The Angelus Temple 2002 Rebirth

The 1924 annual report for Angelus Temple in Los Angeles listed 12,000 saved, 3,000 baptized in water, 3,000 new members, 3,600 healings and thousands filled with the Holy Spirit. The Temple’s early years were filled with revival, and people were touched over and over as miracles took place day after day. This revival led to the incorporation of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in 1927. The movement has grown to worldwide dimensions and is now commonly called the Foursquare church. I have been part of this family of believers since 1979 when I came to California from New Jersey.

The Foursquare denomination held its 2002 annual convention and 75th Anniversary in Denver. Some 2000 pastors and their mates gathered for four days of fellowship, business and inspiration. With a few exceptions, my wife and I have attended these Foursquare conventions for 20 years.

This year, there was some pre-convention tension in some conversations and in several letters to our President that had been circulated to many attendees. The concern was the recent appointment of 27-year-old Matthew Barnett as the senior pastor of Angelus Temple.

Angelus Temple is close to the heart of Los Angeles. It is across the street from Echo Park, which features a lovely lake just off the Hollywood Freeway. The first service at the Temple was held on January 1, 1923, and included unveiling a plaque that dedicated the Temple to the cause of Interdenominational Worldwide Evangelism.

Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Foursquare, built this now venerable old sanctuary. Church lore describes 5300 seats that were filled over and over all week long for the first ten years of the Temple’s life. The Temple reached out to help the community while daughter churches sprung up throughout southern California and beyond. During the Great Depression, 1,500,000 people were fed each year through the ministries of the Temple. The Temple impacted ten percent of the population of LA in its early years. Next door a Bible College was built and thrived, peaking in 1929 at 1,000 students. Men and women were there prepared to take the Foursquare Gospel to all corners of the globe.

As the years rolled by, Angelus Temple’s congregation changed from one born out of a miracle revival to an older, well-entrenched group of people who had grown up under Sister’s leadership. Aimee died in 1944, and her son Rolf assumed the leadership of the denomination and the pastorate at the Temple. Rolf McPherson, or “Doc” as he is known in Foursquare circles, later appointed others to pastor the Temple while he concentrated on establishing and building the denomination.

The neighborhood demographics changed over the years and the area where the Temple sits became home for many of LA’s Hispanic residents. Many of them became part of the Temple, which today has a Spanish speaking congregation of 4,000. The English-speaking congregation waned to less than 500 as the Hispanic group grew to its present size. Later, the Temple was damaged in the Northridge Earthquake and required repairs that also caused the congregation to shrink even more.

As the Temple came back on line after the repairs, Foursquare’s newly elected president appointed a successful ministry couple from the Northwest to pastor the Temple. They had pastored a growing church in Oregon and as part of their new appointment, Foursquare agreed to upgrade the sanctuary’s interior and its sound and lighting to fit the new pastorate’s requirements. I was put in charge of this project shortly before construction was to commence. The new pastors regrouped and held services in nearby Pasadena.

The Assemblies of God also had a church known as Bethel Temple about a mile from Angelus Temple. Bethel had been established out of the Azusa Street revival, and while never as large as Angelus Temple was nonetheless a mighty church that ministered to well over 1,000 in its heyday. Bethel, like Angelus Temple, had fallen on bad times and its congregation dwindled to less than 50 – when the Assemblies made a decision to bring it back to its former prominence. The Assemblies assigned this project to Tommy Barnett, who pastors the Phoenix Assembly – one of our country’s largest churches. Pastor Tommy visited Bethel, and then began a search for the right person to take this daunting challenge. The search was well done but Tommy could not convince any of the candidates that they were the ones to lead this now small church.

Finally Tommy appointed his 20-year-old son, Matthew, to be Bethel’s new senior pastor. The congregation indicated its approval by voting for Matthew as its pastor, and Matthew with much trepidation left his dad’s church and home to go to inner city LA and take the leadership of Bethel and its less-than-50 members.

Matthew worked hard and soon found that he had to go to the people in his neighborhood and become part of them. He openly tells of his struggles as he learned how to do this. It was not an easy road but Matthew has an anointing and training that sets him apart. Within a few years Bethel rebounded and overflowed its old building. Matthew went looking for a place to grow in the same area, and one day he found an old vacant high rise hospital near Bethel and proposed to his dad, that they buy it and convert it into a church open 24 hours a day, every day. When he first broached the idea, his dad reminded him that the Bethel congregation had about $30,000 in the bank less—than one percent of the purchase price for the derelict abandoned hospital.

Matthew persisted and dad helped. Miracles happened in the financial realm. Soon, what had become the LA International Church was located in the old Queen of Angels hospital building. It was a church that reached out to the inner city and quickly enjoyed unusual success. Pastor Tommy, though still based in Phoenix, became its co-pastor and took on the responsibility of raising funds needed by the rapidly growing inner city ministry. Today this ministry is known as the Dream Center. Its success has led to 130 more Dream Centers in cities across the world. President Bush visited the Dream Center and presented it to our country as an example of the type of faith based ministry that could far out perform the government in dealing with society’s problems. Every time I visit the Dream Center I find the presence of God abounds on its campus. It is filled with all sorts of enthusiastic volunteers willing to give their lives to serve and tell others of the love of Christ and His Gospel. It is truly an astonishing place.

The Dream Center ministers to 30,000 people a week, and it needed an auditorium big enough to house the ever growing numbers that crowded into its on-campus meeting room. Foursquare admired the Dream Center and encouraged its work.

Foursquare had no idea that Matt Barnett would frequently walk through Echo Park late at night to look at Angelus Temple and ask God to give him their founder’s church. If I had known what he was doing, I would have dismissed him as a silly young man. He was part of the Assemblies, and while similar to Foursquare, the differences between the denominations made such an idea unthinkable. Besides, it was Sister Aimee’s church. She had picked its location, bought the grounds, designed it, raised the funds for it and filled it over and over. Moreover, Aimee had started her evangelistic ministry in the Assemblies only to have her credentials revoked when her marriage to Harold McPherson ended in divorce. Matt was a young man pursuing folly and wasting his time. Had I known what he was doing in the park late at night, I would have thought these thoughts, and wouldn’t you know, I would have been wrong again.

Something amazing was about to happen. Unprecedented cooperation among denominational leaders and believers’ passion to see a city changed for Jesus were leading up to some wonderful events.

Matthew Barnett, his father, and Foursquare leaders began praying and considering together the possibility of joining the ministries of the Dream Center and Angelus Temple. In late fall of 2001, Matthew Barnett was named as Senior Pastor of Angelus Temple. Prior to this, Matthew and his entire staff studied Foursquare Heritage and Polity and were ordained or granted appropriate ministerial licenses by Foursquare. They had to leave the Assemblies to do this. Only Matthews’s dad currently remains with the Assemblies, and he continues to co-pastor the Dream Center.

This remarkable shift occurred with the cooperation of the highest leadership in both denominations. The effort to bring the two ministries together was not allowed to bog down. Instead, there was a focus on how best to seek and save the Lost. The Temple’s now displaced pastoral couple was able to return to the Northwest, and begin their ministry afresh at another of Foursquare’s leading churches.

When repairs in the Temple are complete, the size of the congregation will immediately exceed the 3,100 seats available. This means that the Temple will again be filled over and over each week. For many years prophecies have rung out about the restoration of this great old church to its beginnings. Now we stand at the threshold and will soon see them fulfilled.

As I write this article, the refurbishing of Angelus Temple still needs several months before her new pastor can stand on her reconstructed platform and call his congregation to worship in the main auditorium. Hopes, dreams and visions in many hearts already abound as the reality of a rejuvenated Temple approaches. That reality will require confronting known and unknown problems and the enemy of our souls in realms that we cannot anticipate. This is the first time that such change has taken place at this scale in either denomination.

When Foursquare’s convention in Denver came together, there was the tension I described earlier. Many unanswered questions were being asked, “Couldn’t you find someone in Foursquare to pastor the Temple? Why have we done this?” Most of the attendees live far from LA, and thus knew little if anything about the Dream Center. Foursquare leadership asked Pastor Matthew to address the convention body on the second night. Pastor Matt shared his vision and his struggles and breakthroughs over the past eight years – since he had left Phoenix for the inner city of Los Angeles. When he was done, all contention and its questions had disappeared. The only questions left were “How can I help?” and “Can my church come out to LA and learn how to do inner city ministry like you do?”

I have continually sensed the Spirit of God hovering throughout the Angelus Temple complex on all the visits I have made to the site for the past 15 months. I mentioned earlier that the same Spirit is ever present each time I go to the Dream Center. This same Spirit hovered over the waters before God said “Let there be light” and His so-great creation followed. All of us connected with Angelus Temple and the Dream Center believe that God is poised to light up Los Angeles and beyond as our newly rebuilt church and its new pastor come on line. Exciting days of ministry are ahead. Souls beyond number will be saved, people will be baptized in water, healed, lives restored and many will be filled with the Holy Spirit. Surrounding and far-off communities will be impacted and invaded by the glory of God, and you and I will soon be asking “What can I do to help? Can I come and learn how to do what you are doing?” And won’t that be marvelous for all of us!

PR