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www.newbeginnings.
org
Maximize
the Moment: God's Action Plan for Your Life, the latest
book by T.D. Jakes--Pentecostal pastor, prosperity gospel
proponent and friend of Larry Huch--was recently No. 4 on
the New York Times business books bestseller list.
"If
you lose it on earth, He'll lose it in heaven." When they're
not singing backup for the Judds, members of the New Beginnings
Choir warm up the congregation in Northeast Portland.
Forty
percent of Americans tell Gallup pollsters they go to church
on a regular basis. A recent survey of attendance records
and parking lots shows that only 27 percent actually do.
New
Beginnings isn't a once-a-week operation. Parishioners praise
church programs such as the Thursday night Overcomers meeting.
Evangelical:
adjective describing anyone whose primary goal is to spread
the gospel and convert people to Christianity.
"Mega"
churches are defined as those with an average weekly attendance
of at least 2,000.
According
to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, Calvary
Chapel of Costa Mesa in sunny Southern California is the
largest church in the country with 20,000 members. Oregon's
largest church is Beaverton Foursquare, with 6,000 members.
"I am
very, very vocal that the church will never truly see the
full blessing of God until we break down the racial barrier,"
Huch says. "That's why I have whites on staff, Jews on staff,
Hispanics on staff, African Americans on staff."
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They
Shall Overcome: Overcomers,
New Beginnings' 12-step program
If You Buy It, I Will Build: New Beginnings
is hoping to build its new $20 million church debt-free
Pastor Larry Huch has a thick, outlaw mustache and rides a
Harley. He once fed his drug habit selling smack and has an
assistant who did time in San Quentin. Billy Graham he ain't.
For one thing, Pastor Larry, as his congregation calls
him, is more charismatic. Equal parts inspirational speaker,
psychologist and old-fashioned evangelist, Huch, 49, works
the purple-carpeted stage at New Beginnings Christian Center
like a macho, born-again comic. Pausing occasionally to
check his notes, put on his reading glasses or pick up his
Bible from the portable, clear-plastic pulpit, Huch mixes
personal stories and impersonations with traditional biblical
exegesis.
"When I got saved," Huch told his congregation one Sunday
last month, "I was instantly delivered from drugs. I never
touched them again. No more heroin, no more cocaine, no
more marijuana. Just the occasional LSD"--dramatic pause--"but
that's for the visions."
The congregation laughs at his joke. These days Huch's
visions are of New Beginnings' booming congregation and
expansion plans, rather than of bleeding colors and talking
dogs. From 10 members in 1990, New Beginnings has grown
to a community of more than 4,000 today, making it, according
to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, one of
the fastest-growing congregations in the nation.
Two weeks ago Huch announced to his congregation details
of New Beginnings' 84-acre development in Gresham. Expected
to be worth well over $100 million, it will be the biggest
East County real estate deal in years (see "If You Buy It,"
page 36). The development, complete with a very large worship
center and neighboring business complex, will undoubtedly
raise New Beginnings' profile and test Huch's unusual and
somewhat controversial interpretation of the Bible.
Huch, you see, is an entrepreneur for God. He's identified
a niche market and tailored his message to it: Money, good
health and happy marriages are God's reward for faithful,
positive-thinking Christians.
While many pastors reassure their congregations about personal
wealth, few encourage them to pursue it as explicitly as
Huch. "All good things come from God," he said during one
sermon. "God has put in your heart the desire to feed the
hungry and clothe the poor, but He's also given you the
desire for a nice car, a nice house, to drive a Harley."
For New Beginnings' racially and economically diverse congregation,
Huch's message is a godsend. It offers hope, love and the
opportunity for personal transformation. For some church
observers, however, Huch's "prosperity gospel" verges on
blasphemy. None of the religious leaders WW spoke
with for this story would comment directly on Huch or New
Beginnings (few, in fact, were aware of the church), but
with carefully chosen words they expressed discomfort over
the idea that God not only wants us to be rich, but will
help us get there.
"We can all communicate with God," says Cathie Boerboom,
program director of Rosehaven Shelter, a drop-in center
for homeless women, "but sometimes I wonder whether people
really aren't hearing their own desires."
As Doug Parker, director of communications at Multnomah
Bible College says, in the world of religion a spiritual
message of conspicuous consumption "is a whole, big can
of worms."
Whether you're coming for the Wednesday evening service
or for either of the Sunday morning services, a trip to
New Beginnings, at 7600 NE Glisan St., begins with a search
for a parking spot. Parked cars line the street five blocks
east and two blocks west of the church. The church itself,
a nondescript brick building occupying a full city block,
has just 90 parking spots for the estimated 2,000 people
attending each of the two Sunday morning services.
Carpooling can't come close to solving the problem. Huch
often forgoes Sunday morning altar calls because parking
constraints preclude services from going into overtime.
"We really have to watch the clock," he explains. "We have
to get one herd out on time and the next one in."
Most mainline pastors wish they had such problems. Take,
for example, First Congregational United Church of Christ,
a 149-year-old grand dame of Portland churches located on
the south Park Blocks downtown. Despite Portland's population
boom, the congregation of 550 has struggled to expand its
membership, gaining fewer than 100 new members between 1990
and 1999. And, by national standards, First Congregational
is doing well. Since the mid-1960s, mainline Protestant
denominations, the traditional bulwarks of American churchgoing,
have lost 20 to 40 percent of their members.
In contrast to mainline churches' shrinking congregations,
nondenominational churches such as New Beginnings are growing
rapidly. And Oregon, according to one survey, has almost
double the number of denominationally unaffiliated Christians
as the national average. Many of them are flocking to new,
large and distinctly nontraditional evangelical churches.
Called variously "seeker-sensitive," "7-day-a-week" and,
if they are big enough, "mega" churches, these houses of
worship downplay doctrine and emphasize individuals' present
relationships with Jesus over any past personal failures.
Dress is casual, music contemporary, and the churches generally
offer an array of social activities for adults and children.
Those characteristics describe a half-dozen relatively
new churches in the Portland area, including City Bible,
Crossroads Community Church in Vancouver and New Beginnings.
But a couple of things set New Beginnings apart from the
rest. One is its leader.
Huch (rhymes with "luck") says he was a 24-year-old junkie
on the run from the St. Louis police when he got saved in
an Arizona church. He arrived at the service under the influence
and, by his own description, left it high on God. Before
that time he thought churches were boring, God was vindictive
and Christians were hypocritical.
When Huch found God he also discovered not all Christians
are charitable. No one in that Arizona church, he says,
would come forward to pray for him. "I had long hair, needle
marks in my arm," he recalls, "and they thought I would
never last." The memory gives Huch insight into the hearts
of the unchurched and newly churched few other ministers
enjoy. "I always think," he says, "'What about this would
turn me off?'"
Huch's personal history has left its mark on his church.
New Beginnings takes its moniker literally. Like most mega-churches,
it has "cell groups"--small groups that meet in a member's
home for weekly Bible study--but unlike most, it has one
that is exclusively for former drug addicts and prostitutes.
From the top down, New Beginnings is infused with the message
that anyone can start over: Three of the 12 pastors were
drug addicts before getting saved. That personal knowledge,
they believe, makes their ministries particularly effective.
For example, in addition to its cell group for ex-addicts,
New Beginnings hosts Overcomers, a 12-step program run by
former San Quentin inmate Larry Reed (see "They Shall Overcome,"
page 35), a prison ministry and an annual conference for
ministers who have fallen or are burned out.
A second way that New Beginnings differs from other mega-churches
is Huch's belief in the prosperity gospel.
Given the sustained surging economy, it's no surprise that
more and more churches are preaching the message, "It's
OK to be rich." What differentiates the prosperity gospel
is the belief in an everloving father who not only wants
His children to live the high life, body and soul, but also
provides a blueprint for doing so in the Bible: Get saved,
work hard, tithe 10 percent of your income and have faith
that God will provide. "Imagine if Bill Gates were your
dad," Huch often tells his congregation. "Well, that ain't
even close."
Sometimes referred to as the "name it and claim it" or
"health and wealth" theology, prosperity gospel's central
premise is that Christians, through Jesus' crucifixion,
became the new heirs to God's covenant. Believers are entitled
not only to eternal life in heaven but also to financial,
physical and emotional well-being on earth.
Want proof? For Huch it's as simple as Diet Coke and Twinkies.
That, he says, is the modern equivalent of what Jesus provided
at the Marriage at Cana, when, with his first miracle, he
turned water to wine. If God cared enough to provide snacks
for a party that was almost over anyway, Huch argues, then
you know He wants to help you take care of the rent. "The
word of God," according to Huch, "is full of teachings on
how to make this life wonderful."
Huch's prosperity teaching combines traditional elements
of the Christian gospel with tidbits from the mind-healing
movement ("Say it and see it," the former Transcendental
Meditation teacher often shouts to his congregation) and
the late Norman Vincent Peale's "positive thinking" philosophy
("If someone gives you bad news," Huch said in one sermon,
"say, 'I don't receive that.' If you can't get anyone to
agree with you, agree with yourself.")
Christians' only barrier to enjoying their inheritance,
the prosperity gospel goes, is a lack of faith. Many Christians,
Huch says, fail to prosper as much as they could because
they don't trust that God really is there to help them,
and therefore they don't appropriate what He has provided.
As a result, Huch recently preached, "Heathens are enjoying
the Promised Land. They are driving our cars, eating our
food, living in our houses. We have to get our stuff but
we have to get it a different way than they did; we have
to get it through spiritual ways."
Huch didn't start out with these views. For years, he traveled
through the United States and Australia preaching hellfire
and brimstone and what he refers to now as the 'poverty
message'--that money is bad, Christians shouldn't seek it,
and churches and ministers certainly shouldn't display it.
Then, about 14 years ago while living in Melbourne, Australia,
Huch experienced an epiphany. It came, of all places, in
the shower. Huch says he had a vision of God's enormous
goodness, love and desire for Christian prosperity. It was
the beginning of a spiritual and financial turnaround for
Huch and his wife, Tiz, who looks like a kinder, gentler
Brigitte Nielsen. They started to invest portions of their
income and a small inheritance they received from her mother.
"Because we were givers," says Huch, "we saw God open doors
for Tiz and me to purchase a piece of land years and years
ago that nobody wanted, and suddenly it's rezoned and now
we can build a subdivision on it." After a year in Melbourne
and one in Oregon City, Huch and Tiz felt called to plant
a church in Portland.
By their own admission, the Huchs have done well with this
gospel. They wear designer clothes; own a 1988 Jaguar, a
'93 Volkswagen and a stable of motorcycles, including his
1981 Harley with the license plate "TIZ1." "I can refute
the anti-prosperity message because I'm not prospering just
because I'm a pastor," he says. "I'm prospering the same
way anybody else can"--by believing God wants you to be
successful, pursuing success for yourself and tithing 10
percent of your income to the church.
Aggressive tithing isn't unusual among nondenominational
evangelical churches. It's a biblical requirement and, in
the absence of a denomination to draw on, a financial necessity.
What makes tithing different at New Beginnings is the concept
that money dropped into the translucent, plastic buckets
every week is more than just a donation, it's an investment
with a guaranteed return. During services, Huch tells of
people who began tithing and subsequently received cars,
buildings and better-paying jobs.
You can be a good Christian without giving up a tenth of
your income, he recently reassured his congregation, "but
if you don't tithe, then you are limited to the sweat of
your brow, to this cursed earth. But if you give a little,
God will give a lot."
God has given a lot to Bart Jensen in the two-plus years
he has been a member of New Beginnings. A professional parachutist
before succumbing to drugs, the 38-year-old beams and opens
his arms wide while talking about God. He ended his 21-year
addiction with the help of Overcomers. His wife's cancer
was cured miraculously, he believes, through prayer. And
Pastor Larry helped him identify and defeat a "family curse"
of anger and insecurity inherited from his grandmother's
abandonment of his mother. Perhaps most amazing is that
Jensen says from time to time strangers show up at his door
and give him money.
Jensen initially was offended by New Beginnings' emphasis
on tithing. "But one day," he recalled, "I was coming to
church wearing torn-up clothes in my Honda with a broken
windshield and I saw people coming out of church looking
nice, so I decided to try it." He says he began giving 10
percent of his weekly paycheck even though his family needed
the money. By Jensen's estimate, he and his wife tithed
more than $4,000 last year--over a tenth of their income.
They have received, he says, more than that. "People just
walk up to me and give me money. They say, 'God wanted me
to give you this.'"
Common sense says that if someone stops doing drugs and
starts working regularly, his or her health and bank account
will improve--with or without God's involvement. People
who aren't Ed McMahon showing up at the door with a big,
fat check, on the other hand, defy logic.
The idea of God as investment broker offends many people's
religious sensibilities. Where do the Beatitudes ("Blessed
are the poor...but woe unto you who are rich for you have
received your consolation") fit into prosperity gospel's
equation of "good faith equals material rewards"? What of
being "in the world but not of it"? And how does prosperity
gospel answer liberation theology's concept of God's preferential
option for the poor?
While prosperity gospel's message of personal change and
divine intervention can be individually empowering, it pays
scant attention to the socioeconomic roots of poverty, addictions
and racism, and its give-to-get message can cross over into
crass bartering with God.
"I've heard preachers talk about reading scripture to dried-up
cotton bolls and the cotton's exploded while other fields
remained barren," said Rice University sociology professor
William Martin. "That's heretical. It just feeds false hopes
that if you donate to God's cause, you will automatically
succeed."
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the prosperity gospel
is its failure to adequately grapple with believers' continued
suffering and failure. "So often," said Paul Metzger, professor
of postmodern theology at Multnomah Bible College, "we soft-pedal
the gospel because we know that in America people want to
hear the good news of health and prosperity."
The unspoken flip side of believers achieving material,
physical and emotional fortune through prayer and tithing
is that they are to blame when their luck doesn't turn.
What happens when God doesn't hold up His end of the bargain--when
you follow Huch's rules and still, your '84 Civic blows
a head gasket on the way to your radiation treatment?
Huch pins blame on the devil and urges followers to have
the patience of Job, but he doesn't really grapple with
the problem of evil. "The reason most Christians fail,"
Huch said in one sermon, "is that they hear and see the
word of God but the devil, because we're not strong enough
in our faith, is able to uproot us." As in the parable of
Job, Huch insists that anything the devil takes, you are
owed back seven times: "If he breaks down your car--God
has a better car waiting for you; if he messes up your job,
God has a better job waiting for you."
But what about a loss that can't be replaced? If God is
so concerned for our emotional prosperity, why do children
die? That, Huch says, is unanswerable. He simply knows God
is not responsible for children's deaths. Huch's God does
not do bad things.
For many people, believing Christians among them, Huch's
prosperity gospel requires a leap of faith across a theological
chasm that is simply too wide.
At the same time, there is an aspect of New Beginnings
that is harder to dismiss. In contrast to many other conservative
Christian churches, New Beginnings welcomes people without
judging them, no matter their personal histories.
Explaining why they started attending New Beginnings, parishioners
repeatedly said, "I felt comfortable and loved here." And
in contrast to many liberal congregations, which often sympathetically
preach about people who don't sit in their pews, New Beginnings
is able to reach a too frequently marginalized audience
and help them effect significant personal changes.
This is not a slick suburban preacher helping high-tech
millionaires feel comfortable with their wealth. Huch delivers
his message of goodness and empowerment to people who often
have seen little of either in their lives.
Huch has drawn together a diverse, largely unchurched congregation.
A 1997 church survey shows that congregants are predominantly
working- to middle-class, with an average household income
below $40,000. And New Beginnings defies the adage that
11 a.m. Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week.
The rainbow congregation and staff make it one of the most
racially diverse gatherings in the Portland area.
"Our friends sometimes ask us how we can sit under a white
pastor," says Delores Douglas, an elegantly dressed African-American
woman who attends New Beginnings with her husband and adolescent
daughter. "We come because this feeds our spirit. We've
tried other churches but always come back to this one--Pastor
Larry preaches pure Word, not candy-coated."
In addition to telling people God wants them to prosper,
Huch and New Beginnings provide practical means for people
to improve their situations. Currently the church provides
tutoring, ESL classes, low-cost day care, a weekend youth
center and a Montessori preschool, available to church and
unchurched alike.
At the new facility, the church will be able to fulfill
what Huch sees as its mission on an even grander scale.
In addition to ongoing programs, the Gresham campus will
have a multimillion-dollar kid's facility with free video
games, movies and adult supervision; counseling for abused
women and children; and possibly an office complex with
medical, dental and even bail-bondsmen services.
Huch says that by providing these types of services for
individuals, his church is addressing broader societal issues.
"The normal mom and dad," he says, "don't care about the
world going to hell when their own world is falling apart.
I believe the main thing is to teach you and your family
how to get your life out of that living hell. Let's get
you born again so you can make heaven your home, but let's
also bring some of heaven here on earth so you can enjoy
the good life, the good news Jesus intended you to have.
Once you're set free, you can help others."
Lori Cooley is doing just that. The 44-year-old, brown-haired
woman, who favors floral patterned skirts, was already free
of her cocaine and heroin addiction when she started attending
New Beginnings in 1991. She had visited Beaverton Foursquare
intermittently but came to New Beginnings, she said, because
of its openness and ministry to addicts and other traditional
outcasts.
Cooley now hosts a weekly cell in her home and works with
Overcomers--checking attendance, pow-wowwing with attendees
over new jobs or determining new bus routes, handing out
name cards, and repeatedly soothing her own and others'
souls. "I tell people," she says, "I will match my time
with their efforts. That's the same with God because when
you leave your addiction and come to the Lord it's really
a survival of the fittest. Whatever is strongest in you
will win."
THEY SHALL
OVERCOME
Every Thursday evening, 50-some people file into an old,
converted gym at New Beginnings Christian Center on Northeast
Glisan Street.
People wander in and greet each other, while a preppy guy
tunes his guitar. There's no majority here, attendees are
young and old, black, white and Latino, well-dressed and
shabby. Some are regulars at these weekly meetings; others
are about to admit for the first time they have an addiction
they can't control.
They come to Overcomers, New Beginnings' 12-step program,
because they know the pastors here can identify with them
and have tailored this meeting to them. Pastor Larry Reed,
with faded tattoos covering his forearms, was a junkie for
18 years before getting saved in San Quentin. Assistant
Pastor Peter King, a car dealer by day, was in and out of
prison seven times before getting saved. Assistant Pastor
Joe Wilkins became an alcoholic after his father was murdered
and his mother died. He testifies often about crying out
to God when he was "hog-tied and bleeding after being beaten
by the police" in a Texas jail.
Clearly, they don't constitute the traditional pastoral
trinity you'll find at mainstream churches, but neither
are they tending to the most traditional flock. "We've had
dysfunctional lives," Reed says to the group during one
meeting. "We have our own walk, our own culture and you
can't expect to just walk into a normal church and have
it work. We're not gonna ask you to be 'religious,' just
to be yourselves."
At times Overcomers resembles an old-fashioned tent revival,
as Reed, 70, falls into the cadence of a circuit preacher--pacing
in front of the congregation, pumping his arms and adding
emphatic syllables: "And-eh, somebody here today-eh is going
to be-eh released...."
Several people speak in tongues during prayers. Others
recount miraculous healings for Hepatitis C, STDs, AIDS.
Every week people testify to their lives being turned around
through 12-steps and Jesus. According to Reed, Overcomers
averages an 80 percent success rate.
Overcomers is at once central and incongruous to New Beginnings'
ministry. The defeat of demons provides authenticity to
New Beginnings' message of religious victory, but the rawness
displayed in the old gym also seems at odds with the church's
polished image.
People here don't talk about new cars and gifts of real
estate. They talk about a craving-free day, living through
withdrawal and landing a minimum-wage job. "I kept coming
back here," said Chadwick Thomas, 23, before one meeting,
"and nobody criticized me. They care about me and want to
see me get better." --RG
IF YOU BUY
IT, I
WILL BUILD
Four years ago, New Beginnings Christian Center bought
84 acres at 175th Street and Sandy Boulevard in Gresham
on a hope and a prayer. The church's plans included a large
church complex, acres of parking, and virtually no ideas
on how to finance it all.
As Senior Pastor Larry Huch said in a recent sermon, "God
told me, 'If you buy the land, I'll build the building.'"
Now, in a deal that puts the church's prosperity gospel
to the test, New Beginnings is hoping to build its new $20
million church debt-free. Working with Opus Northwest, one
of the country's largest real-estate developers, New Beginnings
is trying to meet community needs and church goals while
maximizing profits.
According to Huch, New Beginnings purchased the land for
$4.2 million with donations from the congregation and a
small loan (the church, Huch says, still owes about $500,000
on the land). Rather than take out a conventional mortgage
for the new church, New Beginnings is planning to sell 54
acres for about $14 million to Opus Northwest, which will
develop the property.
Contracts aren't finalized yet, but Opus plans to construct
eight to 10 flexible-use office buildings with capacity
for up to 3,500 workers on its acreage. (Opus development
director Bruce Wood says a major regional employer is interested
in a significant parcel.)
As part of the deal, Opus will give the church a percentage
of its development profits. Those funds, along with the
$14 million, should cover construction costs for the church's
new complex, including a 5,000-seat sanctuary and a 40,000-square-foot
kids' center. "This deal," Huch says, "is saving us literally
millions and millions of dollars--all because we taught
prosperity."
Opus is a good match for the church. Headquartered in Minneapolis,
the company cuts its profit margin for church developments.
In addition, Opus donates 10 percent of its pretax earnings
to charitable organizations, a fact Huch clearly relishes
as akin to tithing.
Huch is unapologetic about New Beginnings' combination
of commercial and spiritual enterprises. "We're in the business
of religion, you have to pay the bills, you have to do all
these things, but you're not supposed to prosper. That doesn't
make any sense," he says. "If prosperity is bad, God would
never have given it to us."
Where many successful churches have built facilities apart
from others--City Bible, for instance, is high on a hill--New
Beginnings wants to mix with secular enterprises. He notes
that the church provides programs that appeal to many employers,
such as day care and after-school tutoring.
"We don't want to isolate us from them," Huch says. "There's
enough doing that; we want to go in the other direction."
New Beginnings' plans are good news to Gresham officials.
Although the land originally was zoned industrial, the Gresham
Planning Commission granted the church an exemption in 1998.
Had New Beginnings simply built a church, the city would
have lost a valuable chunk of its dwindling industrial land
from the tax rolls. --RG
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Willamette Week | originally
published March 29,
2000
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