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Ron Wolfson and Lawrence Hoffman are spending their Sundays in "megachurches."

The two Jewish educators aren't interested in conversion, but rather in reviving synagogue life for the 21st century.

They contend that the same elements that keep Jews away from synagogues also keep Christians from church — mostly, a feeling of disconnectedness and a lack of relevance.

But a new American phenomenon, "megachurches" — as large as 15,000 strong, with an absence of canned committees and a focus on specific tasks, outreach and upbeat contemporary music — have bridged the religion gap for generation Xers and baby boomers alike.

Wolfson, director of the Whizin Center for the Jewish Future at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and Hoffman, a professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union College in New York, are hoping to create the same effects through Synagogue 2000.

A two-year national pilot program comprising 16 synagogues including congregations B'nai Shalom in Walnut Creek and Beth David in Saratoga, Synagogue 2000 is aimed at "respiritualizing the synagogue," Wolfson said.

The synagogue of the 21st century might include lower bimahs, modern music or rabbis conducting discussions from the sanctuary floor rather than issuing sermons from the pulpit — all which could make the synagogue experience both physically and emotionally more accessible. It will also certainly focus on prayer, study, community and healing, Wolfson says.

"We're living in a new world. The needs of people and of religion have gone through a change. And congregations need to find out how to respond to those changes," Freeman says. "We need to find how to best utilize our heritage and help people get through life."

Initial Synagogue 2000 congregations will focus their efforts on prayer and healing.

Each congregation will form a team of professional and lay leaders who will meet twice monthly for study and brainstorming. Funding from the Whizin Center, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Steven Spielberg Righteous Persons Foundation will pay for synagogues to implement their experimental programming.

In addition, each team will meet periodically with Wolfson and Hoffman, join other participants for a conference at Camp Ramah in Ojai and create a report on their findings, to be published on the World Wide Web.

"In our early discussions we realized prayer and healing are the two content areas needing the most attention," Wolfson says. "Prayer. People have no access to it. Healing. It's about spotlighting the Jewish tradition's ability to help those in pain. It's recognizing that not everyone who comes to synagogue is celebrating a happy occasion."

For Freeman, whose congregation will focus on prayer, the task ahead means grappling with questions like How does one connect with God? What is God? How do Jews connect with a liturgy that is ancient? What is prayer and how does one make it moving?

"Prayers are symbolic liturgy. But people can't connect to them. They don't know the prayers. People aren't interested to begin with. They've lost their redemptive quality. It's obligatory and memorization," Freeman says. "The communal function of prayer is extremely important. That people come to synagogue to see other people is fine, valid and authentic. But people are also looking for something else and they are largely disappointed.

"You can sing together and it's powerful. But the content has to filter through. It has to be efficacious if it's going to have meaning."

However, a lack of connection to prayer isn't the only problem plaguing synagogues, he added.

"Our congregations are a mixed bag of people whose only commonalty is their Jewishness. And even that isn't universal. How do we serve people with different needs and issues? What are our ethical obligations?" Freeman says. "Religion in general is going through a profound crisis. It's lost its way."

In addition to focusing on prayer and healing, Synagogue 2000 will address issues like creating a feeling of community beyond "call this committee if you're interested," and increasing social action. However, perhaps the most difficult obstacle to be tackled is institutional change.

"It's not an easy process. There are regular synagogue-goers who support the synagogue the way it is. But we need different responses to different needs," Wolfson says.

However, he points to multiple minyans, all-musical and layperson-led and services and the involvement of women in prayer as possibilities.

Wolfson acknowledges that Synagogue 2000's goals are lofty for a two-year project. However, he embraces "the luxury to say we want to envision the future.

"I fully anticipate some of the initiatives won't work. But we need to create a place that feels different," Wolfson says. "We need a place that has spiritual energy with people committed to a purpose of being there besides dropping off their kids at Sunday school — a place people will come for their own spiritual enrichment and not just to say kaddish or celebrate a bar mitzvah."