A former champion bodybuilder will give a lift to the March for Jesus in Monroe, Mich., next Saturday, but nobody was able to get the event off the ground in Toledo this year.

Dennis Tinerino, the winner of more than 100 bodybuilding titles who lost his Mr. Olympia crown to Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1980, said he will tell Monroe marchers that “the church is there to pray for people, help people, and love people.”

In Toledo, however, where the March for Jesus has drawn up to 22,000 participants, lingering problems and an apparent lack of interest have resulted in the march not being held for the first time since it started in 1993.

“The last few years, there was nothing but trouble,” said Jim Kachenmeister, a longtime member of the local steering committee. “It ran over budget, there was rain, poor turnouts, offerings were way down, and some people's personal finances were involved.”

Theresa Pelton, wife of March for Jesus USA founder Todd Pelton, said there has been a sharp drop-off in the number of marches this year, from 425 cities in 2000 to about 225 this year.

Part of the reason, Mrs. Pelton said from the group's national headquarters in Atlanta, was due to an article in Charisma, a Christian magazine, that erroneously proclaimed that the March for Jesus had been scheduled to end after the year 2000.

Another major factor for the decline, she said, was that people were looking for something new.

“We'd been marching for 10 years. People are tired of marching,” Mrs. Pelton said.

National organizers began to shift the focus away from the march itself, in which Christians of all denominations come together and walk through city streets holding banners and singing songs, to emphasize a full day's worth of evangelistic events they're calling “Jesus Day.”

Participation in the Toledo March for Jesus reached its peak in 1996 with 22,000 people, but the numbers had dropped to about 2,000 the last several years.

The budget for printing T-shirts and pamphlets, renting sound equipment, obtaining permits, and other expenses for the Toledo march had been as high as $20,000 but was cut back to $8,000 in recent years, Mr. Kachenmeister said.

The Rev. Bill Herzog, pastor of Vineyard Fellowship, and his wife, Barb, headed up the local effort for the first four years in Toledo.

“When Barb was doing it, she was working on the march full-time for almost five solid months,” Mr. Herzog said. “She always had a good team of people but it was a lot of work.”

Mrs. Pelton acknowledged that “in some cities, the march organizers are just worn out.”

In Monroe, Lisa and Tom Bowman have been busy organizing the city's fifth annual March for Jesus.

“In 1996, we went to Toledo, and then we brought it here in '97,” Mrs. Bowman said. “I work on this about four-to-six hours a day, Monday to Friday, for six to eight months a year.”

The first year, she told her husband that “if 10 people come, I'll be blessed!'” Much to their surprise, 750 people participated in Monroe's first March for Jesus. The event drew 800 the next two years and 650 in 2000.

More than 200 food baskets will be passed out to people in the neighborhood this year, and every child will receive goody bags. There also will be clowns, puppets, music, and displays by fire and law-enforcement officials.

Mr. Tinerino, 53, will speak after the 1.1-mile march, telling the audience how he went from being a world-class bodybuilder to a world-traveling evangelist.

“In 1979, I made a conversion or confession of faith,” Mr. Tinerino said from his office in Northridge, Calif. “I became a born-again Christian and started to see my life in a different perspective. It had been what I call “the unholy trinity - me, myself, and I.”

Having earned such prestigious titles as Mr. America in 1968, Mr. World in 1972, and and Mr. Universe in 1968, 1975, 1981, and 1982, Mr. Tinerino said he had been obsessed with weightlifting and when his career began to fade, he took a few wrong turns.

“I was living life in the fast lane and everything was out of balance,” he said. “I was involved in steroids. I was abusive to my wife. I got involved in many illegal activities. I was broke, busted, disgusted, and couldn't be trusted.”

He said he was arrested after running an illegal “escort service with 100 women” and, while on a work-release program, heard Pat Boone, the famous 1950s pop singer, give his Christian testimony. About the same time, several other people close to him began telling him about the love of Jesus and “I saw the light in them and the void in my life.”

The tough-talking Mr. Tinerino, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., became an ordained minister in 1981 and travels throughout the United States, Africa, Europe, and Asia. He continues to work out regularly even though he has retired from competitive bodybuilding.

“I know I'm a three-dimensional being, a spirit, soul, and body,” he said. “I know I should work out and stay fit, and with proper meditation on the Word of God it all goes together.”

He said he wants to tell people that “there is hope in Christ and no situation is impossible. What's impossible with man is possible with God.”

The Bowmans invite any Toledoans who want to march this year to join them in Monroe, where the March for Jesus will begin at the Arthur Lesow Community Center, 120 Eastchester, at 1 p.m. June 2. There also will be marches in Bryan, Ohio, starting at 9:30 a.m. at the MacDonald-Ruff Ice arena on Townline Road, and in Defiance, Ohio, starting at the downtown triangle at 9:30 a.m.

First Published May 26, 2001, 12:27 p.m.