Faith communities in the footprint of the Palisades and Eaton fires will wake up Easter Sunday still facing trials with Biblical overtones: members who lost homes or remain displaced now live far from their churches, if those houses of worship still stand. Congregations who continue to gather do so in new venues, or ones damaged in the fires.

All are tackling the financial and emotional costs of repairing and rebuilding what’s been scarred, including the spirits of their brethren.

The message of the Christ, believers say, is so much more “us” this year, bruising and human.

Palisades Community United Methodist Church Pastor John Shaver, his wife, and their two daughters, moved to the Pacific Palisades after spending around 10 years in San Diego.

Living in the coastal town for just six months, Shaver never imagined his church or home would burn, but both were lost.

In the months since, Shaver has been working with a relief group the church formed to support their community, spiritually and materially and worshipping first on Zoom and then at other congregations, backyards of members and even a restaurant in Sawtelle.

Shaver has been working through his family’s loss of their home as well as the loss of the church, as he splits his time between Venice to be near the church and much of the now somewhat diasporic congregation and Thousand Oaks with his in-laws.

“As I look at the Bible, and I see that God has so many metaphors and symbols for parts of life… I try to look at things in a way that’s going to be somewhat therapeutic or helpful, so I have tried to stay away from the imagery of fire or flames,” Shaver said.

For Ash Wednesday, he stuck with “water being that place where we find that renewal.”

His sermon instead focused on Matthew 17:20, a Bible verse emphasizing the power of even the smallest bit of faith, the size of a mustard seed, can have to carry one through difficult circumstances.

“Hold on to that mustard seed,” Shaver said.

As Easter nears, Shaver is looking toward a sense of renewal, illustrated by the greenery he sees beginning to grow in the scorched hills of the Palisades.

“We are moving from, what I’ve called these last three months, a survival period, into what we hope is a period of renewal,” Shaver said.

On Good Friday, Palisades Community UMC members took part in a cross walk, from the remains of their church, down to the bluffs.

Returning to the site of the church feels right for Shaver, to walk through the town that the church has so much history in. The Palisades community UMC is known as the church that built a town. It was one of the first structures built in the Palisades, in 1922, following Methodist chautauquas, a form of traveling community education, and camps had been held in Temescal Canyon for years. The Alphabet Streets neighborhood in the Palisades was founded by the Methodist church and the streets are named after Methodist ministers.

“I thought of the name of the street we love, Via De La Paz, the way of peace,” Shaver said.

As they walked from the church, to the bluffs and come to see the ocean and the sun, he hoped that people would be reminded of the good things that are yet to come.

“How can we free ourselves from some of that hurt and pain we’ve been through over the past few months?” Shaver said. “For those of us who lost our homes and lost everything, though we can see that there is this renewal, when you see your home still covered and buried, we don’t quite know what that is.”

On Easter Sunday, congregants will place flowers on a cross. An Easter flower cross has been a longtime tradition for the church, and though in the aftermath of the fire, with Holy Week looking incredibly different, this is one tradition they will not have to let go of this year.

They have asked contractors to save part of the wall that survived the fire to create a new wall, to remember the original church as they rebuild, “our own Wailing Wall, if you will,” he said, referencing the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

He is encouraging vulnerability and for families to assess if they should go back to the fire site, or if it is too soon for some. Good Friday and Easter Sunday will be the first formal gatherings at the church site since the fire.

“I know some people may not want to and may not be ready… but I know others that have asked, can we go back?” Shaver said. “I do feel right now, that when people come to the church, when they know I’ve gone through the same thing, it does create some kind of solidarity with them.”

‘Altadena will rise again’

For Pastor G. LaKeith Kenebrew of Hillside Tabernacle City of Faith in Altadena and what is left of his 120-member congregation, Easter looks nothing like last year. The 58-year-old church is celebrating the holiday in their temporary church, a TV studio in Duarte.

“It’s as if we’re back in COVID, because we’re mostly online and have limited space,” Kenebrew said. “We were on the main path of the fire and its fury, losing our family life center, storage unit, carport, and all its contents. We as a church family are striving to restore our main sanctuary from burn scars so we can return home and restore some sense of normalcy.”

Five Hillside families lost their homes, and 15 remain displaced. Eight have departed the church and renters are establishing their lives elsewhere, unable to find housing nearby, Kenebrew said.

“We are a people that’s been ravaged,” he added. “However, I still believe that we are victorious as believers living abundantly, loving unconditionally and enjoying our liberty. Altadena will rise again.”

Altadena Rising is a theme the Rev. Tom Eggebeen, 73, interim pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Altadena, witnesses every day. Three congregations call its campus home, including LIFT International Church and Altadena Community Church members.

The Rev. Tom Eggebeen, interim pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, poses in the main chapel of the Pasadena church on Thursday, April 17, 2025. Rev. Eggebeen invited the Altadena Community Church, which was destroyed in the Eaton fire, to share their space. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

But with the Altadena Rotary Club also meeting there, joining many support groups and community groups, Eggebeen good-naturedly says Westminster can seem like Grand Central Station at times. Parking on Sundays can test even a saint, or those working to be one.

“There’s no need to be anything but real,” Eggebeen said. “I hope that Easter touches the deep places of hurt and loss. There is no promise of a quick fix or ‘all will be well next week.’ It’s going to be a long, long road, but together, we can do it. It’s okay to be sad, and glad will come in its own way and time.”

Michael Okamura, 63, and his fellow parishioners from Altadena Community Church see the ruins of their 78-year-old Spanish Revival church, with its graceful arched entrance still standing, every time they go to Westminster.

The Altadena Community Church facade still stands three months after the Eaton fire ripped through the community of Altadena on Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Two days after Pastor Paul Tellström, 69, announced his retirement, the Eaton Fire destroyed the United Church of Christ church, one of the first in the nation to declare its support for LGBTQ people.

Unsettled in more ways than one, the community, including 15 who lost their homes, don’t know what their Easter celebration will look like. Will the small but mighty chancel choir bring out their usual extravagant production? Will they be able to “flower the cross” when guests bring blooms up and create a colorful display? Okamura said the cross, along with the church’s Casavant Freres pipe organ, is gone too.

The hierarchy of the United Church of Christ is accelerating its search for ACC’s new pastor, sensitive to the group’s need to find a shepherd to help them decide what kind of church they want to become and what type of structure to rebuild, and not just for its loyal but aging population.

“We have a golden and unique opportunity to reinvent ACC at this time,” Okamura said.

For Pastor Anthony McFarland and his wife Micheline, the loss of their Altadena home of 32 years means no hosting family for a full layout of a feast after Easter service. The founders of LIFT International Church will be going to their daughter’s home instead.

The Eaton fire also took LIFT’s church building of 15 years, from which they moved barely two months before the fire. McFarland, who has taken to wearing a t-shirt proclaiming “Altadena Not For Sale” as well as a white cap that reads “Make Altadena Great Again!” this first Easter lays bare a word richer in meaning.

“When we say that word ‘hope,’ we’re talking hope wrapped up in so much love, God will help us as a community recovers because he loves us,” McFarland said. “This isn’t wishful thinking. It’s unwavering trust we can place in God to rebuild our lives, revive us, and restore us so we can be a community again, understanding that nothing will ever be like it was before.”

Pastor Anthony Mc Farland from Lift International speaks during an Altadena Not for Sale rally in Altadena on Saturday, March 29, 2025. (Photo by Libby Cline-Birmingham, Contributing Photographer)

LIFT, Living In Faith Together, is throwing an Easter party for its children, with bubbles and games, an effort to bring normalcy and fun to its youngest members.

The Rev. Febin Barose belongs to a religious order focused on the Passion, the suffering and death of Christ. The morning of Jan. 8, the director at Mater Dolorosa Passionist Retreat Center in Sierra Madre remembers seeing a deer grazing on a small patch of green grass spared by the flames.

“That image gave me a new definition of hope,” Barose said. “Hope is the ability to see and believe in the goodness of God that never runs out or fades, even in the midst of devastation.”

While reopened, Mater Dolorosa still needs to rebuild damaged portions of its main building, and on Good Friday, thousands of pilgrims to its famed gardens saw scorched trees and other signs of the conflagration.

“Easter, at its heart, offers us healing and hope not shallow optimism, but deep-rooted faith in the One who overcame suffering and death,” Barose said. He and his fellow priests lived in hotels and bunked in other parishes after the fire, evacuating once more when mudslides threatened the center.

“The wildfire has presented us with one of the most challenging moments in the history of Southern California,” Barose said. “In the span of a single evening, our beloved homes, belongings, and sacred grounds were devastated. It will take time to recover physically, emotionally, and spiritually.”

Fr. Gilbert Guzmán, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Altadena, said church pews remain full at Sunday Mass, with some parishioners commuting from far away.

While the church was closed for three weeks after Jan. 7, St. Andrew Church in Pasadena opened its doors to the parish. For the first time, Sacred Heart’s English, Spanish and Vietnamese-speaking communities gathered together at the same time.

“That first Sunday Mass after the fires we marveled at how beautiful it was for all of us as diverse as we are to be able to occupy the same space and worship together. We stayed after Mass for over an hour, united in our recent suffering we comforted each other with our stories and many hugs,” Guzmán said.

Deacon Jose Diaz speaks about the night he helped save the church from burning during the Eaton fire. He and his son as well as two other men hosed down part of the wooden roof near the church’s boiler room. They stayed until the fire was out at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Altadena on Wednesday, March 5, 2025. (Photo by Keith Birmingham, Orange County Register/ SCNG)

The mountain of trouble people still face, the losses and paperwork and regulations, are matched by the kindness and generosity Altadenans have shown even before the fire erupted in the San Gabriels.

“What was perceived as a miserable and hopeless death on the cross became the means by which God saved humanity,” Guzmán said. “By this we know that no matter what circumstances might befall us, we who have shared in the suffering of Christ are sharers as well in His resurrection.”

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