Saturday, Oct. 26, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
The picture postcard view of American communities, with church steeples rising assuredly amid neighborhoods, may fade into nostalgia as we plunge further into bigness.
What began 50 years ago with supermarkets caught on in the next decades with movie houses, bookstores, shopping centers, hotels, theme parks, office complexes, school districts and now ... churches.
The battle for big has been won in most spheres. The bigger the mall, the better. The bigger the bookstore, the better. The bigger the hotel ... the bigger the laser light show ... It's the '90s and big is boffo.
But on Sunday morning?
This question is still open. Big churches, so-called megachurches, are not so common that there's not some fight left in the people who oppose them. People who want to amble out for their Sunday paper in their bathrobes, pausing quietly to prune the roses if they wish. People who want to bring home groceries without concern for what time evening services let out, flooding their streets with megatraffic.
And while they don't want to criticize anyone's religion, their sideways glances give away a certain uneasiness about the style of worship in these new churches. They sense commercial overtones and display a certain dread toward the churches' theatrical approach to sermonizing. Theater means noise and unchurch-like architecture. Big means daily activities and nightly services to pay for it all.
Just as they don't mind a convenience store in their neighborhood, they don't mind any kind of church as long as it's proportional, on a scale with the rest of the homes and businesses. But just as they would oppose a mall on the next block, they oppose these new, big churches on the grounds that they will dominate the neighborhood, change its character entirely.
Match made in heaven
Megachurches and baby boomers go together.
Millions of boomers want a spiritual life for themselves and their kids but not their parents' church, the old stone one on a corner lot with a steeple and doctrine rigid as the deacon's collar. Where fidgeting in the pew merited a stern look, and a yawn or giggle warranted something worse when they got home.
Nondenominational Christian churches are leaders in the movement to meet this new need, the need to come back to the faith, to quote Scripture AND Richard Pryor: "I'm cool, I'm cool."
In Las Vegas, the Canyon Ridge Christian Church is growing right along with this national trend. With an average Sunday draw of 1,440 at each of two services, the church is outgrowing its Sunday-morning quarters in the portable classrooms and auditorium at Cimarron Memorial High School.
With $4 million in financing from the Church Development Fund of Fullerton, Calif., Canyon Ridge plans to establish permanent residence on 30 acres at Lone Mountain Road and Jones Boulevard. While big may satisfy the church's needs, many neighbors are asking: "What about our needs?"
"I don't have a problem with the church per se, just a problem with its high density. It'll generate 2,000 to 3,000 more cars going both ways. It'll be a nightmare," says Marvin Rayno, who lives near the site.
"The reason I bought out here was because you couldn't hear a thing, it was so tranquil. I know that can't last forever, but I sure as heck don't want someone down the street clashing a set of cymbals."
Comments such as Rayno's are still forthcoming, despite City Hall's approval of a 49,500-square-foot church building on 7.5 acres of the property (the church says it will build only 30,000 square feet in phase one of the construction, while its plans show 110,000 square feet for phase three). During the public hearings, dozens of neighbors spoke in opposition and signed petitions, gaining a few site changes but losing the fight to halt the development.
Yet they continue to speak out, hoping for a miracle.
"It's just way too big," says Carol Catey. Noting that City Hall's approval was only for phase one and that the church is planning to have 110,000 square feet at build-out, she fears there will be no end to the church's activities and growth. "Once they get in, they'll be able to do anything they want."
Traffic fears allayed
The city planner who supervised the church's paperwork as it made its way through the application process, Phyllis Hargrove, said any plans beyond those for the church building now approved will necessitate new approval processes and more public hearings.
That doesn't assure neighbors who were active in opposing the church at public hearings. Barbara Brown says the will of the neighbors had little effect then and it will likely have little effect in the future.
Hargrove also seeks to assure the neighbors that the other logical and inevitable use for those 30 acres would have been the development of single-family homes, 120 of which could have easily been built in that space.
Citing models worked up by the national Institute of Transportation Engineers, she said a church of the size approved for Canyon Ridge in phase one will generate 461 trips weekdays, while 120 homes would generate 1,146. The church is a little larger on Sundays, 1,813 trips as opposed to 1,054 trips for the homes, but overall, she said, the neighbors will see far less traffic with a church on those 30 acres.
"Traffic studies don't bear out the neighbors' fears," she said.
Neighbors are not persuaded, suspecting that the numbers will be a lot higher and certainly in greater concentrations.
"With single-family homes, people don't all go to the grocery store at the same time," Brown says, referring to her fear of traffic jams during peak hours of church use.
Mary Pace, another neighbor, says the church will overwhelm the neighborhood. "Why should we have to have that amount of traffic?" she asks.
'Good neighbor'
The Rev. Kevin Odor, pastor of Canyon Ridge Christian Church, seeks to assure the neighbors that their worst fears are imaginary.
"Our goal is to be a good neighbor," Odor said. "I pledge that we will be a good neighbor."
Odor sought to dismiss, at least for now, a major concern expressed by several neighbors -- that the church has plans to develop an amphitheater, day-care services and a school that would operate on a daily basis, adding stress to the neighborhood.
Plans for the amphitheater were dropped as part of the concessions to neighbors during the public hearings. As for a school, Odor won't rule it out for sometime in the future but says, "At this time, there are no plans to have a school, zero."
Neighbors' fears, however, are bolstered by the building plans, which contain classrooms and day-care facilities, and the city's approval of the church's plot plan, which has 21 requirements, including:
"Provide a traffic study which includes a detailed scope of the operation including number of employees, students and days and time of operation ...
"Submittal of a complete and independent Special Use Permit application for any future development of an amphitheater or school/day care."
Odor also admits that anything is possible regarding use of the church grounds in the future.
"What church can be built anywhere that can say what it will be in 10 years?" he asks.
All the neighbors interviewed for this story said they believe the amphitheater will be back, with outdoor concerts nearly every night, and that a school and day-care facilities are necessary to generate the revenue for the church to pay off its debt. They said the amphitheater plans were withdrawn simply to placate an outraged citizenry, and that someday, quietly, the plans will work their way back into the development.
"I know as I live and breathe the amphitheater will be there," Brown said.
Looking into the future, they see conventions, schools, day-care, and entertainment going hand-in-hand with the church services. They base their fears on the floor plan, which shows a 1,190-seat auditorium (ultimately planned for 3,900 seats), two smaller auditoriums with stages, food preparation areas, several rooms for children that they say could be used for classrooms, a teachers' room, conference room, a bookstore, sizeable lobby and lounge areas and 644 parking spaces that will balloon to 1,552 in phase three.
As pastor of Canyon Ridge, Odor cares about what the neighbors are saying but wishes they would be more accommodating. "We have incurred over $1 million in additional costs responding to concerns of the neighbors," he said. "We respond to their concerns but they don't accept." One response was to knock the church's height from 52 to 35 feet.
"It's not true that we need a school for revenue. Funding for our ministry is a gift from the people. We're not into fund-raising. We don't do rock-a-thons, sell candy. ... We feel the church should be financed by gifts from grateful people."
Contemporary methods
A graduate of William and Mary with two master's degrees from Cincinnati Christian Seminary, Odor sees a deep need to bring the ministry to today's families whose path to God may be more animated than in the past but nonetheless sincere.
"The principals are timeless but the methods are contemporary," Odor said, describing his services that use music, drama, readings and a sermon that all fit together to present a theme. "People leave having had something to seriously think about."
Because the dress is casual and guitars are in evidence doesn't mean Canyon Ridge is anything but a serious church, Odor said. He said the church strives to make religion relevant, injecting itself into such issues as homosexuality, racism and abortion. "We take an honest look at what God says about the issues," Odor said.
In its attempt to integrate itself with the real life of the community, the church reaches out to groups. Gamblers Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, the Boy Scouts all can find a place to congregate at Canyon Ridge. "We want to offer what the community needs," Odor said, reiterating his theme that the church will be a good neighbor, a resource, not a center of contention or problems.
Hargrove said the city approved the church because there was no reason not to. "Churches are permitted in any zone," she said. "With Canyon Ridge, it's just a big one, that's all. We have no separate standards for megachurches."
While neighbors suspect the church will be commercial in nature, Hargrove said it's well understood that any commerce -- selling books or tapes, for example -- is OK only as it is incidental to the services and conducted during church hours.
"Any other use is not allowed in a residential zone," she said.
Megachurches and fears surrounding their impacts on neighborhoods are a national phenomenon. The August edition of Atlantic Monthly magazine has a mega-article about the trend, calling megachurches "the Next Church":
"No spires. No crosses. No robes. No clerical collars. No hard pews. No Kneelers. No biblical gobbledygook. No prayer rote. No fire, no brimstone. No pipe organs. No dreary 18th-century hymns. No force solemnity. No Sunday finery. No collection plates.
"The list has asterisks and exceptions, but its meaning is clear. Centuries of European tradition and Christian habit are deliberately being abandoned, clearing the way for new, contemporary forms of worship and belonging," the magazine reports.
"The churches are remarkable chiefly for their size. ... These very large and dynamic congregations may at the moment number no more than 400, but they are the fastest-growing ones in the country."
In Annapolis, Md., last month, a city councilman was set upon verbally by members of dozens of churches after he proposed a bill that would have thwarted a local Baptist congregation from building a megachurch on 40 acres.
Although many neighbors of Canyon Ridge are unrelenting in their protests -- they still hope to force another public hearing on the church before its likely groundbreaking next month -- Odor is confident that someday the wounds will heal.
"The bottom line is we do feel God led us to this property," he said.
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