Los Angeles Dream Center
The Dream Center is a Pentecostal ministry and a significant provider of social outreach services in Los Angeles. The Dream Center includes over 200 ministry and outreach programs that reach more than 40,000 people each week. These programs serve children and families in need and the homeless, as well as discipleship and recovery programs for drug addicts and gang members. In addition, the Dream Center, which is associated with both the Assemblies of God and the Foursquare Gospel Church, operates a church from the Angelus Temple, where Aimee Semple McPherson’s ministry was originally located. CRCC’s project seeks to understand how the Dream Center embodies and expresses its religious ideals institutionally, through its many different programs, and also how those programs are experienced by participants, both workers and volunteers, and by those who are served by those programs. The project is funded by the Godly Love Initiative at the University of Akron, which is made possible with a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.