“We want to be a catalyst for change in the community,” Olsen said. “But looking at the congregation, I didn’t think we were ready for that.”
The Beacon gained 12 new members in the past year, according to church records, two of which were Olsen and his wife. Eight other people left the church during the same time frame.
Olsen hopes to give The Beacon a shot in the arm by joining forces with the hip Rock Harbor Church in Costa Mesa, which has a reputation for high-profile community involvement and attracting young people with its casual atmosphere.
The Beacon merged with Rock Harbor Sept. 2. Olsen hopes the partnership will help him and Beacon members learn a new way to do their churchly duties. Members of the Anaheim church make the roughly 20-minute commute three weeks out of the month to attend Sunday services at Rock Harbor. The Beacon has plans to re-launch at a new location in Orange in March.
“We just began to ask what it would look like for Rock Harbor to adopt a church for a season,” Rock Harbor Lead Pastor Todd Proctor said. “It was God’s idea, but Ric was the one who brought it to us.”
Olsen knows his church has the potential to make an impact in the community. When wildfires threatened houses in Anaheim Hills and Orange in March, Beacon members offered to open up their homes to people with respiratory problems and evacuees. The church began giving its members small annual grants last year from its budget to donate to a local charity of their choice. Plans for a community seminar on HIV/AIDS are underway. But Olsen wants to take The Beacon to a new level of community involvement.
“We want to be the church where people say things like, ‘That’s where you go when your marriage is in trouble,’” Olsen said.
