BUILDER OF THE FAITH

Minister is launching church on Peninsula, again

Mary Moore

Daily Breeze

The Rev. Wayne Coombs likes starting things, especially churches.

He calls it a God-given "apostolic gift." Some people have it, he says, but most don't.

That's what led the pastor to break ground at five churches, including his own: the Lunada Bay Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Palos Verdes Estates, which he started in the early 1980s. It closed in 1993 when he shifted focus to another of his start-ups, an international effort to bring Romanian children to the United States.

Coombs, though, recently has changed the direction of his adoption organization, the Adam Children's Fund, and handed over the reins to a new executive director. He now describes his role as a "figurehead" for the group.

In the meantime, Coombs is starting another church.

What Coombs hopes to do is rekindle the remains of the Lunada Bay church, which fizzled into hard feelings five years ago as the pastor shifted his attention from his role as a charismatic spiritual leader to a crusading humanitarian missionary.

Some of his churchgoers felt betrayed; Coombs still wishes they had been more supportive.

The church's opening service is at 9:45 a.m. Sunday in Fred Hesse Park in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Even Coombs himself wonders how many people will turn out Sunday, and how many will be former parishioners. So far, news that the Lunada Bay church is starting again has been spread mainly by word-of-mouth.

"To be honest, I've never heard of a church closing for five years and then re-opening," said Coombs, former public relations point-person for Pat Boone and auto maker John DeLorean, a born-again Christian. "But if this is what God wants me to do, then it will happen. If God's not in it, it won't work, but I'm trusting that God is in it."

By now, the lion's share of Coombs' followers are filling the pews -- and the offering plates -- at other churches. But at least one local pastor welcomes Coombs' return.

"We're underchurched," said the Rev. Gary Leary, pastor of the Branch of Life church in Torrance. "The Vineyard is a good ministry and (Coombs) is a good man."

When Coombs left the Lunada Bay church in 1993, he knew it was time to go. His time was being taken up with traveling back and forth to Eastern Europe, fighting international immigration laws and finding American homes for Romanian children.

To some, he was a hero. But his maverick style caught the eye of the U.S. State Department, which questioned Coombs' adoption methods. Altogether, his international relief effort was complex, heady and all-consuming.

"At one time, all my energy was on building the church, and then I felt within myself that my focus shifted," he said. "I knew I needed to leave."

2 children adopted

Coombs' overseas adoption struggles led him to a similar battle closer to home that left him and his wife, Jan, with a $300,000 out-of-court settlement and two young adopted children of their own. The Coombs also have two grown children.

The county Board of Supervisors awarded $300,000 to the Coombses last spring to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit they filed. The couple charged that county social workers discriminated against the couple by trying to prevent them from adopting Adam and Ebony, both black.

"I can remember lying in bed, crying," Coombs said, his chin quivering and his eyes filling with tears at the memory. "There were times it seemed like it was utterly hopeless. I had never felt such utter despair."

Dressed from head to toe in black with a steel-gray crew cut and tinted glasses, Coombs acknowledges that his departure from the Lunada Bay church created hard feelings among some of his parishioners, who accused him of abandoning them. His free time already was limited, yet Coombs began spending weekends away from his own church to help start one in Toronto.

Meanwhile, membership in the Lunada Bay congregation dropped by about half, falling from its high point in the late 1980s when it peaked at about 400. The pastor has blamed at least part of the membership falloff on the recession of the early 1990s.

When he finally resigned in 1993, Coombs left the dwindling church in the hands of assistant pastor John Prassas.

"A lot of people thought it was God's will that (Coombs) continue in the church," said Sandi Kliss, a Rancho Palos Verdes resident who attended the Lunada Bay church for five or six years. "He became an outcast, and I felt the supporters of the church let him down. I think the curious will come back to see if there's any change in (Coombs') heart. And if it is God's will that he re-open his church, God will bring the people."

Coombs' supporters urged him to return; at first blush, he recoiled. He vividly remembers a telephone call 3 1/2 years ago from one former parishioner.

"I said, `Oh, no, I don't want to do that,' " Coombs said. "When I left the pastorate, I swore I'd never go back. I had a lot of bad experiences, a lot of emotional struggles and a lot of people who let me down. But people kept saying that my calling is in pastoring. I started giving it consideration and praying about it. And about four or five months ago, I had peace about it."

Still mystified

He may be a man of the cloth, but Coombs said he was hurt and mystified that some of his parishioners turned on him. So, too, was his wife, who Coombs said is cautiously supportive of his decision to return to Lunada Bay.

To this day, they both question those parishioners who did not support Coombs' overseas work and wonder why they did not get involved. But the pastor blames himself himself for not finding a way to make that happen.

"I goofed," he said. "Whatever I did, I didn't make the church part of it. I think it was a mistake on my part. But I thought the church would take ownership of it. I still don't know why it didn't happen."

Nowadays, Coombs himself takes more of a supportive role with the Adam Children's Fund. The group changed its goals in 1997; instead of coordinating adoptions, the group flies sick and disfigured children from Eastern Europe to the United States for medical treatment.

Coombs talks proudly, for example, of a Russian boy born without ears who was brought by the Adam Children's Fund to a San Diego hospital, where he is undergoing a series of surgeries. And a doctor in Romania has asked Coombs to help start a hospital there.

The pastor is not exactly slowing down, but said he hopes things will be different this time.