Downtown church keeps the city’s mayhem at bay — one service at a time
South Hope Street is quiet on a Sunday morning. Five blocks over in Skid Row, police are investigating a shooting, but in the Financial District, calm prevails. Parking lots are nearly empty. Guests at the Sheraton are checking out early. The unhoused have mostly left their sidewalk beds, and Jeffrey Taylor and Deborah Johnson are preparing for church. With just a half hour before service, the husband-and-wife team fall into familiar routines: scanning the sidewalk and garden for wrappers, food scraps, clothing and needles, spraying deodorizer near the front door and hauling out the welcome sign, whose bottom line reads: … in this place will I give peace. The Third Church of Christ, Scientist of Los Angeles. Hope is a rare commodity on the struggling and hardened streets of downtown Los Angeles, and since 1910, Third Church of Christ, Scientist has extended this promise to passersby without interruption. Taylor and Johnson are not about to jeopardize that run. In a religion with no priests, they are the first and second readers, who conduct the weekly worship. A few minutes before noon — with two congregants