Follow us to...beach church

Lutheran, The, Jul 2001 by Hartman, Joyce

Next time you're tugging at your tie, untwisting your panty hose or praying for a breeze, think "Beach Church."

Worship at Beach Church is interrupted when whales or porpoises are spotted off the coast by worshipers, who dress in everything from shorts and sweatshirts to jeans and jackets. Some are sipping coffee from Starbucks cups or insulated mugs.

Welcome to the 8 a.m. service of Christ Lutheran Church, San Clemente, Calif., an area best known for the Nixon estate, a quaint downtown, its fishing pier and surfing beach. It's also known to a few as the home of Beach Church, which began as an Easter sunrise worship, developed into a weekly service during the summer months and for the past three years has been a year-round fixture.

"We're here every Sunday, rain or shine," announces Margaret Duttera, pastor, from her pulpit in the sand to about 50 hearty souls. "Unless it's really pouring, in which case we hold the service in our church building just up the road."

On this unusually cool and cloudy California morning, volunteers unload plastic chairs from a trailer in the parking lot. As everyone settles down, the organist plays a batterypowered keyboard over the sound of the surf and the cries of hovering sea gulls. At sea, boats move slowly over the glassy surface. Worshipers follow a loose, but liturgical, worship setting fitting of the beach.

A few minutes into the service, the pastor pauses for worshipers to turn and wave to passengers in the Amtrak train speeding by. One family joined the church because they were train passengers.

Children join Duttera on a blanket for a message. At communion, worshipers receive the host from an oyster shell just as the sun breaks through the clouds.

After the benediction (and another wave to a train coming from the opposite direction), members carry their chairs to the trailer where they're loaded along with the pulpit and organ. The crowd soon disperses-some to Sunday school at church, others in search of a late breakfast at a nearby coffee shop.

So if you find yourself in San Clemente and in need of a spiritual lift, head for North Beach. Look for a van pulling a trailer with "Follow Us to Beach Church" painted on its sides.

Hartman is retired and lives in Montrose, Colo. She and her husband visit their daughter at Christ Lutheran Church in San Clemente, Calif.