Faithful commuting

The landlord was raising the rent and attendance wasn’t exactly growing at Anaheim church The Beacon when Pastor Ric Olsen began thinking of options for turning the church around.

“I started to hyperventilate. I didn’t want to be meeting in school cafeterias. That wasn’t what I signed up for,” said Olsen, who has been pastor at The Beacon for the past 14 months.

The North American Baptist Conference-affiliated church with an average weekly attendance of about 90 adults and 45 children needed a makeover, Olsen said.

“We want to be a catalyst for change in the community,” Olsen said. “But looking at the congregation, I didn’t think we were ready for that.”

The Beacon gained 12 new members in the past year, according to church records, two of which were Olsen and his wife. Eight other people left the church during the same time frame.

Olsen hopes to give The Beacon a shot in the arm by joining forces with the hip Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa, which has a reputation for high-profile community involvement and attracting young people with its casual atmosphere.

The Beacon merged with Rock Harbor Sept. 2. Olsen hopes the partnership will help him and Beacon members learn a new way to do their churchly duties. Members of the Anaheim church make the roughly 20-minute commute three weeks out of the month to attend Sunday services at Rock Harbor. The Beacon has plans to re-launch at a new location in Orange in March.

“We just began to ask what it would look like for Rock Harbor to adopt a church for a season,” Rock Harbor Lead Pastor Todd Proctor said. “It was God’s idea, but Ric was the one who brought it to us.”

Olsen knows his church has the potential to make an impact in the community. When wildfires threatened houses in Anaheim Hills and Orange in March, Beacon members offered to open up their homes to people with respiratory problems and evacuees. The church began giving its members small annual grants last year from its budget to donate to a local charity of their choice. Plans for a community seminar on HIV/AIDS are underway. But Olsen wants to take The Beacon to a new level of community involvement.

“We want to be the church where people say things like, ‘That’s where you go when your marriage is in trouble,’” Olsen said.

Meanwhile, it can be hard to get a seat for one of Rock Harbor’s seven Sunday services. If churchgoers can find a place to park, there’s a coffee bar inside Rock Harbor and fashionable twentysomethings mill around the lobby in jeans from Urban Outfitters. Hip mood lighting in purple and green illuminates the Christian rock band at services, fronted by Proctor. The church, which has a roughly $6 million annual operating budget, celebrated its 10th anniversary Sunday. Most of the about 5,000 worshipers who attend Rock Harbor each weekend are under 30. Singles and young families are the majority at this church where Teaching Pastor Mike Erre wears jeans and integrates jokes about college football into his sermons.

“We believe Ric’s church and his denomination is in need of new life and we hope this idea will be embraced beyond Rock Harbor,” Proctor said.

Rock Harbor also might have a thing or two to learn for The Beacon.

“They’ve got this newfangled thing called potlucks,” Proctor said with a smile.

Rock Harbor

Denomination: nondenominational Christian church

History: Planted by Mariners Church in Irvine in 1997, Rock Harbor celebrated its 10-year anniversary Sunday.

Website: www.rockharbor.org

The Beacon

Denomination: North American Baptist Conference

History: Began as Cornerstone Bible Church in 1996 in Orange. It merged with Beacon Hills Church in Anaheim in 2004.

Website: www.beaconhills.org

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at [email protected].