TEMPLE, CHURCH SHARE COMMON GROUND.

Byline: Harrison Sheppard Staff Writer

When a gunman sprayed bullets through the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Center last week, wounding five people, the Episcopal church next door was ready to help. But that was no surprise - the church has been working literally side-by-side with its Jewish neighbors for years now.

Despite their conflicting beliefs, the St. Andrew & St. Charles Episcopal Church and the Reform synagogue Temple Beth Torah have shared the same sanctuary and meeting space for almost a decade. Christian masses and Jewish Sabbath services are held in the same room at different times. To prepare, they simply take the cross down and put up a Torah.

With such a close relationship, the shootings especially hit home for church members, even though it was targeted at Jews.

``We're neighbors in a very close sense,'' noted church member Carol Sherwood of Granada Hills. ``I was glad the church was here to be open for them. We consider ourselves part of the same community and we're glad we could be there for part of the healing.''

The sanctuary inside the church ended up as a literal sanctuary to the children fleeing the violent scene Tuesday, waiting to be reunited with their parents.

Parish administrator Marv Simmons noted that church officials tried to speak to as many media representatives as they could ``to let the world know the Christian community here was 100 percent behind the community center.''

But at the same time, the Rev. Jim Seipel was worried that congregants would similarly be more personally, emotionally affected by the shooting. In his Sunday service, he cautioned them not to let fear, anger and hatred into their hearts. By doing so, he said, they would become just as bad as Buford O'Neal Furrow Jr., the white supremacist who allegedly shot five people at the North Valley Jewish Community Center next to the church/synagogue.

Seipel, who was filling in for the church's regular pastor, who is on vacation, told the congregation that the worst enemy of God ``is hatred, and it is fear.''

``You can't live in fear,'' Seipel said. ``There is no tool that gives itself to evil more easily than fear. When you are in fear, you are one step away from anger, just as in anger, you are one step from danger.''