‘Will Rogers of Christianity’ Puts New Face on Religion : TV Evangelist Envisions New Theology for ‘80s

The first thing that strikes you about the Rev. Jess C. Moody is that he’s a talker.

The senior pastor of the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys remembers parishioner Burt Reynolds’s high school football rushing average (9.8 yards per carry), reminisces about meeting C.S. Lewis, gives his opinions on what’s wrong with churches and explains without hesitation his view of the California work ethic--toil until you can afford a Mercedes, then quit.

He describes himself variously as an “over-insured Republican,” a “prophet to the church,” a “pragmatic mystic,” “transparent as a window pane” and “hard to interpret.”

And, in 1986, he announced that he would move his congregation to Chatsworth “to keep the West Valley from Satan’s grip.”

But what rolls off Moody’s tongue, in his honeyed west-Texas drawl, is not mere loquaciousness.

“I am a storyteller because that is what Jesus was,” said Moody, the Southern Baptist minister who is the force behind a $17-million “church for the 21st Century” soon to be under construction at a site north of the Simi Valley Freeway and west of Tampa Avenue. “And I want to be what he was more than anything.”

5,000 Active Members

For this venture to succeed, Moody must retain most of First Baptist’s 5,000 active members while attracting new ones. To do that, he believes that he needs a 1980s’ theology communicated with 1980s’ marketing tools, a tactic that could alienate some of the very people that he’s trying to reach.

The Rev. John Myrick, a close friend who is pastor of the Restoration Church in La Crescenta, calls Moody “the Will Rogers of Christianity.”

“That gets him in trouble,” Myrick said, “because there are some people who think that unless you are real serious and sour-faced about your faith, you’re not a real Christian.”

Moody defends himself by saying, “You can’t teach anybody anything unless they’re entertained.”

A TV evangelist with a bent for building big churches--the one in Chatsworth will be the third of his career--Moody has not attracted the followers, money or controversy of a Jimmy Swaggart or a Jim Bakker. His sexual activities have not been profiled in Penthouse magazine, and he is not among the television ministers being investigated by the IRS. In fact, Moody served on the government panel appointed to help settle the bankruptcy of Bakker’s ministry, the PTL Club.

Before coming to Van Nuys in 1976, he had a 25-station television network based in Palm Beach, Fla. He said he gave up the network because it “had become a God.” The program was also $400,000 in debt.

First Baptist’s services are taped and shown at 1 p.m. Sundays on Channel 30, a Glendale UHF channel broadcast throughout Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties and at 3 p.m. Sundays on Valley Cable’s Channel 65, a religious access channel seen in the west San Fernando Valley. Both channels show taped repeats every weekday morning at 5:30.

Moody’s income, $78,000, is relatively modest compared to that received by leaders of other large churches, and does not include the usual pastor’s stipend for a house or car. He and Doris, his wife of 39 years, live in a Chatsworth home that they bought several years ago for $235,000. He says he gives 30% of his income to charity.

Moody’s one concession to high living is his smoke-gray Sterling automobile, the British wanna-be Jaguar. But when he takes a visitor to lunch, it is to Furr’s Cafeteria in Van Nuys, a regular hangout.

Financial Risk

Nonetheless, he is ambitious: The new Chatsworth facility represents a financial risk--there will be $4 million in construction debt, even after the sale of the Van Nuys property.

Moody, of course, is no stranger to risk. Consider his theological beliefs.

Christians who believe that the Bible is literally true and who associate only with Christians who believe as they do trouble Moody because they see the secular and the sacred worlds as separate.

Moody does not. In fact, he says he strives to be sure that half of his friends at any time are non-Christian so that he does not get trapped in Christian rhetoric.

Moody’s version of Christianity eschews pain and guilt and indoctrination. Rather, he says, he preaches “total life development and enrichment.”

That attitude has won Moody a wide range of admirers. One fan, movie producer Harvey Bernhard, said: “No matter what your religion . . . you’ve got to believe in Jess Moody. He’s the class act of all preachers.”

“He is a crusader against legalism and narrow fundamentalism” and that has “made him unpopular with people who don’t think he is stern enough in the faith,” said Myrick, who was recruited by Moody even though he was divorced, usually a taboo among Southern Baptist congregations.

Yet Moody doesn’t consider himself a crusader. “I’m just a Southern boy attempting to adapt to California culture, to bring the Gospel to help these people lead a satisfactory life,” he said.

In that regard, said the Rev. John Jackson of Anaheim, the newly elected president of the California Southern Baptists Convention, Moody “has been out in the forefront,” and he “has taken his shots.”

Because Southern California lacks certain longstanding Christian traditions found in the South, Moody has eschewed some of the trappings associated with Southern Baptists.

More Than Hymns

If religion is to matter, he says, it must be more than 400-year-old hymns and exhortations not to sin. “Jesus never talked much about religion,” Moody, 63, said in an interview in his redwood-paneled office. “He started where their interests were. You always start with the trivial . . . and pull them back to where they ought to be.”

For example, he said, 75% of Jesus’ stories were about money because Roman taxes had impoverished 1st-Century Jews. The parallel is that Moody often talks about real estate, probably the hottest topic of conversation in Los Angeles.

Sophisticated theological discussions aren’t likely to penetrate the stress of freeways, child care and mortgages. So he preaches biblical lessons using everyday experiences and the argot of psychologists and self-realization gurus.

Moody also hopes to attract new members to the Chatsworth church with facilities that are to include a lap pool, Jacuzzi, paddle tennis courts, jogging path, weight room, 99-seat Equity-waiver theater and classrooms, all to be located on a 14-acre site.

High Window

The church sanctuary, carpeted in blue with architectural details of finished wood, will be dominated by a 3-story colored window depicting a sun and a dove. The window’s high-tech glass will change colors as viewers move about the room. A statue of Jesus and a multilevel waterfall will highlight the building’s street facade.

“Aesthetically, the structure is quite beautiful,” a slick fund-raising brochure says. “But, more importantly, it is totally functional to include the Christian life style found in Southern California. We envision a place where our members might work out mentally, physically and spiritually, all at the same time!”

The church is selling that idea with a promotion featuring Los Angeles Raider wide receiver Willie Gault and disc jockey Rick Dees, both members, that was sent to 25,000 upscale homes. The unabashed marketing was featured in a skeptical article in Los Angeles magazine last month under the headline “God for Sale.”

“They always criticize you, if you use sense in your approach, for being manipulative,” Moody responded. “If you do it sloppily, they accuse you of being sloppy. So, of the two, I’d rather do it correctly. You do the demographics, study who is there and aim at them. That is what Jesus did.”

Membership Crucial

He acknowledges that as many as 10% of the Van Nuys First Baptist congregation, which is one of Los Angeles’ largest, may not follow him to Chatsworth and that several hundred others have left already. But he said most of First Baptist’s members already live in the West Valley.

The as-yet unnamed new church “will be at the jugular vein of the Valley’s future,” he said, smack dab in the middle of where a huge shopping center, hotel, office buildings and 3,000 homes are planned.

When Moody kneeled 10 years ago on that exact spot and prayed to be allowed to build a church, no one knew it would become a developer’s dream location. But, he said: “God knew it. And now we’re there. What are we going to do with it? We’ve got to produce a different breed of cat from what the church has produced before.”

During his sermons, at the 11 a.m. Sunday services, Moody, who is 6-foot-3 and weighs 239 pounds, roams agilely. He cajoles, digresses, makes personal references and inserts a politically conservative message or two.

Political Messages

One week, he said that because of the ACLU, more religious liberty exists in the Soviet Union than in parts of the United States. On another Sunday, he said: “Let’s choose an 8-year-old for president. That’s as good a choice as we’ve got this year anyway.”

He says he grew up in several dusty little towns in west and south Texas with his father intermittently owning a liquor store and a cafe and his mother serving as the town pianist. They were not avid churchgoers, but she played for Sunday services. In return, the stern Baptist ministers allowed her to also play for Saturday night dances, he said.

It was Moody’s mother who helped him recover from childhood traumas involving the deaths of two of his playmates and an incident in which he was sexually abused.

He thought that he caused one of the deaths, of a 5-year-old boy who was hit by a truck while chasing a ball Moody had thrown. Another playmate was mauled at a circus by a tiger. The same year, a man who ended up sentenced to life in prison molested the young Moody.

“From then on, my mother’s main job was to restore my self-esteem,” he said. “I had a very hard time. But . . . I would awaken in the night to hear her praying for me, to heal my mind and my memories.”

World War II Deaths

Tragedy struck again soon after high school, he said. Most fellow members of the state championship football team enlisted in the Army, and many of them died in the 1943 battle at Anzio, Italy. Weak eyesight prevented Moody from enlisting.

Moody said he was devastated and considered suicide. He hadn’t gone to church in years. But finally he realized that he was either going “to get bitter or get better,” he said, and joined the ministry.

Those experiences left him profoundly anti-war and highly conscious of the fragility of life.

In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, he preached to the 14,000-member Southern Baptist Pastor’s Conference on “The Christian and War.”

The sermon was an emotional anti-war lament vowing to all governments: “We have sent our sons to die for your selfish purposes and trumped up principles for the last time.”

Moody majored in communications at Baylor University, earned a master’s degree at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctorate in theology at Campbellsville College in Campbellsville, Ky.

Founding College

His first church, and his first building program, was a 2,300-member congregation in Owensboro, Ky. In 1961, he became pastor of the 6,000-member First Baptist Church in West Palm Beach, Fla., and undertook another ambitious building program. He also founded Palm Beach Atlantic College, now a richly endowed, accredited liberal arts college.

His Palm Beach Bible study class, dubbed “the billion-dollar Bible class” by etiquette columnist Amy Vanderbilt, included members of the Firestone, Dodge, Kennedy and John D. MacArthur families.

Some congregation members there complained about his celebrity status. But there is disagreement from church member Ruby Rinker, wife of M.E. Rinker, whose fortune is estimated to be more than $275 million, according to Forbes magazine.

“Wherever he went, he just generated love and affection,” whether it was among the elite or among prisoners in a jail, she said. “He made his mark in this town. He touched a lot of lives.”

Moody sees no contradiction between what he says is his devotion to the needs of poor people, on the one hand, and a career that has repeatedly put him in contact with the famous, rich and powerful, on the other.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that the church should huddle down with people with very little money,” he said. “Jesus didn’t do that. He applied his principles to all people, of all walks of life.”

Moody also heard grumbles about his hobnobbing soon after he came to Van Nuys in 1976. He was replacing a longtime pastor who had left 2 years earlier, and his ideas for change drew some opposition.

He wanted to begin targeting the movie industry for evangelism. Some branded him a celebrity seeker and an egotist. But Moody said he was simply seeking to reach the largest industry around.

As a result, he says more than 200 actors, writers, directors and producers are members. The church sponsors the Act One acting group, and a variety of plays, all secular, are produced in the neighboring Jess Moody Theater. Moody has been a consultant to a number of television shows and has contributed to the writing of 13 movies.

Quaid’s Songs

One church member is Dennis Quaid, whose steamy celluloid love scenes in “The Big Easy” catapulted him to sex symbol status. Quaid recently asked Moody for permission to sing a couple of gospel songs that Quaid had written for a Sunday service.

Moody agreed immediately. “I said, ‘Come right in.’ Why not? Do we have to have paragons of righteousness to get up and communicate the Gospel? ‘Hi I’m goody-two-shoes. I get up and talk nice. I’ve never sinned. I’ve never done anything wrong.’ God help me, man! I want a man who’s broken and who’s been there!”

In 1979, the church’s Board of Trustees nearly ousted Moody, primarily over differences in theological philosophy, and when more than 600 members departed en masse, he was emotionally crushed.

John Jauregui, a Lockheed Aeronautical Systems Corp. executive who chairs the board, acknowledged that change has been difficult at times. But, he said, that is not unusual.

Now, he said, Moody has won over almost everyone. “He pastors as if he is in a small church,” Jauregui said. “He pastors one-to-one. He has a deep concern about each individual’s needs.”

Moody is confident that he and his congregation are up to the challenges ahead.

“Old guys with vision are dangerous,” he said. “What are they going to do? Fire me? I have a good healthy ego and I’m alive and I’ve got a pretty wife and a big church and thank God it’s not the other way around.”