On the Job : For 24 years, most of it from a small office behind his church, a pastor has run a no-fee service to find employment for people.

As a young man Luther McCurtis was a worldly sort, with ambitions to be a music promoter amid the bright lights of Tulsa, Okla. But then he got the call.

It wasn’t from AT&T.;

“I kept saying (to God), ‘You’re interfering with my life,’ ” McCurtis recalls. “I quit school and joined the Air Force.”

That might have been the end of that, except the caller in question apparently had not minded getting a busy signal the first time around. Back from a tour in Europe in 1953, McCurtis was guarding an ammunition dump outside Roswell, N. M., when the line rang again.

This time he picked it up.

“I was called by an audible voice,” McCurtis recalls. “I said, ‘All right, God, if you really want me, it’s got to be a different ballgame. No. 1 is preaching to people and saving their souls. No. 2, (which) the church in America don’t cover, is jobs. I got to do more than just preach a sermon and ride in a big car.’ ”

From the look of things, McCurtis’ caller kept His end of the bargain.

After leaving the service and marrying Oracia Lane, an ardent piano player who later would become his co-pastor, McCurtis was ordained in 1956 as a minister of the Church of God in Christ. He then took a series of assignments in Arizona and Nevada, searching for a congregation that would share his concern for poverty.

God, he says, advised him to go farther west.

In 1962, he landed in California with his wife and a ready-made congregation of five children. He checked out various communities, including Santa Barbara and Oxnard, but was particularly struck by Ventura.

“When I got to the Avenue,” he says, “something rested in my spirit.”

Today, on a Ventura Avenue block shared with a tattoo parlor and carwash is the Church of God in Christ, where McCurtis, now 60, is senior pastor. And behind the church is the jobs part of the deal he made years earlier: a small office that houses an ambitious, no-fee employment service.

The Employment Aptitude & Placement Assn., or EAPA, has been finding jobs for people from all backgrounds and from throughout the county since it opened in 1968. But its efforts have been recognized beyond the county line as well.

On its walls, behind computers and notebooks filled with job openings, are numerous commendations that the EAPA has received over the years. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the service was applauded by city, county and federal officials. In 1982, McCurtis traveled to Washington to receive a Volunteer Action Award from President Reagan.

What helped build the employment service appears to have been a combination of McCurtis’ determination, persuasiveness and tenacity.

“I thought he had an interesting approach to self-help,” says Alan Teague, who, as president of Teague-McKevett Co. in Santa Paula, was a key figure in finding supporters for the job-service project.

“He is quite aggressive in a positive way. People probably get tired of having him knock on the door,” Teague says.

And that seems to suit McCurtis just fine. “If you knock, the door shall be opened,” McCurtis says, describing his philosophy of job recruitment.

Shella Douet, 39, says McCurtis’ door-knocking worked for her. Four years ago she came to EAPA after having been out of work and on welfare for “quite a few years.” She says she had obtained computer training, but for some reason employers seemed skeptical of her background.

Within a month, Douet says McCurtis got her a job at Teledyne in Newbury Park, where she now is an associate programmer analyst. “He just went right for it. He said, ‘Don’t you worry. We’ll get you a job.’ He has a heart to help people who need his services.”

But helping people who need it today, McCurtis says, is a lot harder than it was when he started. In the early years, the service had a kind of Midas touch. It had been evident from the very start.

After arriving in Ventura, McCurtis persuaded a man selling an old house on Ventura Avenue to accept $100 and his word that McCurtis would come up with the rest of the down payment. With a tiny group of worshipers, he raised the balance of $900 in 45 days. McCurtis then converted the house to an ample Pentecostal church, raising his family in an upstairs apartment and adding quarters in the rear for the EAPA six years later.

Back then, McCurtis says, finding jobs for applicants was a little like a jigsaw puzzle: Just find the one that fits the space. Employers were receptive, especially since the service cost them nothing.

“They were a good square of strong character candidates,” recalls Conrad Conway of G. E. Plastics Division in Oxnard. “They are what we call good, solid citizens. That’s one thing that drew us to them.”

“People felt like I had some kind of magic,” says McCurtis, a tall, imposing man who is quick to laugh. “In the ‘60s I could pick up the phone and find a job--like that. This isn’t so much true in the ‘90s.

“This is the day of resumes and ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ ”

At a time when jobs are scarce and funds for the no-fee service are even scarcer, staying afloat in recent years hasn’t been easy.

In contrast with a decade ago, when the service placed 200 to 250 applicants a year, in 1991 only 70 candidates were placed of the 376 who filled out applications.

Conway, like representatives for several large employers, says he hasn’t called the service in recent years because of industry cutbacks. In the same crunch, the usual businesses that funded EAPA have cut losses by withdrawing support.

To compensate, the EAPA staff is now bare-bones. Cathy Karlowsky, the current office manager and sole employee, has volunteer counselors come in a few times a week to assist in placing candidates.

“Things are tough, but I know the jobs are out there,” Karlowsky says. “I just need to find time to get out and meet those employers.”

McCurtis knows that the outlook for the employment service has not been good. The EAPA’s directors have discussed closing it, he says. They also have talked about looking elsewhere for funding.

But McCurtis shakes his head at both ideas.

It is a point of honor to him, he says, that the EAPA has never accepted government funding and has relied solely on private and community support. Problems have been weathered in the past and can be again.

“I have had all kind of board members come and go because they wanted to ask for government money,” he says. He not only believes in grass-roots support, he adds, but doesn’t want the government telling him how to run the place.

For now, there is no way McCurtis is ready to give up on the deal he made so many years ago in front of a New Mexico ammunition dump. Especially now, when what the employment service needs isn’t so much a Christmas miracle as a little boost.

“I can see this place filled, with people on the phones like they call in for prayers at Trinity Broadcasting,” says McCurtis, smiling.

Perhaps one of the callers will turn out to be someone he talked with a long time ago.

UP CLOSE / LUTHER McCURTIS

Age: 60

Profession: Minister

Childhood: Born in Stonewall, Miss.; orphaned at age 5 and reared by family and friends in Mississippi and Oklahoma.

Admitted weakness: Pin-stripe suits and wingtip shoes.

First impression of life’s work: “A minister mentioned he had seen the call of the ministry on me. I thought, ‘I’m out of here.’ ”

Inspiration for creating a job placement service: “The church has always addressed itself to a little clothing and a little food. It’s good for a little clothing and a little food. It’s good for a little Band-Aid, but the permanent cure is to teach a man to fish. Then he can fish the rest of his life.”