Urban planning, with Christian values

By Marshall Allen , Staff Writer

PASADENA -- Eric Jacobsen speaks passionately about things like sidewalks and store fronts. But he's not an architect or a developer.

He's an ordained Presbyterian pastor who says city planning can have an important influence on religious experience. Jacobsen is an advocate for New Urbanism, the movement that calls for interdependence among residents by promoting pedestrian-friendly streets, parks and town squares in neighborhoods where shops and homes coexist.

The values of New Urbanism, whose national leaders gathered in Pasadena last week, are consistent with those of Christianity and a possible antidote to the isolation experienced by many churches and Christians, Jacobsen said.

Jacobsen, 38, wrote the book "Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith.' He is studying for his Ph.D. in theology of the built environment at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is now teaching the school's first class on the subject.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Jacobsen rode his bicycle to the Zona Rosa Caffe on South El Molino Avenue. He wore a blue dress shirt and a cuff of his gray slacks was tucked into his sock, so it wouldn't snag in the bike chain. Over a cup of coffee, Jacobsen extolled the virtues of the location, which bustled with passers-by. The shop's entrance abuts the wide sidewalk instead of being separated from it by a parking lot. A neighboring building was adorned with stained glass that would only be visible to someone on foot.

Jacobsen said Zona Rosa Caffe might make an ideal "third place,' the term New Urbanists use for a location that is not a person's home or place of employment. The third place is an important part of community, he said. It's where people from diverse backgrounds learn to interact, he said.

For Christians, the third place also provides opportunity for spontaneous ministry, he said. Jesus did much of his ministry in the context of everyday life. For instance, Jacobsen notes, in one Bible story Jesus was on his way to heal the daughter of a synagogue ruler named Jarius, when a sick woman touched his cloak and was healed.

The woman may not have been noticed by today's ministers, Jacobsen said.

"She's not going to call for an appointment,' he said.

Jacobsen is one of a growing number of Christian leaders nationally who are thinking theologically about urban design and applying its principles to the church. They advocate for New Urbanist concepts that force people to share with one another, dwell among their neighbors and allow for a healthy exchange of ideas.

Christians must see their ministry "as not just supporting the programs inside your church, but also caring about the whole neighborhood,' Jacobsen said.

Jacobsen said many Christians resist or ignore his appeals to New Urbanism. But that doesn't dampen his evangelistic fervor. Part of the challenge is the historical propensity of Protestants to dismiss architecture. The saying is that "the church is the people, not the building.'

"That slogan obscures the fact that the building influences how people relate,' Jacobsen said.

Many churches around the United States are isolated by suburban sprawl. The sprawl began in part because of federal subsidies after World War II, said Philip Bess, professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame. Bess, who has a master's degree in church history, is a Catholic and New Urbanist.

The low-interest housing loans the government provided GIs returning from the war applied only to new houses. Meanwhile, the government was funding the interstate highway system; zoning laws separated communities into their commercial, industrial and residential uses.

The suburbs were born, neatly dividing people by economic class and often making it inconvenient not to drive everywhere to the market, to work and to church.

Churches followed people into the suburbs. Bess said they also adapted suburban development patterns, buying sizable plots of land, building a church and surrounding it with a surface parking lot. Churches then offered multiple programs to draw members, who drove to the site, leaving neighborhoods behind.

Sprawl makes it more difficult for churches to achieve their objectives, Bess said. For example, anyone who can't operate a vehicle the young, old or disabled are disenfranchised, he said.

"Just as a matter of social justice it's arguably better to make mixed-use, walkable environments,' Bess said.

New Urbanism is a hot term in the world of Christian community development, said Curt Gibson, director of neighborhood ministries at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena. At Lake Avenue, there is a philosophical connection between the architectural movement and ministry focus, he said.

Several years ago a survey at Lake Avenue found that most of the children in the church's youth programs were driven there from other cities, or attended private schools, he said. The smallest group of students was from the Pasadena Unified School District.

The church poured resources into the Lake Avenue Community Foundation to expand its neighborhood outreach and tutoring programs. Now, PUSD has the largest representation in the youth program, he said.

"There's been a heart change at Lake Avenue,' Gibson said. "A subtle transition has happened where they recognize they need to be an active participant in the local community.'

Nationally, Randy Frazee is among leaders who favor New Urbanism. Frazee is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, a trend-setting Illinois mega-church attended by more than 20,000 people.

Mega-churches have become like castles surrounded by moats, Frazee said. The drawbridge is lowered a few times a year to let people in, where they become a subculture separate from the outside world.

"You have to disengage from your community to be involved in the church,' Frazee said, describing the problem. "Now the church has become irrelevant to the community.'

Frazee said Willow Creek is changing so members spend less time on campus and more in their communities. The push for integrating the values of New Urbanism will include the 10,500 churches in the Willow Creek Association, which links smaller congregations that share the mega-church's philosophy of ministry, Frazee said.

--Marshall Allen can be reached at (626) 578-6300, Ext. 4461, or by e-mail at marshall.allen@sgvn.com .