New pastor offers hope

The Rev. Bradley Stienstra first felt pulled to enter the ministry as a student at UC Santa Barbara during the 1970 Isla Vista riots.

“[The riots] seemed to call into question my youthful idealism,” said Stienstra, who went to college with the goal of becoming a well-paid defense attorney.

“I thought the world would be bettered if we just got the right people into the right places, but people were behaving badly on both sides,” Stienstra said. “I began thinking that if the world was going to be saved, it was going to have to be saved by someone who came from beyond it.”

Stienstra is leaving the church in Riverside where he has worked for the past 19 years this week to become the new pastor at Newport Harbor Lutheran Church. The pastor hopes he can help revive the 63-year-old Newport Beach church, which has struggled to survive in the wake of scandal and dwindling membership.

A former Newport Harbor Lutheran bookkeeper was convicted in May of stealing about $320,000 from the church coffers between 2002 and 2006.

Cheryl “Lean” (pronounced Lee-ann) Granger, pleaded guilty earlier this year to forging signatures of church board members on more than 170 checks over the course of four years.

Granger made checks out to herself and a business she and her husband owned, using the funds to pay off her credit cards.

The woman moved to New Hampshire when discrepancies in the church accounts were discovered.

“The embezzlement thing was a shock, but we got over it and now we’re going forward,” said Virginia Hawker, who has been a member of Newport Harbor Lutheran for more than 20 years.

Hawker has stayed with the church through its troubles because she loves the intimate atmosphere there, she said.

“They’re like an extended family to me,” Hawker said.

The church also has struggled to find a permanent leader for the congregation, said Newport Harbor Lutheran member Beverly Lewis.

The church has about 200 members, down significantly from the early 1990s.

“This was a very vital church in the ’60s and ’70s, but for various reasons, there was kind of a drop off in attendance over the last 10 years,” Stienstra said. “There’s probably more people that are just kind of hanging around to find out what’s going to happen and haven’t made the determination whether to leave or not.”

A husband and wife pastoral team stole several thousand dollars from the church in the ’90s, Lewis said.

The Rev. David Monge took over as pastor at Newport Harbor Lutheran in the late 1990s, but he died from brain cancer a few years later.

Another pastor left the church abruptly when he became overwhelmed with the job, giving only two weeks’ notice before he quit, Lewis said.

“Apparently, the situation just became too much for him,” Lewis said. “We’ve had an awful lot of hardship in our church, but we just kind of keep hanging in there.”

At 59, Stienstra had always figured he would stay on at his Riverside church for a few more years before retiring in the area, where and his wife enjoy watching their two grandchildren, 2 and 4, a few days a week. But the pastor said he felt a sort of pull to Newport Harbor Lutheran.

“I wasn’t out looking for a move — and I don’t think they were necessarily looking for me,” Stienstra said.

Newport Harbor Lutheran Church’s congregational profile showed they probably needed a young pastor — someone in their 30s who would appeal to a younger demographic, Stienstra said.

“It was somewhat of a surprise to me that they continued to come back to me,” he said. “But I couldn’t ignore that at every point I could come up with — and there were lots of solid objections — there was still this insistent voice that said I want to be there.”

Lewis said she believes Stienstra’s instillation will bring a new vitality and stability to the church.

“He’s leaving a very successful church of his own and didn’t really have to come here — it was his decision,” Lewis said. “This is where God was leading him. He offers us hope, a fresh approach and a loving spirit.”

IF YOU GO

Newport Harbor Lutheran Church will install the Rev. Bradley Stienstra as pastor 2 p.m. today at the church, 798 Dover Drive.

The church has invited the community to attend the service. Bishop Murray Finck of the Pacifica Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will officiate at the ceremony and a reception will follow.

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.