Throop Unitarian to Install New Pastor

His posts have ranged from Berkeley, Seattle and Sepulveda to a first-ever missionary trek to Russia for the Unitarian Universalist Assn. But a new challenge faces the Rev. Paul Sawyer in Pasadena.

Sawyer, 60, will be installed at 4 p.m. Sunday as pastor of the historic but struggling Throop Memorial Church, which has about the same number of members as it does years as a congregation--110.

“It’s a really solid group that’s gone through ups and downs, including an attempted merger with the larger Neighborhood Church in Pasadena. We’ve had a modest turnaround recently,” said Sawyer, who has been in Throop’s pulpit since Sept. 1.

A Harvard graduate, Sawyer was the pastor of the Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist congregation in the 1960s when that church built its distinctive bulb-shaped building (dubbed “the onion”) in the San Fernando Valley neighborhood of North Hills.

The Boston-based Unitarian Universalists, who form a self-described liberal religious denomination, named Sawyer, his wife Susan and son Alexander as the church body’s first missionaries in 1994 to establish congregations in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Small fellowships still function there, Sawyer said. Unitarian and Universalist churches in other European countries have roots in Eastern Europe going back 400 years, he said.

Throop Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church, at 300 S. Los Robles St., was founded by Amos G. Throop, who helped to establish what is now Caltech. The institute started as Throop University and then was called Throop Polytechnic Institute for many years.

A pre-installation symposium on “The Contemporary Church and the New City” will be held at 2:15 p.m. Sunday. Panelists will include Mike Davis, author of “City of Quartz;” the Revs. Jan and Rob Eller-Isaacs of First Unitarian Church of Oakland and Margaret Pipes of the L.A. Urban Ministry and the United Farm Workers Ministry.

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PEOPLE

Berta Timblin of Grace Community Church in Ramona was named the top Sunday school teacher in the country by Ventura-based Gospel Light publishers. Timblin, selected from among 400 nominees, is the 1996-97 Henrietta Mears National Sunday School Teacher of the Year, named after the late founder of Gospel Light and an influential mid-century Christian educator at Hollywood Presbyterian Church. Timblin, who teaches first- and second-graders, was told of the honor during the Oct. 20 service at her church, pastored by the Rev. Paul Nelson. She won a trip to Hawaii, among other things.

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DATES

The 28-member Westminster Abbey Choir will perform two concerts Sunday at St. James Episcopal Church in Los Angeles’ Mid-Wilshire District, completing a 10-city tour of North America. The first performance, at 3 p.m., will be in the style of evensong at England’s Westminster Abbey. The second will begin at 7:15 p.m. Suggested donation at both concerts: $28. (213) 387-8712.

* The Rev. Charles Swindoll, the former Fullerton pastor who also churned out dozens of best-selling books in the evangelical market, will preach at three services this weekend at Pasadena’s Lake Avenue Church. Swindoll, now president of Dallas Theological Seminary, will speak at 6 tonight and during the 9:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. services Sunday at the nondenominational church, which overlooks the Foothill Freeway. (818) 795-7221.

* A biologist who is president of the Catholic-run University of San Diego will move across the city Thursday to lecture at UC San Diego on “The Growth of a Leaf and a Life: A Scientist Reflects on Faith.” With the leaf as a metaphor, Alice Bourke Hayes will explain how her scientific work has affected her approach to age-old questions about God, a spokeswoman said. The 8 p.m. lecture at UC San Diego’s Solis Hall is free. (619) 755-6357.

* More than 350 workshops and 150 exhibits are planned for the 45th annual convention in Pasadena of Christian Ministries Training Assn., formerly known as the Greater Los Angeles Sunday School convention. The three-day meeting at the Pasadena Convention Center, starting Thursday, will feature church-growth specialist Elmer Towns of Liberty University on the closing day. (818) 294-1992.

* Pastoral care ministers have been invited to a one-day conference on family domestic violence at Nov. 9 on the downtown Los Angeles campus of Mount St. Mary’s College, 10 Chester Place. Author and family therapist Clayton Barbeau will give the keynote address on attitudes that damage intimate relations within families and how to respond to them. $25. (213) 746-0450, Ext. 2135.

* Scottish scholar Andrew F. Walls will review the “cultural history of the Christian faith” next week in lectures sponsored by Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission. Walls was the founding director from 1986 to 1995 of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at Scotland’s University of Edinburgh. He will speak at 10 and 11 a.m. Wednesday at Pasadena First Congregational Church and at 10 and 11 a.m. Thursday at the seminary’s Travis Auditorium. (818) 584-5260.

* A gospel choir from Grace United Methodist Church in Los Angeles will present a concert at Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd., at 5 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $20 at the door. (213) 294-6653.

* An interdenominational service for people who have died of AIDS will be held at 7 p.m. Sunday at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, 6657 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood. The candlelight service will include a Hebrew prayer, a Gospel reading, music and the reciting of names. (213) 896-8267.

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FINALLY

Houses of worship typically seek money pledges in order to survive.

Now, synagogues in Conservative Judaism are asking pledges of donated organs and tissue so that people awaiting transplants can survive.

Citing Jewish law that the “obligation to preserve life is all-encompassing,” the Rabbinical Assembly, in cooperation with officials of the 850 Conservative synagogues in the United States and Canada, has mailed more than 100,000 donor pledge cards to congregations.

Rabbi David Lieber, president emeritus of the University of Judaism and president of the Rabbinical Assembly, said he hopes his rabbinical colleagues will support the campaign with sermons and adult group discussions about how donating body parts saves lives, amounting to a mitzvah (good deed) in Judaism.

The donor cards require the signatures of two witnesses and are to be given to physicians, not the synagogues, a spokesman said. The card also directs medical personnel to preserve honor for the deceased and “that the rest of my remains are buried in a Jewish cemetery in accordance with Jewish law and custom.”

Notices may be mailed to Southern California File, c/o John Dart, L.A. Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or faxed to Religion desk (818) 772-3385. Items should arrive about three weeks before the event, except for spot news, and should include pertinent details about the people and organizations with address, phone number, date and time.

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CONGREGATIONS

The cathedral-like Hollywood United Methodist Church, which faces northbound traffic on Highland Avenue before the street curves toward the Hollywood Bowl, has undergone extensive refurbishing inside and out. The church will be rededicated at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.

Brown tiles were peeled off the sanctuary ceiling to improve the acoustics and the ceiling was painted blue in the tradition of Gothic cathedrals, a spokesman said. The lighting was upgraded and all 105 doors and windows were repaired and painted. Before Sunday’s service, music will be played once again on the church’s chime carillon atop a 160-foot tower that was repaired after it was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. (213) 874-2104.

* The Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center--with 375 member families the largest synagogue in the San Gabriel Valley--will be rededicating its main sanctuary at 7 p.m. today. The congregation, at 1434 N. Altadena Drive, spent $2.5 million on renovation and earthquake retrofitting.

The synagogue, affiliated with Conservative Judaism, is also celebrating its 75th anniversary. For 36 of those years, Rabbi Maurice T. Galpert was the spiritual leader. Galpert, who died in 1988, was succeeded by Rabbi Gilbert Kollin. The rededication ceremonies, admission to which is $20, include music by a klezmer band, food and speakers. (818) 798-1161.