a highlight of the Christmas service to be held Sunday afternoon will be a banquet of ethnic dishes prepared by members.

“We are looking forward to Christmas with great expectation and anticipation,” the Rev. Andres Kuhn, a native of Uruguay, said through an interpreter.

Kuhn came to the United States as a missionary in August 2002. He started the church with the help of the First Assembly of God of Alta Loma, whose pastor, the Rev. L.B. Howard, is a former missionary to Nicaragua.

Kuhn’s congregation does not have to pay rent to share the church facilities.

Howard’s English-language congregation has a 10:30 a.m. Sunday service, and Kuhn’s Spanish-language group has one at 2:30 p.m. The congregations sometimes mix for fellowship.

For more than year, Kuhn, who was pastor of a 120-member church in Uruguay, stood outside stores to invite people to his church.

“I knocked on doors, talked to baby-sitters and went to construction sites to pass out fliers and talk to people to let them know about Jesus,” he said.

About 20 now attend Sunday service regularly.

For the service on Sunday, Kuhn has invited everyone who has set foot in his church to partake of a “potluck banquet.”

Speaking through Howard, Kuhn explains that the food will be as varied as his congregation, representing people not only from Uruguay but also Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil and Nicaragua. The idea is that, while they are far from their homelands, they can celebrate Christmas with a new church family.