Volunteers Go Door-to-Door in Bid to Boost Valley Church Attendance

Protestant church volunteers are hand-delivering Christian literature to all 376,000 homes in the San Fernando Valley, urging residents to attend the church of their choice.

Armed with colorful pamphlets and comfortable shoes, church members are walking door-to-door in the first such interdenominational effort in the Valley, church officials said.

Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, Nazarene and other denominations are participating in the sweep, organized by Every Home for Christ, a Chatsworth-based evangelical organization that distributes Christian literature in more than 100 countries.

Members from eight Reseda churches are now going door-to-door in that community. By the end of the month they hope to have knocked on the doors of all 19,921 homes in Reseda and left a packet of Christian information, said David Zapp, West Coast regional director of Every Home for Christ.

Similar sweeps are under way in Granada Hills, Sylmar and San Fernando. About 150 church members are involved in the four communities.

Volunteers in Sun Valley will hit the streets later this fall, followed by Northridge and Pacoima early next year. Simi Valley was the first community in the United States targeted by Every Home, and churches there have praised the sweep as “wonderful.”

First Sweep in U.S.

Although Every Home was established 41 years ago and says it has distributed more than 1.6 billion pieces of Christian literature worldwide, the sweeps in the Valley are the first it has coordinated in the United States. Since April, when the Simi Valley coverage was completed, Every Home has organized sweeps in Kansas City, Mo., and several Eastern states.

“We had always perceived the need was much greater overseas,” said Gil Mertz, director of church relations for Every Home. “Many people there have never even heard of Jesus Christ.”

The decision to target communities in the United States came at the request of churches that had long supported the overseas efforts, but wanted something similar in their own communities, Zapp said.

Volunteers take a low-key approach, usually consisting of handing residents a packet of colorfully illustrated Bible stories--one for adults, another for children--and asking that they be read. If no one is home, volunteers leave a packet and go to the next house. Volunteers are not soliciting donations.

“We didn’t try to confront them or hard sell them at the door,” said Darrell Foote, pastor of First Christian Church in Simi Valley.

“We don’t want to be pushy or overly aggressive,” said Marylyn Jackson as she walked down a tree-lined Reseda street. “We just want to give people the opportunity to know Christ and let them know we care.”

Coordinating Churches

Every Home for Christ is coordinating the churches in each community. From its sprawling office, the nonprofit organization runs its distribution network of Christian literature. A colorful map of the Valley is marked with community boundaries, and red dots mark participating churches.

The organization and its overseas efforts are paid for by donations from churches and individuals, Zapp said. In the domestic crusades, churches pay for the literature. Every Home for Christ has an annual budget of about $5 million. In 1987, it ran up a $300,000 deficit.

In Simi Valley, church pastors said they noticed new people in church who lived in areas covered during the 13-week sweep. There is talk of starting another crusade in the area to cover new housing, Foote said.

“I think a lot of churches would like to be doing this and think they should be doing this, but don’t want to be identified with some other religions,” said Jo Cottle, who visited about 50 homes along a busy Reseda street one afternoon.

One of the recipients of the literature, Manette Ward, 40, of Reseda said the volunteers were so polite she would have invited them in if she had not been not sick with the flu.

“Usually it’s the Jehovah’s Witnesses I get really upset about,” Ward said. “They just don’t want to take no for an answer. They want to come in and spend the day.”

Others were not so receptive. David Imbach, pastor of International Missionary Church in Reseda, had barely introduced himself when a woman’s voice behind a window curtain offered a curt, “No, thank you.”

Undaunted, Imbach hung a packet of literature on the woman’s door, wished her a good day and went on to the house next door.

“It’s like being a vacuum-cleaner salesman,” Imbach said. “If you quit when you got some no’s, you’d never sell a vacuum.”