By Jeff Finley
Pastor Christopher Spolar became concerned Jan. 7 when he heard about the wildfire spreading rapidly through Eaton Canyon in Pasadena, California, where Expressions Church launched last October in a building surrounded by trees. After checking on the home of a church member who was out of town, his concerns were confirmed when he turned on the TV news around 11 p.m.
“ABC 7 had a crew in front of our building, and I heard the name Expressions Church,” Spolar said in an interview with Light + Life.
In the station’s breaking news report, journalist Leanne Suter said, “There is a church here fully engulfed in flames. It is a very large church. According to the map here, it’s an Expressions Church. We have just seen this thing explode in flames in the last couple of minutes. … We have seen embers the size of your hand. They have been huge embers blowing off of this church and flying up into the air.”
The building was owned by a Church of Christ congregation that had welcomed Expressions (a Free Methodist Church in Southern California plant) as a renter for Sunday worship and for office space throughout the week. Spolar said Expressions stored its musical instruments, production equipment and cameras at the church building.
“The building is a total, complete loss. It used to be two stories. Now you couldn’t even tell it was a two-story building,” Spolar said.
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“The first thing we do is we don’t say anything. We just meet people where they’re at. There’s not a lot of words to say, for a lot of people, they have lost everything.” – Christopher Spolar
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Relief and Resilience
After accepting that the fire destroyed the church building, Spolar recalled asking, “OK, Lord, then what’s the invitation for us right now?”
“What I sensed was, if the walls of the church have been burned down, then God’s inviting us to be the church beyond the walls,” Spolar said. “On Wednesday morning (Jan. 8), I started reworking a new fire relief web page on our website to start intake of needs, so people can fill out a form in ways that they need help. That started just for our own church people, and it quickly morphed into more than that and then other ways people can be engaged and stay involved. People can sign a form for alerts for how to serve and get involved.”
The Sunday after the fire, Expressions still gathered but at a local park instead of a church building.
“It was a smaller gathering. A lot of people are still at different places. Some people were concerned about air quality,” said Spolar who added that the park gathering consisted of “a simple time of worship and some prayer and then just sharing — just getting to hear from the people who were in the really affected areas, and hearing what’s happening with their neighborhood, how are people feeling, and checking in with each other. Then after that, we went out and were prayer-walking the neighborhood.”
The church has now secured a temporary home for worship at another church building in Pasadena while the search continues for a more permanent location.
Decimated Neighborhoods
Most of the people who attend Expressions Church come from the neighboring communities of Pasadena and Altadena.
“We had one single, elderly woman in Altadena lose her home,” said Spolar who added that the church gave the woman gift cards and a suitcase she could use for clothing someone gave her. “She’s staying with a friend in Long Beach, and then she’s talking to a family member about a potential, indefinite stay. She’s got people around her loving on her.”
Spolar said the church had “at least five or six people where their homes were the only houses around them that were standing, and so we see a total hedge of protection around some of their houses” although “their neighborhoods were decimated.”
Some church members had previously complained about neighbors having a tall wall or said they had other property features they hadn’t liked, but “some of the things that they were annoyed about on their property were some of the things that God used to protect their property.”
For these people whose homes were protected from the wildfires, Spolar acknowledged “there’s a little bit of some survivors’ guilt. People are not really knowing how to deal. There’s a lot of shock.”
The fire especially devastated Altadena, an unincorporated community of nearly 43,000 residents.
“One of the older men in our church, he’s part of that historically Black community in Altadena, and so his family’s been there for a couple of generations,” Spolar said. “His whole childhood has burned down to the ground, so there’s a lot of that kind of pain, especially for people in Altadena who’ve been there for a long time.”
Media Spotlight
Spolar admittedly isn’t much of a cable news viewer, but he received a request from Fox News for an interview. He initially referred the news network to the Church of Christ, but when the Church of Christ leaders didn’t seem interested in doing an interview, he agreed.
“Then I found out right before that it was going to be live,” said Spolar who told Fox host Bret Baier that “we’re one group out of many who have lost a lot.”
Baier said to Spolar, “You’re a pastor. You’re in the business of talking about tough times and getting people through things. What do you say to them?”
“The first thing we do is we don’t say anything. We just meet people where they’re at. There’s not a lot of words to say,” Spolar replied. “For a lot of people, they have lost everything.”
Spolar later noted, “We just want to be with people, giving people the hope that we have and know in Christ.”
The full interview is available on the Fox News website with a related article, “California pastor gives people hope amid wildfires: ‘We believe in a God of Resurrection.’”
Spolar also was interviewed by the Fox Weather channel along with Kerwin Manning, another Pasadena pastor, about how local churches have come together for relief efforts. Click here to watch that interview via Expressions Church’s Facebook page.
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“… there’s a lot of need, and there are a lot of ways that we can engage, and we just want to do that well and to our fullest extent.” – Christopher Spolar
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Prayer and Giving Needed
Along with opportunities to give and serve, the church’s fire relief web page links to a prayer guide with Scripture and prayer requests for emergency responders, evacuees, government officials/crisis response, and people who have lost homes, businesses, churches or loved ones.
When asked how Light + Life readers can pray for Expressions Church, Spolar requested prayer for the church to “really forge into the kind of community that we want to see. One of our church members was reflecting on how it feels like an Acts church type of moment and how that church was born out of their fellowship with each other and their serving the needs around them, and so that really can be the same kind of birthplace for our church.”
He also requested prayer for “wisdom for how to navigate these next steps and capacity, because there’s a lot of need, and there are a lot of ways that we can engage, and we just want to do that well and to our fullest extent.”
Visit expressionschurch.com/firerelief to learn more about the fire’s impact on Expressions Church and about the church’s fire relief efforts. Visit fmcusa.org/bcrf to donate to the Bishops’ Crisis Response Fund that is helping multiple churches affected by the wildfires.
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Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light + Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church in Indianapolis. He and his wife, Wabash and New South Conference Superintendent Jen Finley, are the parents of a teen son. Jeff has a bachelor’s degree in English from Greenville University and a master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois with additional graduate studies in journalism at Southern Illinois University. He serves on the boards of the Greenville University Alumni Association, Friends of Immanuel and Gene R. Alston Memorial Foundation.
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