Faith or Fad? : Energize the fervent beliefs of some Christians with techniques from the New Age human potential movement. The result? Momentus.

For four days, they blurt out secrets, slug pillows while yelling “Mama, Mama, Mama,” and pretend to be aboard a sinking cruise ship that has only one life raft.

They also pray, listen to music from “Beverly Hills, 90210” and--occasionally--claim to hear whisperings from God. By the time it’s over, many say that they’ve never felt closer to Jesus or to other people, and that their lives have dramatically changed.

The program is called Momentus, a $500 jump-start for the spirit that is raising eyebrows among charismatic and evangelical Christians in Orange and Los Angeles counties, Northern California, Texas and Hawaii.

Started in a church gymnasium, Momentus is an unusual mix of conservative Christianity and rough-and-tumble psychological techniques. In it, people confess sins, wrestle with past hurts and role play in an attempt to better understand themselves and their relationship to God.

So far, the seminar has won praise from a former co-host of Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” TV show, dozens of pastors, a Nicaraguan contra general and the man who ran the Border Patrol’s western headquarters under President Ronald Reagan.

But it also has split one church, created a stir at others and come under question for its confrontational approach.

Momentusites acknowledge the program is rigorous--even humiliating at times--but say it needs to be to shake Christians from their complacency. “Jesus,” explains founder Dan Tocchini, “is not Mr. Rogers.”

Tocchini, 38, is the lightning rod for Momentus’ detractors.

A former altar boy who later sold movie theaters, he says he was “born again” 15 years ago in his sister’s living room. From there--and this is what disturbs his critics--he went to work for Lifespring, a controversial self-improvement seminar similar to est.

To a number of Christians, Lifespring’s New Age philosophy and methods--which borrow from Eastern religions, existentialism and encounter-group psychology--are not only at odds with biblical teachings, but potentially dangerous. Although most of Lifespring’s 500,000 customers have enjoyed the seminars, the company has been sued more than 40 times for allegedly causing psychological injury or death--charges it denies--and its insurers have reportedly paid millions in settlements.

Tocchini, however, was intrigued with the idea of converting Lifespring’s techniques to Christian ends. When his Pentecostal sister prophesied that “God would do a mighty work” with him at Lifespring, he signed on.

“In Catholic schools, I learned a lot about the Bible and Jesus Christ,” he says. “But knowing truth is very different from being true. . . . In Lifespring, I saw that people were able to take on principles and use them like second nature in a short period of time. I wanted to learn how to (use the same teaching methods) to make biblical principles more (real) in people’s lives.”

In 1990, two years after quitting Lifespring, he was ready. At that time, he was involved in a home Bible study group at an Episcopal church in Petaluma, Calif., and “there was a buzz about our (meetings) in the congregation at large. . . . I (had developed a skill for) honing in on what people were concealing and the concerns of their hearts.”

When the priest asked him to create a spiritual-growth program for the entire parish, Tocchini came up with Momentus. It had no name and lasted just two days, but the effect was electric.

“People came out and were really excited about doing things,” Tocchini recalls. “And that got the priest kinda jumpy. He said, ‘You’ve gotta put the reins on these people,’ and I replied, ‘I don’t have any.’ ”

The jumpiness continued after Momentus moved to Santa Rosa, Calif. At first, the reviews were glowing. Broken marriages were healed, non-Christians accepted Jesus into their hearts, believers found new fervor for the Lord.

But soon, a vague uneasiness crept in. There were questions about the “living mirror” exercise, the odd lingo spoken by seminar graduates and the “peepee-to-peepee” hugs.

It sounded to skeptics like Lifespring in sheep’s clothing.

(Lifespring officials say their program has no association with Momentus. “Only Lifespring is Lifespring,” says company president Jeffrey L. Cosby. “We’ve assumed that what (Tocchini) is doing is quite different.”)

“The debate isn’t over the purpose of (Momentus), which is to get people to make full commitments to Christ,” says John Strong, an evangelical Santa Rosa pastor who cautiously endorses the seminar. “The issue is the tools being used.”

The underlying argument boils down to this: Is it possible to Christianize the psychological methods of human-potential groups, or are they inherently “man-centered” and anti-God?

The most controversial of those methods--one that has been used by Lifespring and adapted by Momentus--is the living mirror, an exercise in which individuals stand in front of other people at the seminar and listen to what those people think of them.

“People who don’t know you from Adam are giving you a rundown on what they think you are, and some of it is just really uncalled for,” says Wayne Coombs, a Palos Verdes minister who otherwise loves Momentus. “It’s said with a real sense of unkindness (and) for me, there was some damage.”

Likewise, a Los Angeles woman, who asked not to be named, says the “harshness and verbal abuse” left her depressed for two months: “Christians are supposed to reach out in love and be gentle . . . (but) this just ripped me apart.” Tocchini refunded her money.

But many others describe the exercise as illuminating. “I’d been wearing this mask of always smiling and being the life of the party,” says Lynn Thompson of San Jose. “I got found out. It forced me to take a look at myself. . . . I realized I wasn’t allowing people to know me. . . . Some of the stuff went back to when I was a kid.”

Another image problem for Momentus involves Tocchini’s apparent inability to put his message into conversational English.

People come out of the seminars spouting such phrases as “showing up,” “where do you stand” and “who we are will show up in how we engage with others regarding the commitments that define our relationship.”

Says Strong: “It gets (outsiders) riled up.”

Recently, Tocchini has begun replacing some of the psychobabble with weird constitutional language. He talks about “governing the capitol that you are” through your personal legislative, executive and judicial branches, and says that getting “aligned with our God-designed identity . . . (enables us to) enjoy the privileges and benefits of a constitutional republic.”

Other factors that put off non-Momentusites include the relentless pressure many graduates use to recruit them into future seminars, the secrecy surrounding Momentus (participants sign agreements not to reveal seminar contents, a rule Lifespring recently dropped), and the infamous, but now discarded, peepee-to-peepee embrace--a fully clothed, pelvis-to-pelvis body hug that has also been used by Lifespring.

“Can you imagine the apostle Paul . . . writing to the saints, encouraging them to hug one another penis to vagina?” one minister asks.

A few have also been irked by the perceived elitism of Momentus graduates.

“The attitude seemed to be that anyone who had doubts or questions about Momentus would be fine if you just got him through the (seminar),” says Charles Berlin, an early Santa Rosa supporter who later changed his mind. “But Jesus never said, ‘You have to do the seminar.’ ”

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Not surprisingly, tension soon swept Santa Rosa’s evangelical and charismatic Christian community, the primary target for Momentus’ word-of-mouth advertising. At Tocchini’s home church, a quarter of the 800-member charismatic congregation left when pastor J.R. Young refused to condemn the seminar. Several conservative Sonoma County preachers began branding Momentus satanic. And the Santa Rosa Press Democrat ran a front-page story describing the uproar.

“In all my life, I’ve never seen people as energized as the ones from those early seminars,” says Dennis Peacocke, a Santa Rosa Bible teacher and author who initially endorsed Momentus, then switched sides and led the revolt at Tocchini’s church. “But it took over the energy of the church. It sucked everything into its orbit.”

Tocchini says the ensuing controversy was “like a witch hunt.”

Part of the problem predated Momentus, pastor Strong says. At Tocchini’s church, for example, some congregation members were automatically suspicious of the seminar because of fallout from a 1980s movement called shepherding. Under that program, which at one time involved charismatic churches across the country, individuals submitted control of their personal lives to church leaders.

The purpose, Strong says, was to help believers follow biblical teachings, but it got to the point where “people were being told how often to have sex with their wives.” That, he says, “left many wary of the next fad. And when that next fad came through--in the form of Momentus--a bunch of people not only said ‘no,’ but ‘hell no.’ ”

Tocchini had expected to make waves. After leaving the Episcopal church in Petaluma, he halted the seminars for more than a year because “I knew what kind of upset was coming and I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay the price.”

It wasn’t until mid-1992, after a few more trial runs of the seminar in Santa Rosa, that he incorporated Mashiyach Training Services (from a Hebrew word meaning anointed ) as a nonprofit religious organization. (A few months later, the nonprofit status was changed to for-profit, with Tocchini controlling 78% of the corporation’s stock.)

He also created a $400 advanced course, launched satellite offices in Tustin and Houston, and now holds seminars in Dallas, Sacramento, Florida and Hawaii.

But Tocchini, a raspy-voiced college dropout who looks somewhat like a big Danny DeVito, says Momentus has yet to make a buck. In 1993, the corporation grossed $250,000, paid Tocchini about $35,000 and lost money, he says. This year, with a second seminar leader on staff and a new audiocassette sales division, Tocchini expects to move into black ink.

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Although Southern California and Texas haven’t seen the sort of church split that rocked Santa Rosa, occasional small problems have arisen. Mission Viejo Vineyard Christian Fellowship, for example, lost 15 to 20 of its 300 adult members after church leaders criticized the program. And a 550-person Assemblies of God church near Houston lost about 50 members when it endorsed Momentus.

To counter criticism, Tocchini has made some changes. In addition to dumping the peepee hugs, he also jettisoned his use of profanity in the seminars (although attendees themselves are free to swear if they wish) and a visualization exercise that had people picture themselves soaring to heaven to retrieve a package that contained the baby Jesus (opponents consider such uses of the imagination occultic).

But skeptics say the changes are cosmetic. “You’re dealing with a greased pig,” says Santa Rosa pastor Dick Williams, who went through Momentus and liked it, then decided he had been psychologically manipulated.

“No matter what you say, they can say, ‘Oh, we’re not doing that anymore.’ ”

Says Tocchini: “No matter how thoroughly we document our ministry with a Biblical rationale, (some) will never cease their opposition.”

Momentus supporters acknowledge that their approach defies religious convention. Although Marriage Encounter, Cursillo retreats and some other accepted Christian programs have also adapted a few encounter-group techniques, none uses Momentus’ discomforting style.

“This is not a retreat,” says pastor Coombs. “It’s a major confrontation--with yourself.”

The idea, Strong says, is to break through the “anger, bitterness and old tapes” that hold people back from fully following Christ. People are forced to look at discrepancies between their behavior and their beliefs, which “brings up issues of repentance, confession and forgiveness.”

Psychological exercises are only used to reinforce points or draw out emotions that get people to look seriously at their relationships with God and other people, he says.

If it seems heavy-handed at times, well, Jesus was the same way, Tocchini says: “About 80% of what Christ said was harsh. Driving people from the marketplace with a whip was harsh. . . . He was as much a lion as a lamb (because) he was after the truth.”

*

The guy clutching the microphone was a liar and Wayne Coombs wasn’t going to let him get away with it. It was day three of a Momentus seminar in Orange County and Tocchini had opened the floor to anyone who wanted to share. Coombs sprang from his seat and challenged his fellow enrollee.

“You don’t love your wife, do you?” he recalls asking.

“What?” the speaker sputtered. “Of course I do.”

“No, you don’t. You’re a liar, man.”

The verbal sparring continued briefly, until finally the man broke down sobbing and admitted that he still loved his first wife. Then, as the rest of the room listened in stunned silence, he added: “She was stolen from me by another man--and I hate his guts.”

Coombs asked: “Have you ever told him how you feel?”

“Yes,” came the grim reply. “I beat the (hell) out of him. And then I went to his house and set it on fire.”

At that moment, the man’s second wife--also attending the seminar--walked forward, visibly shaken. “Why didn’t you ever tell me this?” she asked.

Her husband hugged her halfheartedly, but she pulled away and told the group about their empty marriage, how they hadn’t had sex in ages. It was, says Coombs, an emotional bombshell.

Then something amazing happened.

The next day, the woman approached Coombs and told him that she and her husband had somehow worked things out overnight and fallen “in love.” Her entire countenance, Coombs says, had shifted dramatically. A few weeks later, she showed up at Coombs’ church, still enthralled with the marriage--and pregnant.

Coombs sees only one possible explanation: “No (psychological) manipulation can do something that dramatic. That’s the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Others report equally surprising changes of heart.

Bobby Herron, an African American missionary with Athletes in Action, says the seminar disarmed the “distrust and animosity I felt toward white people. . . . I’m still an activist, but I realized that holding onto bitterness and hurt doesn’t produce good fruit. . . . I hope other individuals of color will avail themselves of Momentus.”

For some, Momentus has been a spiritual epiphany. Of the 250 non-Christians who have gone through the seminar, about 200 have converted to Christ, Tocchini says.

He adds that Momentus doesn’t proselytize nonbelievers--a statement attested to by a Jewish couple who attended a recent Manhattan Beach seminar--but says anything can happen once the sessions get under way.

A few even claim to have heard whisperings from God. Williams, the Santa Rosa minister who is among those most critical of Momentus, says he “experienced the Holy Spirit speaking to me in some of the exercises.”

Says Tocchini: “It’s a real potent environment. . . . It’s powerful. I’ve had 40 or 50 people remember molestations they never remembered before.”

Occasionally, something backfires. “If you put a jerk through this, he comes out a dynamic jerk at the other end,” Strong says. But most of the 1,200 people who have taken Momentus--including a growing roster of Christian celebrities--seem to rave about it.

Harold Ezell, a former Border Patrol chieftain and Der Wienerschnitzel exec, says it helped him become “more forgiving.” And Christian musician Sheila Walsh, onetime sidekick to Pat Robertson, testifies in Momentus brochures that it enabled her--after 26 years as a believer--to “finally begin to grasp hold of what it means to love God with everything and to love my neighbor as myself.”

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Leading the opposition is the Christian Research Institute of Irvine, an anti-cult organization that wields considerable influence among conservative believers. Last year, CRI issued a statement that it was investigating “disturbing reports” about the seminar because “it appears that a number of principles embraced and promoted by the human potential movement (in particular Lifespring) have been carried over to Momentus under a thin veneer of Christianese.”

But CRI officials admit that they have done virtually no firsthand research on the seminar. And several former CRI staffers say the institute’s methods and credibility have slipped in recent years.

For example, CRI acknowledges that its most current critique of the Vineyard--a popular, nationwide network of charismatic churches--was written nine years ago by a free-lance researcher who based his entire report on a four-day Vineyard conference about church growth. The information was never double-checked or updated.

In the case of Momentus, CRI has relied on statements from “seven to 10” unhappy seminar attendees (but says only two of them will allow their names to be released), a handful of skeptical Santa Rosa ministers and a theological analysis written by a premed student from Orange Coast College who left a local seminar after a day and a half.

Not good enough, say several other researchers. “(You) don’t make blanket statements based on somebody’s rumors,” explains Gretchen Passantino, a Christian investigative journalist who once worked for CRI.

Although somewhat dubious about Momentus herself, Passantino says the only accurate way to assess the seminar is to send a trained researcher through undercover. Interviews with Tocchini and other knowledgeable sources--pro and con--also would be sought.

CRI says it can’t put anyone through Momentus anonymously because enrollment questionnaires ask where the person works and it’s against CRI policy to lie. (Requests by The Times to have a reporter attend the seminar without signing a secrecy agreement were turned down by Tocchini.)

As for interviewing Tocchini, CRI researcher Marian Bodine says she met with him once--at his request--but “Waco was burning that day and we really didn’t have time to talk.”

Despite the limited investigation, Bodine drafted a five-page critique of Momentus last September. But it hasn’t been released to the public, she says, because Tocchini threatened to sue. Tocchini denies hinting legal action, and CRI continues to distribute various materials it has collected about the seminar.

*

Some observers suggest that the controversy over Momentus may be a lot of sound and fury over nothing. The effects of the seminar on graduates, say several supporters and critics who have watched it long term, often fade or disappear after a few months.

Rex Julian Beaber, a psychologist and attorney familiar with encounter groups, says that isn’t surprising:

“The grand lesson of the whole marathon group encounter movement is that the effects are very short-lived. . . . It is very difficult to change another human being.”

The only reason people think their lives are different is because “they confuse emotional intensity with significance. What are they doing now that they weren’t doing before? Were they unemployed people who now have jobs? . . . Are they best friends with someone they couldn’t forgive? The evidence of real change is usually trivial.”

The exceptions, Beaber says, are people who attend a seminar at a critical juncture in their lives and are thus more susceptible to a “conversion experience.” They usually join the group or stay involved to solidify the effect, he says.

For most others, however, “it’s like a roller-coaster ride--a brief emotional flurry that disappears in time.” And that, he says, is the secret to any successful self-help or spiritual conversion movement: “A truly great idea can be written down in a book or article and transmitted to millions. But a mediocre idea has to be shrouded in emotional intensity.”

That’s not to meant to imply that such ideas are useless, he adds: “People’s lives are so bland that anyone who makes them feel anything is a miracle worker.”

Butch Pluimer, a charismatic Tustin minister and Christian radio personality who is cautiously introducing Momentus at his church, agrees:

“Obviously, (the seminar) is meeting a need in many people’s lives that the church isn’t. Some say it’s the most transforming thing they’ve seen. Others say it’s the most egregious. Let’s talk and see if we can make it better. . . . I don’t want to say that everything they’re doing is perfect, but I don’t want to shut the door just because it’s fresh and new.”

Clearly, the verdict on Momentus is still out. Even critics admit that they’ve had a hard time staking a position. As Santa Rosa’s Peacocke wrote in his eight-page critique of Momentus: “I have never been less certain in attempting to evaluate and discern if something was or was not of God.”