In 1991, when Chele Roland was a college student, regular customers at the diner where she worked persuaded her to come to the Los Angeles International Church of Christ, a protestant evangelical church with a handful of locations in the greater L.A. area. “I was always a seeker and a do-gooder,” she says. “They made me feel like God himself had sought me out, and I was going to help them change the world.” The same day she first attended a service with them at the Wiltern Theater, she learned her father had died unexpectedly.