Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 24, 1990 TAG: 9003242277
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
United Methodists of the Roanoke District are preparing for a Religion and Race Convocation open to the public and featuring the Covenant Players national religious drama group.
It will be April 21 at Locust Grove United Methodist Church on Locust Grove Lane in Salem. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the program will cost $5 for lunch and materials.
The Rev. William E. Olewiler, convener, said the program will bring together church people interested in promoting integration, the place in society where little is found. A breakdown exists, he said, between the brotherhood ideals most churches favor and practical inclusion on the grass roots levels.
For several years United Methodists of the Roanoke District have been meeting interracially in a small group. The convocation will try to expand this process.
Besides the players, the program will include a look at apartheid, discussion time and music by the Gospel Choir of Patrick Henry High School.
Registration is needed by April 16; call 389-0428 or 774-4730 for more information.
Seminary to open in '91
The Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, a proposed graduate school for clergy wanting a non-literalistic Scripture education, is expected to open in 1991.
Trustees of the school being promoted by the Southern Baptist Alliance recently decided more time and money is needed to launch the institution. Currently a development office is at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education; several denominations other than Southern Baptist are cooperating in the seminary's founding.
Adult center open
Martinsville's new Adult Day Care Center will be open for public inspection April 1 from 2 to 5 p.m. It is at 433 Commonwealth Blvd. Churches of the community are supplying volunteers and program help with the facility.
Pre-Easter services
Martinsville's ecumenical Pre-Easter services will be April 1-4 nightly at 7:30 at Starling Avenue Baptist Church. Sponsored by the Martinsville-Henry County Ministerial Association, they will feature the Rev. H. Lynn Stone of Cleveland, Tenn. He is coordinator of ministerial development for the Pentecostal branch of the Church of God.
Also part of the observance is a concert by Harbor, a music team of young adults who minister nationally from Nashville, Tenn. Harbor's concert will be March 30 at 7:30 p.m.
Pastor called
The membership of Wytheville Baptist Church has issued a call to the Rev. Barry Wayne Losey of Shreveport, La., to become its new pastor.
He will succeed the Rev. W. Wesley Huff who has taken a job as director of Eagle Eyrie, a state Baptist retreat and conference center near Lynchburg.
Losey, currently pastor of Hillendale Baptist Church in Woodbridge, holds a B.A. degree in speech from Louisiana College, and his master of divinity and Ph.D. in philosophy of religion from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife have two children. He will assume his new duties in mid-April.
Homosexuality debate
DETROIT - A debate about homosexuality and blessing of same-sex relationships surfaced at the recent convention of the Michigan Episcopal Diocese.
After Bishop Steward Wood made an emotional plea to priests to stop blessing such unions, he got a standing ovation, but some delegates charged he had demeaned homosexual members.
The Rev. Zalmon Sheron, an openly gay priest, said, "In asking me and other clergy to stop blessing same-sex unions, he has rendered countless lesbian and gay people in this diocese invisible."
However, the Rev. Richard Kim said, "I know we have to find new ways to minister but we cannot rewrite the Bible."
The issue also has smouldered widely in the church. - Associated Press
Gifts for hungry down
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Southern Baptist gifts for the hungry in 1989 dropped to the lowest point in five years, the denomination reports. Giving for domestic and foreign hunger totaled $7.9 million, down 12 percent from 1988. - Associated Press
Eastern churches strong
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - A Czech Protestant leader says Western evangelical groups planning to swarm into former communist countries apparently don't realize that churches remain strong there.
The Rev. Milan Opochensky, the Czech chief executive of the World Alliance of the Reformed Churches, said the church is "more dead" in some Western countries than in Eastern Europe.
"There are 278 parachurch groups sitting around the edge of all of Central and Eastern Europe waiting to rush in and save us from the evil of Marxism and offer us Christianity," he said.
"Don't they know the Christian church has survived under great difficulty behind the Iron Curtain? It has survived 70 years in the U.S.S.R. and 40 years in the Eastern Bloc nations." - Associated Press
by CNB