The Place to Pray

     Show us the steeples.
      Most residents have heard the claim: Las Vegas has more churches per capita than any other city. But where's the proof?
      Documentation to support the oft-repeated claim is elusive. Statistics are slippery, and can yield a variety of per-capita counts.
      More tricky yet is figuring out why Las Vegans love to brag about their churches.
      "I've never lived anyplace
     that didn't claim to have more churches" than everywhere else, said Donald Carns, categorizing the claim as a common expression of civic pride.
      Carns is a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He teaches about the sociology of religion and conducts regular surveys involving local demographics.
      Depending on which total is used, the ratio for Clark County ranges from 1 church per 1,700 residents to 1 church per 3,455 residents.
      One published count of churches appears in the relocation guide distributed by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce.
      "Las Vegas has more churches per capita than most major cities," reads a line from its 1996 edition.
      But Darla Pierce, of the chamber's communications department, said the church count may be dropped from future editions because of concerns about accuracy.
      According to the chamber's guide, the community has 586 houses of worship. That yields a ratio of 1 church, synagogue or mosque for every 1,910 county residents, based on a July 1996 population of 1,119,708.
      The rosiest ratio is mentioned in a publication called "Experience Las Vegas," which says, "The Las Vegas metro area has 1 church or synagogue for every 1,700 residents."
      Even at that, the city comes nowhere near the most churches per capita record. "By comparison, Memphis, Tenn., has 1 church for every 875 residents," according to "Experience Las Vegas."
      The 1996 publication adds, "Where the `most churches per capita' legend came from is hard to say, but statistically (it) has never been true."
      City Experience Publishing Inc., which produced the book, no longer has a working telephone number and could not be contacted to explain its data.
      The ratio is 1 church per 3,455 residents based on data from the county assessor's office, which has records of 324 sites of worship in Clark County in the current fiscal year. The assessor's figure is admittedly low. It counts only property owned by religious groups that is used for worship services. Excluded are groups that worship in leased space or private homes.
      Sin City or Church City? Which is it?
      The churches-aplenty legend may have grown to "counter the image ... projected in the media that (Las Vegas) is Sin City, and all it is is the Strip," suggested Bishop Daniel Walsh of the Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas.
      "That's very good marketing," said the Rev. Peter Wagner, a professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary.
      "The way I'd process it is, Las Vegas wants to balance its public reputation as being a nice city where we have churches, where we don't just have the Mafia and gambling," said Wagner, who teaches at Fuller campuses in Colorado and California.
      The claim is a way to "manage what psychologists call dissonance," or two opposing realities, according to Carns. By touting the city's churches, Las Vegans can use an aspect of the community that promotes family life to offset its major industry, which promotes adult recreation and gratification.
      "I think part of it is the fact Las Vegas has a deep insecurity problem about its image," said Frank Beckwith, formerly a philosophy instructor at UNLV, now a faculty member at Whittier College in California.
      "Perhaps it needs more forgiveness, so there are more churches," quipped Beckwith, who grew up here.
      Some of the counts to bolster the claim may include wedding chapels, which are for-profit businesses rather than not-for-profit houses of worship. Several religious leaders contacted said they suspect the chapel factor may have led to the myth of abundant churches.
      Availability of churches might fall in the realm of quality-of-life indicators, said Jeff Hardcastle, a senior planner for Clark County's Comprehensive Planning Department.
      "There's a lot of interest in quality-of-life indicators," he explained. "You get into the idea of levels of services: community centers, parks. ... Part of it is what a community as a whole values -- if it values community outreach, support for the less fortunate" -- which are the kind of programs that churches frequently offer.
      Whatever the precise count of churches in Clark County -- or the reasons to publicize them -- religious leaders agree the valley's inventory keeps growing to keep up with the bulging population.
      There are now 14 Jewish congregations in Clark County. At least half of them were started since 1990, noted Joshua Abbey, program director for the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas.
      In the same period, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also has been busy building -- and adding new wards, or parishes, to existing worship centers.
      According to Ashley Hall, an LDS church spokesman, there are now approximately 85,000 church members in the county vs. about 74,000 at the turn of the decade.
      "We're always behind the power curve on getting enough buildings built to support our growth," he said.
      The Catholic Diocese of Las Vegas has built 10 new churches since the start of the decade, according to the bishop. Seven were expansions for existing parishes. Three were new parishes.
      Great growth is also occurring in Protestant circles, both mainline denominations and independent congregations that are not allied with a specific denomination.
      Sometimes the growth is linked to urban sprawl.
      Canyon Ridge Christian Church on the northwest end of the valley is a sister congregation to Central Christian Church on the east end.
      Canyon Ridge holds several Sunday services at Cimarron-Memorial High School, with an average 1,600 total attendance.
      "There are some unique challenges in meeting in a building that's not ours," said the Rev. Kevin Odor. "Everything sits in trucks, and we come at 6 in the morning on Sunday and unload everything. We set up cribs, classrooms for children, and 750 chairs and sound and stage and lights -- and turn it into as much of a church as we can. Then we have services, and then put it back in a truck."
      When a church outgrows its building or follows its demographics to a different neighborhood, that move causes ripples in other congregations.
      Mountain View Lutheran Church, for example, recently sold its property on Decatur Boulevard near Charleston Boulevard to occupy new premises in Summerlin. Grace Evangelical Free Church, which had been renting, snapped up the vacated church.
      "Visibility is very good in a storefront," said the Rev. Bill Reed of Greater Grace Ministries of Las Vegas. He and his family moved here in 1991 -- sponsored by a parent church in Baltimore -- specifically to plant a church. Greater Grace of Las Vegas has outgrown two locations and is now scouting its third home.
      The frequent moves don't faze Reed, who characterizes his congregation as nondenominational: "It's a good thing. We evangelize the neighborhood we're in."
      Leasing a worship site is a standard strategy for new congregations, who don't know how large they will grow and lack the funds to build a permanent home.
      For a short period, Adat Ari El -- a Jewish congregation -- held services during off-hours at a Christian church. The prior tenant at its current rented storefront was a Methodist congregation.
      "We're inexpensive in our dues structure because our overhead is quite low," said Rabbi Gary Golbart, leader of Adat Ari El, which plans to build one day in the southwest valley.