LOS ANGELES – The new president of the Los Angeles-based International Church of the Foursquare Gospel said he wants to restore a sense of confidence in the leadership of the independent Pentecostal denomination.
The past two leaders left their offices after financial investments resulted in substantial losses for the church.
Jack Hayford, who is preparing to start his five-year presidency on Oct. 1, said he hoped to offer “a fresh breeze of openness and communication” and to decentralize church leadership to avoid repeating mistakes.
And beyond finances, he said he wanted to reach more people by less traditional means, ministering in inner-city neighborhoods, bringing in Christian rock bands and holding a tailgate party at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., before the Rev. Billy Graham’s crusade there in November.
“The objective of our organization is to present the gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that is truly relevant to people today,” Hayford said, by “learning to communicate the spiritual dynamic of the first century in terms that are perceptible to the 21st century.” Hayford, 70, is a lifetime member of Foursquare and founder of its Church on the Way in the Los Angeles community of Van Nuys.
Foursquare claims more than 4 million members in 138 nations, with more than 38,000 churches and meeting places. In the United States, where Foursquare has 250,000 followers, its stronghold is on the West Coast, with 601 churches and more than 113,000 members in California, officials said.
Founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in Los Angeles in 1923, Foursquare was run for more than 60 years as a family enterprise, said Vinson Synan, dean of the School of Divinity at Regent University in Virginia.
McPherson, one of the early 20th century’s most successful evangelists, used Hollywood stage props and movie star flamboyance to draw crowds. After her death in 1944, her son Rolf K. McPherson took over as president until 1988.
“When you have such a centralized government, decision-making is not as diffused as it is in other places,” said Synan, who has studied Pentecostal movements for about 50 years. “There’s not the checks and balances you have in other places.”
The following two presidents, John Holland and Paul Risser, each resigned for not following church governance rules in the wake of large financial losses, Foursquare officials said.
“The reality is that there was a very serious misjudgment and a corresponding presumption in the exercise of the decision-making power of the president,” Hayford said.
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