Test of faith

You might not understand "the call" until you have one, the Rev. Rick Smith says. The drive to start and run a church is huge. A burning desire. A mission. A raison d'etre.

Smith, 56, has had it all his life -- and preached in a number of places. In the mid-1990s, his calling manifested itself in a sign posted in front of his home at The Lakes: "Church -- Neighbors Welcome."

But the well-groomed community did not appreciate the sign nor the Christians parking on the curbs, and Smith's church was quickly shut down.

So Smith and partner-in-faith Fred Green moved their small congregation to a rented space in a Boys and Girls Club, where "some of the little patrons there destroyed our sound equipment," Green said.

Smith and Green put their spiritual calling on hold in 1996 and devoted their energy to running two swimming-pool maintenance businesses -- figuring pragmatically that next to spiritual salvation, what Las Vegans need most is a good pool cleaner.

But two years later, while minding his own business in the pews, Smith was asked to preach at Fellowship Christian Church. He could not refuse. The call was in him. Preaching is what he believes to be his life's purpose.

Today Smith has new problems. His church is being sued for negligence in a child sexual-abuse case. He has lost a number of the members handed over to him. The fire marshal keeps dropping by and issuing complaints. Day-care regulators are all over him. He had a stroke. And the church recently filed for bankruptcy protection.

"Is this easy?" Smith -- still sitting proudly at the pastor's desk -- breaks out in ribald laughter. "Running a church is never easy."

With a population growth rate of more than 5,000 people a month, Las Vegas seems an ideal place to start churches.

In fact, new houses of worship are going up in every corner of the valley -- including some multimillion-dollar facilities equipped with state of the art multimedia systems that outclass many a secular auditorium.

In some cases, the girth of church-operating budgets is allowing clergy to tool around in luxury cars and live in upscale neighborhoods. Salary and perks at mid- to large-sized congregations range from $40,000 to $70,000 annually; a few local clergymen earn more than $100,000 a year. Some churches have had jaw-dropping success -- Central Christian Church has grown from 24 people in a rented room to more than 4,000 on a $9.5 million campus in 20 years.

But the more common story is that of the little church -- the dozen people in a living room and the two dozen in an elementary school and the three dozen in a storefront.

This is where the trials begin, where those with a calling have their faith tested.

For example, the Rev. Charles Hemphill, an eternally positive thinker, recently found himself standing on the Strip posing for a cameraman, making TV commercials for his budding United Methodist Church called Imani Cathedral.

"You have to think outside the box. We are unique. I'm going to do my best to tap into the idea that this is Sin City. This city was created for the church," Hemphill said.

He took over the failing Miracles Church for All People in a downtrodden strip mall last year, accepted its lease, and inherited its seven loyal congregants. Now he has more than 50 members.

Similarly, the Rev. Ken Anderson built up his Crossroads Community Church congregation inside Henderson city limits, only to find that once he outgrew his building, the city's zoning codes made it nearly impossible to get a new site.

So he had to move his church just outside the city limits -- meaning some members would be lost.

Still other congregations have looked at their tight budgets and started searching for discounted land. Some have lobbied for Bureau of Land Management parcels -- select lots that can be acquired at 50 percent of market value by religious organizations under the Recreation and Public Purposes Act.

Congregations such as Shadow Hills Baptist Church, West Valley Assembly of God and Congregation Ner Tamid all got such deals -- accounting for about 150 acres of local BLM land.

As land prices continue to escalate, the BLM is being pressured to stop making such deals and instead get full-market value for the land. Two years ago, Faith Lutheran Church officials wanted BLM land near Cheyenne Avenue and Hualapai Way to build a high school, but they lost out to Del Webb Corp., which acquired the land at a higher value as part of a master-planned community.

Nevertheless -- with competition tight -- Las Vegas is still considered fertile church-planting ground.

The Southern Baptists are pouring nearly $2 million into evangelism and church-starts in Las Vegas in a yearlong focus in 2001.

In 1999 the local Baptists began reaching for new congregants by distributing a video about Jesus and a bag of microwave popcorn to the doorsteps of 1,000 North Las Vegas residents.

Disasters

But the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest is mulling over closing an operation on one of its properties in Las Vegas -- a 20-year-old building on West Cheyenne Avenue called Fellowship Christian Church, run by the Rev. Rick Smith.

Building rent was $6,500 a month two years ago. But when the church ran into financial problems, the regional offices agreed to cut the rent to $1,000 a month to help, Smith said. Now the rent is back to $5,000 a month.

But rent is only a tiny piece of Fellowship's troubles: The church seems to have faced every problem a religious organization can encounter.

To hear Smith and Green -- the only remaining members of the church's board -- tell it, some problems were inherited, some were just "unfortunate."

The most notorious was child abuse.

A couple of years ago the principal of the Tree of Life K-8 Christian school on the Fellowship campus left her class of elementary students in the care of her 12-year-old son.

While she was gone on a five-minute break, the boy allegedly molested some of the children.

"We didn't try to cover it up. I wrote a letter to the parents the day I found out about it, telling them that the student and the principal had been removed," Smith said. "It was a terrible situation."

Metro Police were called, the juvenile offender was charged, and Metro provided counseling to the remaining students.

But few stayed. Parents yanked more than 50 students out of the school, along with their $360-per-month tuition payments, leaving about five students, Smith said.

"So we lost a lot of money," Smith said.

The church was already in financial straits because of mismanagement over the years, according to longtime member Bob Connelly.

"Small churches can't offer much salary to (pastors)," Connelly, who was a charter member, said. "Sometimes you get some (pastors) that may not be the best people."

"The former administrator was a financial disaster -- he overextended us," Green said. And when he left, he took some church members with him.

Although the former pastor could not be reached for comment, it may not matter who started the problems. What does matter is who is going to clean them up.

After the mismanagement and the school-enrollment loss, the church couldn't make payroll taxes, "and the IRS was threatening to close our doors," Smith said. "Our options were rapidly diminishing. I wasn't too thrilled about filing bankruptcy, but we were staring the IRS in the face."

This summer Smith survived a stroke and returned to work after accepting a cut in his already-meager salary.

Fellowship Christian filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this month.

And a lawsuit alleging that the church was negligent for allowing the 12-year-old to watch the children is ongoing.

And day-care regulators have cited the church for unclean carpet, requiring that the old, stained gray carpet be replaced at a cost of about $1,000 per room.

And the fire marshal dropped in to say that the material used for trim near the pulpit was a fire hazard and that he would cite the church if he found it there again.

Persistence

But the cycle of church growth is not undone by trouble. When it's your calling, there's no turning back, Smith says.

"I can't quit. I can't turn away from this. I'm just one beggar telling other beggars where to get bread," Smith said as he sat in his office with Green, the two of them saddled with this idea that faith will carry them through.

And if you share Smith's view, things have changed for the better.

Last month the pastor of another struggling church came to Smith in need of a place to hold services.

The Rev. Fermin Rangel of Centro Christiano Bethel had knocked on other doors trying to rent space for Spanish services, but had been turned down. Smith says he "jumped up and hugged" Rangel when he knocked on Fellowship's door, and the two made arrangements to hold Spanish services in the evening for $1,500 a month.

Shortly thereafter came another unexpected visitor. A Pacific Bell representative dropped by to ask if the company could lease space in the church for its cellular telephone relay equipment -- to the tune of $900 a month for 30 years, with a $10,000 signing bonus.

Next -- "and most miraculously," Smith says -- a church member dropped a $76,000 check in the collection basket, enabling it to pay off some creditors and reduce payouts due under the Chapter 11 plan. The donor made the gift on the condition of anonymity.

And finally, earlier this month, a Christmas-tree seller asked if he could rent the parking lot to hawk trees.

"How's that for blessings?" Smith said, standing in his sanctuary next to a crooked -- but donated -- Christmas tree.

"I have faith. I'm not giving up."

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