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Live, Work and Pray
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| Kevin Haah left a Chinatown ministry to open his own Christian church. Like a handful of other religious leaders, he is targeting the new crop of Downtown residents as his future congregants. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
As Downtown Grows, New Religious Leaders Come Searching for Their Flocks
by Evan George
Three years ago, Kevin Haah received a phone call that changed his life. Then an associate pastor at a large Korean church on the outskirts of Chinatown, Haah was asked what he was doing to reach out - and spread the gospel - to the new people moving to Downtown Los Angeles.
"For some strange reason that conversation never left my head," Haah said.
The question helped spur Haah to action: He has embarked on the long process of founding his own Christian church in Downtown. With his wife and a handful of believers, Haah is scouting locations for what will be called the New City Church of Los Angeles. He said he is considering the newly opened ImaginAsian cinema house on Main Street as a temporary location and is surveying residents as to what kind of worship service they would attend.
"We're hoping to launch in the first quarter of next year," Haah said. "We are in a meeting and prayer stage right now."
Haah is the latest to join a growing trend of religious founders planting roots in Downtown Los Angeles. He and others recognize that as a community grows and residents desire amenities like restaurants and parks, some new inhabitants will also want a place to worship near their home.
Some options have already arrived. Since late 2006, two small, independent churches have surfaced: one called Sovereign Grace meets in an Arts District community center; another named Hope Fellowship rents the fourth floor of a building in South Park.
Meanwhile, Rabbi Moshe Greenwald, a 26-year-old from Long Beach, is planning a small synagogue at Seventh Street and Broadway, on the second floor of a loft project by an Israeli developer. Slated to open in a few months, the Jewish Community Center Chabad of Downtown Los Angeles will be "Downtown L.A.'s first full-time synagogue in over 60 years," Greenwald said.
'Religious Entrepreneurs'
Starting up isn't easy. Religious leaders new to the area are looking for space and worshippers.
Both Sovereign Grace and Hope Fellowship hold weekly services, usually to fewer than 50 people (each is considered non-denominational). They say they project a young, hip and loose style of worship, which involves plenty of singing and down-to-earth sermons.
"We're targeting artists and working professionals," said Alex Choi, the baby-faced 32-year-old pastor at Sovereign Grace.
Choi and the other religious pioneers say they hope to gain members as the community swells with new residents.
A 2006 study conducted by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District found that about 29,000 people call Downtown home - a 20% increase since 2004. With more than 7,000 new housing units in the pipeline, another 10,000 residents are expected to move Downtown by 2009, according to the DCBID.
Given that continued migration, upstart houses of worship are a predictable trend, albeit a recent one, said Donald Miller, executive director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC.
"Upper middle-class people moving Downtown - that's a new phenomenon," Miller said. "One would expect these 'religious entrepreneurs' to come in and satisfy the market."
Although Haah said he is uneasy about the comparison to business entrepreneurs, he admits he sees a niche in Downtown.
"With so many people moving Downtown there's very little spiritual activity going on here," Haah said in a recent interview on the patio of a South Park Starbucks.
When Haah, 42, left his post at Young Nak, a well-established Korean ministry that overlooks Downtown from its perch at 1721 N. Broadway, he went to Skid Row, where he assisted at a parking lot church. But he quickly realized that his former life as a high-paid attorney for the law firm Latham & Watkins positioned him to appeal to the working professionals less known for Sunday worship.
Sipping coffee and smiling at a couple of businessmen double-parking their sports cars, Haah added, "The new residents are in greater need of the Gospel, in my opinion."
Grass-Roots Reawakening
For decades, with a few exceptions, churches have been fleeing rather than flocking to Downtown (as was the case with many businesses). When the Catholic Archdiocese opened the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Downtown five years ago, many saw it as a returning religious beacon.
Scholars like Miller who track the region's religious scene consider the recent batch of churches as a grass-roots reawakening of sorts, but also point out that religion never left Downtown entirely.
Various Downtown districts are steeped in religious history. Little Tokyo - now dotted with various Buddhist temples - in 1906 witnessed the birth of the Pentecostal revival movement on Azusa Street, before its early preachers set up camp in Echo Park. In 1871, the first Jewish temple in Los Angeles opened on Broadway between First and Second streets, said Greenwald.
By the mid-1900s, Downtown had become a major headquarters for mainstream Protestant churches, said Miller. That started to change in the 1970s.
"When there was the exodus of people from Downtown, churches lost their constituents and typically dwindled down to a handful of people, but were sitting on multi-million dollar real estate, which has now been converted into office buildings," Miller said.
Not all the churches relocated. This year, the First United Methodist Church in South Park turned 151 years old. It is one of more than a half-dozen Methodist churches scattered around Downtown, said Rev. Sandie Richards, who heads FUMC.
"There's a bunch of us sort of forming a ring around Downtown, mostly historically racial-identified churches," said Richards, listing off First Chinese United Methodist Church and Centenary First United in Little Tokyo as examples.
Although the 100-member church that Richards has helmed since 2004 currently meets in a South Park community center, FUMC plans to build a new facility.
Like FUMC, the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles faced the tough decision of whether to flee Downtown. The former St. Vibiana's Cathedral was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. When preservationists battled the effort to raze the structure and rebuild on the site, Cardinal Roger Mahony considered looking elsewhere, though he ultimately settled on a Grand Avenue plot.
"There were a lot of people who said, 'Go to the suburbs, you don't need to stay here, this place is not going anywhere,' said Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Archdiocese. "Cardinal Mahony said, 'Well it's not going to go anywhere if we go somewhere else. And if we stay here, we can be part of the effort to revitalize Downtown.'"
Tamberg said many criticized the decision to stay.
"There was the concern that if we build it, will they come?" he said. "Now, the masses are full every Sunday."
Questions of finding congregants have been leveled at the new religious entrepreneurs, especially those splintering off from larger churches.
"A lot of pastors criticized us for going Downtown. They said it was too soon," Choi said. "But why come after the people? Why not be here to welcome them?"
PowerPoint Prayer
Mel Venegas spends most every Saturday welcoming people. He and a handful of fellow congregants from Hope Fellowship pass out flyers around Downtown for the Bible study and worship Venegas runs out of a nondescript brick building at 1200 S. Hope St. in South Park.
Venegas said he came Downtown for one reason: God told him to do so.
"I had no idea about the community or the condos or any of these things," said Venegas, 30, who lived most of his life in Orange County. "I just came on faith and there are a lot of people. I found a rainbow of beliefs in Downtown L.A."
Venegas began studying the Bible after a short stint in prison for drunk driving, he said, and for the last six months has operated Hope Fellowship out of two large meeting rooms - one for worship service twice a week, and one a playroom for the children of members. Attendance fluctuates from 10 to 50 people on any given day, he said.
"Some of them are loft people, I know some of them said they live above the new Ralphs," Venegas said. "All of them are from the Downtown area and that's who we're here for."
Choi, as the founding pastor of Sovereign Grace, takes the urban churchgoing experience even further. He described the culmination of the web-savvy church during an interview at a Little Tokyo Starbucks ("Eggnog lattes are the best invention ever," he asserts).
Leaving his pastor position two years ago at a large Korean church in Philadelphia, Choi and his wife chose Downtown to be near a revitalizing urban core. He set out to write a mission statement, vision and philosophy for a new church by creating a PowerPoint presentation and e-mailing everyone he knew.
"We started as a prayer meeting in a studio apartment on Bunker Hill," he said. "We went from the Orsini conference room to the Promenade Towers rec room, to USC where we rented out some rinky-dink chapel."
Since its inception late last year, Sovereign Grace has moved seven times, finally settling in the 99-seat theater of Art Share, a community center at 801 E. Fourth Place in the Arts District.
The church has a sleek website as well as a facebook.com profile. It offers a book group, a film club and an online preview of each Sunday's sermons.
Church member Jerry Won said he was brought one Sunday by a friend and decided to attend regularly with his girlfriend.
"I work in Downtown, I'm going to be living in Downtown, I decided why not go to church in Downtown too?" said Won, who recently worked in a Downtown developer's sales team.
Rabbi Greenwald is also readying a website, for the coming Orthodox synagogue in a 1,300-square-foot loft donated by Israeli developer Zuri Barnes. Greenwald said it will cater to Jewish residents and workers who would like to participate in prayer ceremonies during the day.
"People thought I was out of my mind," said Greenwald, who began looking for a Downtown location only a few months ago. "They said, 'There are no Jews in Downtown L.A.'"
Instead, the resource center has drawn a swift response. Classes and dinner meetings have already been organized.
Richards of FUMC said even the 151-year-old church is modernizing by creating "a killer website" and interacting with Downtown blogs.
But the real turning point will be constructing the new FUMC facility: a mixed-use tower at Olympic Boulevard and Flower Street, a few blocks from L.A. Live.
"We were pioneers in 1856 and we're pioneers again, reinventing ourselves for the 21st century with a new building and a fresh approach," said Richards. "It will be wireless, it will be flexible and welcoming to a diverse group of people."
FUMC intends to partner with a developer to build affordable housing and possibly a hotel with a 50,000-square-foot "sky church" for services. She expects to open the facility to other religious organizations, whether Jewish, Muslim or non-denominational Christian groups. The building will also hold a kosher kitchen.
"Basically, church is coming back to Downtown L.A.," Richards said. "It's one more sign of the success of the Downtown housing renaissance."
page 1, 12/10/2007
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
"For some strange reason that conversation never left my head," Haah said.
The question helped spur Haah to action: He has embarked on the long process of founding his own Christian church in Downtown. With his wife and a handful of believers, Haah is scouting locations for what will be called the New City Church of Los Angeles. He said he is considering the newly opened ImaginAsian cinema house on Main Street as a temporary location and is surveying residents as to what kind of worship service they would attend.
"We're hoping to launch in the first quarter of next year," Haah said. "We are in a meeting and prayer stage right now."
Haah is the latest to join a growing trend of religious founders planting roots in Downtown Los Angeles. He and others recognize that as a community grows and residents desire amenities like restaurants and parks, some new inhabitants will also want a place to worship near their home.
Some options have already arrived. Since late 2006, two small, independent churches have surfaced: one called Sovereign Grace meets in an Arts District community center; another named Hope Fellowship rents the fourth floor of a building in South Park.
Meanwhile, Rabbi Moshe Greenwald, a 26-year-old from Long Beach, is planning a small synagogue at Seventh Street and Broadway, on the second floor of a loft project by an Israeli developer. Slated to open in a few months, the Jewish Community Center Chabad of Downtown Los Angeles will be "Downtown L.A.'s first full-time synagogue in over 60 years," Greenwald said.
Starting up isn't easy. Religious leaders new to the area are looking for space and worshippers.
Both Sovereign Grace and Hope Fellowship hold weekly services, usually to fewer than 50 people (each is considered non-denominational). They say they project a young, hip and loose style of worship, which involves plenty of singing and down-to-earth sermons.
"We're targeting artists and working professionals," said Alex Choi, the baby-faced 32-year-old pastor at Sovereign Grace.
Choi and the other religious pioneers say they hope to gain members as the community swells with new residents.
A 2006 study conducted by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District found that about 29,000 people call Downtown home - a 20% increase since 2004. With more than 7,000 new housing units in the pipeline, another 10,000 residents are expected to move Downtown by 2009, according to the DCBID.
Given that continued migration, upstart houses of worship are a predictable trend, albeit a recent one, said Donald Miller, executive director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC.
"Upper middle-class people moving Downtown - that's a new phenomenon," Miller said. "One would expect these 'religious entrepreneurs' to come in and satisfy the market."
Although Haah said he is uneasy about the comparison to business entrepreneurs, he admits he sees a niche in Downtown.
"With so many people moving Downtown there's very little spiritual activity going on here," Haah said in a recent interview on the patio of a South Park Starbucks.
When Haah, 42, left his post at Young Nak, a well-established Korean ministry that overlooks Downtown from its perch at 1721 N. Broadway, he went to Skid Row, where he assisted at a parking lot church. But he quickly realized that his former life as a high-paid attorney for the law firm Latham & Watkins positioned him to appeal to the working professionals less known for Sunday worship.
Sipping coffee and smiling at a couple of businessmen double-parking their sports cars, Haah added, "The new residents are in greater need of the Gospel, in my opinion."
For decades, with a few exceptions, churches have been fleeing rather than flocking to Downtown (as was the case with many businesses). When the Catholic Archdiocese opened the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Downtown five years ago, many saw it as a returning religious beacon.
Scholars like Miller who track the region's religious scene consider the recent batch of churches as a grass-roots reawakening of sorts, but also point out that religion never left Downtown entirely.
Various Downtown districts are steeped in religious history. Little Tokyo - now dotted with various Buddhist temples - in 1906 witnessed the birth of the Pentecostal revival movement on Azusa Street, before its early preachers set up camp in Echo Park. In 1871, the first Jewish temple in Los Angeles opened on Broadway between First and Second streets, said Greenwald.
By the mid-1900s, Downtown had become a major headquarters for mainstream Protestant churches, said Miller. That started to change in the 1970s.
"When there was the exodus of people from Downtown, churches lost their constituents and typically dwindled down to a handful of people, but were sitting on multi-million dollar real estate, which has now been converted into office buildings," Miller said.
Not all the churches relocated. This year, the First United Methodist Church in South Park turned 151 years old. It is one of more than a half-dozen Methodist churches scattered around Downtown, said Rev. Sandie Richards, who heads FUMC.
"There's a bunch of us sort of forming a ring around Downtown, mostly historically racial-identified churches," said Richards, listing off First Chinese United Methodist Church and Centenary First United in Little Tokyo as examples.
Although the 100-member church that Richards has helmed since 2004 currently meets in a South Park community center, FUMC plans to build a new facility.
Like FUMC, the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles faced the tough decision of whether to flee Downtown. The former St. Vibiana's Cathedral was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. When preservationists battled the effort to raze the structure and rebuild on the site, Cardinal Roger Mahony considered looking elsewhere, though he ultimately settled on a Grand Avenue plot.
"There were a lot of people who said, 'Go to the suburbs, you don't need to stay here, this place is not going anywhere,' said Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Archdiocese. "Cardinal Mahony said, 'Well it's not going to go anywhere if we go somewhere else. And if we stay here, we can be part of the effort to revitalize Downtown.'"
Tamberg said many criticized the decision to stay.
"There was the concern that if we build it, will they come?" he said. "Now, the masses are full every Sunday."
Questions of finding congregants have been leveled at the new religious entrepreneurs, especially those splintering off from larger churches.
"A lot of pastors criticized us for going Downtown. They said it was too soon," Choi said. "But why come after the people? Why not be here to welcome them?"
Mel Venegas spends most every Saturday welcoming people. He and a handful of fellow congregants from Hope Fellowship pass out flyers around Downtown for the Bible study and worship Venegas runs out of a nondescript brick building at 1200 S. Hope St. in South Park.
Venegas said he came Downtown for one reason: God told him to do so.
"I had no idea about the community or the condos or any of these things," said Venegas, 30, who lived most of his life in Orange County. "I just came on faith and there are a lot of people. I found a rainbow of beliefs in Downtown L.A."
Venegas began studying the Bible after a short stint in prison for drunk driving, he said, and for the last six months has operated Hope Fellowship out of two large meeting rooms - one for worship service twice a week, and one a playroom for the children of members. Attendance fluctuates from 10 to 50 people on any given day, he said.
"Some of them are loft people, I know some of them said they live above the new Ralphs," Venegas said. "All of them are from the Downtown area and that's who we're here for."
Choi, as the founding pastor of Sovereign Grace, takes the urban churchgoing experience even further. He described the culmination of the web-savvy church during an interview at a Little Tokyo Starbucks ("Eggnog lattes are the best invention ever," he asserts).
Leaving his pastor position two years ago at a large Korean church in Philadelphia, Choi and his wife chose Downtown to be near a revitalizing urban core. He set out to write a mission statement, vision and philosophy for a new church by creating a PowerPoint presentation and e-mailing everyone he knew.
"We started as a prayer meeting in a studio apartment on Bunker Hill," he said. "We went from the Orsini conference room to the Promenade Towers rec room, to USC where we rented out some rinky-dink chapel."
Since its inception late last year, Sovereign Grace has moved seven times, finally settling in the 99-seat theater of Art Share, a community center at 801 E. Fourth Place in the Arts District.
The church has a sleek website as well as a facebook.com profile. It offers a book group, a film club and an online preview of each Sunday's sermons.
Church member Jerry Won said he was brought one Sunday by a friend and decided to attend regularly with his girlfriend.
"I work in Downtown, I'm going to be living in Downtown, I decided why not go to church in Downtown too?" said Won, who recently worked in a Downtown developer's sales team.
Rabbi Greenwald is also readying a website, for the coming Orthodox synagogue in a 1,300-square-foot loft donated by Israeli developer Zuri Barnes. Greenwald said it will cater to Jewish residents and workers who would like to participate in prayer ceremonies during the day.
"People thought I was out of my mind," said Greenwald, who began looking for a Downtown location only a few months ago. "They said, 'There are no Jews in Downtown L.A.'"
Instead, the resource center has drawn a swift response. Classes and dinner meetings have already been organized.
Richards of FUMC said even the 151-year-old church is modernizing by creating "a killer website" and interacting with Downtown blogs.
But the real turning point will be constructing the new FUMC facility: a mixed-use tower at Olympic Boulevard and Flower Street, a few blocks from L.A. Live.
"We were pioneers in 1856 and we're pioneers again, reinventing ourselves for the 21st century with a new building and a fresh approach," said Richards. "It will be wireless, it will be flexible and welcoming to a diverse group of people."
FUMC intends to partner with a developer to build affordable housing and possibly a hotel with a 50,000-square-foot "sky church" for services. She expects to open the facility to other religious organizations, whether Jewish, Muslim or non-denominational Christian groups. The building will also hold a kosher kitchen.
"Basically, church is coming back to Downtown L.A.," Richards said. "It's one more sign of the success of the Downtown housing renaissance."
page 1, 12/10/2007
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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