Mother of Invention

All three levels of the historic coliseum-style sanctuary are packed. Though the beat rocks and video flashes on triple-wide screens, Aimee Semple McPherson would feel right at home in her old venue. The woman who once flew from the second balcony Peter Pan-like would welcome today’s visiting stand-up comic. She, who reinterpreted the Medieval morality play as the “illustrated sermon,” would like the spoof of family holiday gatherings. And she would like the preacher who is pacing the stage and unpacking a canvas bag of “burdens.”

He is her successor, Matthew Barnett, on this day speaking to more than 3,500 people.

Those in the balcony are there on the promise of a free turkey. Over 1,500 were given away to Echo Park neighborhood residents this Sunday before Thanksgiving.

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The crowd is lively, set up by the music (the bulletin advises people with sensitive ears to sit under the balcony overhang, the only spot where the volume doesn’t reach rock-concert levels), and by the comedian, Cleto (rhymes with “ghetto”) Rodriguez (“Cleto? What was my mother reading? The book of stupid baby names?). Barnett’s message is clear: lay down your burden, take Jesus’ yoke, and follow him.

Barnett has taken McPherson’s mantle—well, mostly.

“People in her day called her a radical, with her theatrics and illustrated sermons,” Barnett says. “We do some of that; it’s part of the personality of the church. But more than that, I respect her tremendous passion for soul winning and for social outreach.”

Angelus Temple was on the verge of closure three years ago, almost 60 years after the death of its founder and five years after the retirement of her son, Rolf. That’s when leaders of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel called on Assemblies of God pastor Barnett to come and save their cradle church. They committed $7 million to renovate the white elephant, and Barnett inherited a great, if troubled legacy.

Sister Aimee herself remains both venerated and vilified. A popular evangelist and faith healer, young McPherson moved her ministry into the temple she built in 1923. She drew enormous crowds with her theatrics (the dedication services included a train of hundreds of gypsies who declared her their queen). She launched a Bible school and a church-owned radio station, sponsored floats in the Rose Parade, fed thousands weekly, and sent aid in the wake of natural disasters. Sister was a local star, and becoming a national celebrity. Until the kidnapping.

In May 1926, she mysteriously disappeared. Three days after her funeral was held, Aimee reappeared, claiming she had been kidnapped, and denying allegations of an extended out-of-town tryst with a staff member.

“We can’t ignore her personal problems,” Barnett said. But he points to her evangelistic zeal as worthy of his emulation.

“There was a time in her ministry that for over two years she stopped holding healing services, because people were coming only for healing. They weren’t coming to be saved,” he says. “We pray for healing in special services, but our main services are for worship and for soul winning. That was her passion and it’s ours.”

Under Barnett’s energetic leadership, the Temple today remains an odd and innovative mixture of art and artifice, Spirit-filled theology and earthy ministry. Above old stained glass windows rise new staging scaffolds. From the high dome with clouds painted on the underside hang state-of-the-art sound baffles to cut the reverb. The crutches abandoned after Aimee’s healing ministrations are gone from the vestibule, headed to her former residence next door, which will reopen as a museum. An usher pointing to the sanctuary entrance tells newcomers, “Enjoy the show!”

So the Temple is filled again, this time by ex-addicts and troubled teens, searching suburbanites, and poor locals in need of hope, a turkey, and reason for thanksgiving.

Like Aimee’s crowds two generations ago, they return because they’re finding what they came for.