Double Coup For Foursquare

Shortly after founding Pastor Doug Murren left Eastside Foursquare Church in Bothell to concentrate on national evangelism projects, the Rev. Tom Ferguson called an old friend, the Rev. Jim Hayford, in Los Angeles.

As Northwest district supervisor of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, Ferguson had the job of finding Murren's successor. He set his sights high from the start.

Hayford was the denomination's national director of leadership development and church growth. His wife, Betsey, also a licensed minister, was editor of leadership-development publications for the church. His older brother, Jack, was in nearby Van Nuys, where he heads the widely known megachurch, the Church on the Way.

Ferguson figured Jim and Betsey Hayford might say no, but, then again, he knew from their years together as youth leaders in Southern California that Jim Hayford had the heart of a pastor: He loved to care and feed a congregation.

Within a week of the call in May, the Hayfords said yes.

"I said, `Good, we get to go back and be with people,' " said Betsey Hayford. For all the visibility of their national work for denominational headquarters, the Hayfords missed "the grass roots, where the people really are," she said.

A month after the Hayfords' arrival, members of Eastside Foursquare and the evangelical Christian community are realizing what a coup Ferguson pulled off.

"There are very few people who could come in and fill Doug's shoes, and I think Jim is doing great," said Gordon McIntosh, a founding member of Eastside and a member of its governing Church Council.

Betsey Hayford "is probably even more outgoing than Jim," McIntosh added.

Murren, who remains based on the Eastside, stepped down from the pulpit in May to concentrate on book writing and national evangelism crusades. In 17 years, he built the congregation from seven members meeting in his home to a huge church in Bothell that can draw more than 4,000 worshipers a weekend.

He did it with a blend of contemporary Christian music performed by a rock band, and practical, Bible-based sermons people could apply to their everyday lives. It was a combination that appealed to Murren's own baby-boom generation.

Hayford, 51, said he won't change Eastside's upbeat style of worship or the application-oriented messages he shares from the pulpit.

"We try to put a `handle' on every sermon so people can take it home and put it to work immediately," said Hayford. "My motivational gift is encouragement. My delivery style is conversational. It's low key, with humor. I am not a screamer."

Hayford will be the lead preacher at the Saturday evening and Sunday morning services. Betsey Hayford, who shares the position of co-senior pastor with her husband, will spend the next six months finishing up leadership and development projects for the denomination's Los Angeles headquarters. Then she hopes to help with Bible study at Eastside.

"She has a deep commitment to helping people study the Bible inductively (using the Bible as its own main reference, as opposed to using the Bible to prove one's own hypotheses). She is a Bible teacher in the purest sense," said Hayford.

Ferguson said it was fitting that Hayford's first Sunday in the pulpit was June 16, Father's Day.

"He really has a father's heart for people. He puts his arm around them, he really cares about them, he'll sit and listen and cry with them," Ferguson said.

Hayford's older brother, the Rev. Jack Hayford, well-known in the Puget Sound region as a speaker at the Promise Keepers men's conferences in the Kingdome and for his appearances on Christian television and radio stations, said he knew of no pastor "anywhere today that is more sensitive, responsible and effective in speaking to today's culture than my brother."

Jim Hayford, 10 years younger than his brother, is close enough to the baby-boom generation to relate to it, but old enough to have an edge in life's experiences, said Jack Hayford. Jim and Betsey have raised three children successfully, Jack noted. "They are sensitive to people's pain, but have also solved the problems they've faced," he said.

While Eastside Foursquare may have been perceived during Murren's tenure as a boomers' church, Jim Hayford said it really has been multi-generational.

"My desire is that this congregation will always reflect the socio-economic environment that it exists in. I'm interested in the church reaching out to everyone. I love senior citizens, children, (Generation) X'ers," he said.

Unable to suppress his fraternal pride, Jack Hayford said flatly, "Everyone ought to stand up and applaud he is in town."

The brothers can be forgiven their mutual admiration. Growing up in Oakland, Calif., Jim Hayford was awestruck by his high-achieving older brother. When Jim felt pulled toward the ministry, it was Jack who influenced him to attend the older Hayford's alma mater, LIFE Bible College of Los Angeles.

In fact, it was Jack that got the Hayford family involved in the Foursquare denomination to begin with.

Jack was born with a muscular condition in his neck that doctors said was irreversible and degenerative. One day, however, the condition improved.

His parents, who were living in Long Beach, Calif., were baffled. They later learned a cousin had called a Foursquare prayer line out of desperation and asked that the baby be prayed for. The parents, Jack and Dolores Hayford, began attending the local Foursquare Church.

When the family moved to Oakland, where the father worked as a switchman for Southern Pacific Railroad, the boys bypassed the small Foursquare church in their neighborhood and went instead to the larger Christian Missionary Alliance Church.

After Jack left for college, Jim switched to the Mission Covenant Church. Yet they never forgot how the Foursquare Church had prayed for Jack when he was a baby. In time, they went to work for the denomination.

Ironically, Jack Hayford was Betsey Hayford's youth pastor when she was growing up in Petoskey, Mich. She earned her bachelor's degree in pastoral care from the Foursquare LIFE Bible College in Los Angeles.

Eastside Foursquare Church will be Jim and Betsey Hayford's fourth pastorate. They previously pastored Foursquare congregations in Glendale, Danville and Santa Barbara, Calif. They founded Zion Fellowship in Danville about the same time Murren began Eastside Foursquare here and became friends and colleagues as their congregations underwent explosive growth.

The Foursquare Gospel denomination was founded in the early 1920s by the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. "Foursquare" was meant to convey something solidly-based, well-founded or firm. In church terms, it described the denomination's four beliefs, that Jesus Christ is the savior, healer, baptizer with the Holy Spirit, and returning King.

Eastside Foursquare Church is one of 350 Foursquare churches in the Northwest and 2,000 in the United States. The Northwest district covers Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Hawaii, and is headquartered in Everett.