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In 1969, 35-year-old Jack Hayford pulled up to a traffic light in front of First Baptist Church of Van Nuys. Like any other pastor in Southern California, he knew of the Baptist congregation. It was growing like a weed, drawing nationwide publicity under the leadership of Pastor Harold Fickett. Hayford's church, a few blocks down Sherman Way, was an aging Foursquare congregation with just 18 members. Two weeks before, Hayford had taken on the church temporarily while serving as dean of students at L.I.F.E. Bible College (now Life Pacific College), an institution of his Pentecostal denomination, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

Parked at the light, Hayford felt a burning sensation on his face, a startlingly physical sense of the church's intimidating presence. Through an inner voice God spoke to him, reprovingly: "You could at least begin by looking at the building."

He turned and saw nothing but a modern brick structure. "What now?" Hayford asked.

"I want you to pray for that church," God said. "What I am doing there is so great, there is no way the pastoral staff can keep up with it. Pray for them."

As Hayford began to pray, he felt an overflow of love for Van Nuys Baptist. It seemed to take no effort. Through the days to come, the same sensation came to him every time he passed by a church—any church. "I felt an overwhelming love for the church of Jesus Christ. I realized I had them in pigeonholes."

A few days later, he approached a large Catholic church. Having been raised to take strong exception to Catholic doctrine, he wondered whether he would have the same feelings. He did, and heard another message from God: "Why would I not be happy with a place where every morning the testimony of the blood of my Son is raised from the altar?"

"I didn't hear God say that the Catholics are right about everything," Hayford says now, remembering the experience that changed his ministry. "For that matter, I didn't hear him saying the Baptists are right about everything, nor the Foursquare."

The message was simply that people at those churches cared about God. These were sites dedicated to Jesus' name. And he, Hayford, was supposed to love and pray for them.

Hayford turned 71 in June. Gravity has pulled his face downwards, his hair has disappeared, and he wears a somber, eagle-beaked visage. Occasionally his wry sense of humor appears without warning, cracking his face into a sudden toothy smile. More often, though, his face falls into solemnity.

According to Steve Strang, publisher of charismatic magazines Charisma and Ministries Today, Hayford has emerged as Pentecostals' and charismatics' gold standard. "Pastor Jack would fall into a category of statesman almost without peer," Strang says. "His integrity and theological depth are so well known that he can draw together all kinds of factions."

In Southern California, he is known as founding pastor of the Church on the Way, a congregation of 10,000 that he built from that struggling 18-member start in Van Nuys. Its one-time Anglo suburban neighborhood has become gritty Latino turf, but the church has not moved. Hayford has a strongly physical sense of God's work, and he believes that the Church on the Way was called to that very location. Spanish-language services have become the leading edge of the church, averaging 6,000 in weekly attendance.

Having reached an age when it would be reasonable to retire into statesmanship, Hayford has taken on more challenges. Last fall he was elected president of the Foursquare denomination, replacing a predecessor who resigned after the church lost $15 million in a phony investment scheme. Seven years before that, his predecessor resigned under similar circumstances. Intensely loyal to his denomination, Hayford intends to reinvigorate a discouraged institution.

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July 2005, Vol. 49, No. 7