Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 25, 1993 TAG: 9301250097
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BOONES MILL LENGTH: Long
`GOD DIDN'T WANT US THERE'
"IT SCARES ME to be comfortable," the minister said. So he, his wife, four of their children and his father-in-law have packed off to preach in Ukraine. They leave behind their spacious Franklin County farm in exchange for a cramped seventh-floor flat and a new adventure in Christianity.
As he did at the end of every service, the Rev. Rick Poland invited those who had made a decision to accept Christ as their savior to come forward as candidates for baptism and church membership.
He was surprised and delighted when his foster son walked down the aisle to make his "profession of faith."
Poland's joy evaporated, however, when the Franklin County congregation refused to grant the usual unanimous acceptance of the youngster's membership.
"They wanted to wait a couple of weeks before voting" on the first black to seek to join the small Baptist church, Poland said.
At a meeting afterward, "I told them he wasn't going to turn white in a couple of weeks," he said.
The incident turned out to be the final indication that "God didn't want us there," said Poland's wife, Sarah.
"I couldn't be the typical country pastor," Poland said. So he left the pulpit.
A year and a half later, the Polands say they hold no bitterness toward the church and that their overall experience there was positive. They worried that relating the story of the church's rejection of their foster son, who no longer lives with them, would unfairly taint the congregation; the church did welcome their adopted daughter, Stephani, a dark-skinned Guatemalan.
"But the truth's the truth," Rick Poland said.
Rick's wife, Sarah, now says they probably pushed that congregation too hard, too fast for change. After all, in their two years there, she and her husband changed, too, she said.
"It taught us, too, about trying to do things our own way - that we couldn't shove things down people's throats."
Now they are glad that what has never been a conventional ministry placed them in just the right position to be able to pull up roots and go to a country - Ukraine - that is begging for Christian witnesses.
Rick and Sarah Poland - he is from Northern Virginia, she from Franklin County - met in the late 1970s while they were "pretty wild" students at Emory & Henry College. They sometimes drank heavily and Rick was using "pot, speed, Quaaludes."
Rick had gotten one girl pregnant who later had an abortion, an act he now considers the equivalent of murder.
Both had been "brought up in the church" - Rick as a Presbyterian and Sarah as a United Methodist, but they say they didn't really appreciate or understand what they professed to believe. "I wasn't listening," Rick said.
"I'd go to church hung over" just about every Sunday at the United Methodist chapel on the college campus, Rick said. "In 4 1/2 years, I probably didn't miss eight Sundays."
Their lifestyles didn't change much until they married in 1983, Rick said, after which they "calmed down quite a bit."
They moved to Tidewater so Sarah could study physical therapy, and they joined Norfolk's First Baptist Church. It was there that both had a new Christian conversion and Rick decided to go to seminary.
Supported by Sarah's earnings as a physical therapist, they moved to Louisville, Ky., while Rick studied at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
That was where the family began to grow. They adopted three brothers who had been abused by their biological family and met Stephani while she was being treated for facial burns suffered when a flaming curtain fell into her crib in Guatemala.
Stephani's biological mother later became convinced her daughter couldn't receive the medical care she needed in her native country and agreed to give her up for adoption by the Polands.
It wasn't long before Sarah became pregnant with a daughter, Danielle.
After graduating from the seminary in 1988, it was back to Franklin County to settle down to a typical Southern Baptist pastorate. But things didn't work out that way.
Rick admits he didn't like or feel obliged to do some of the things pastors at small churches are supposed to do, such as knocking on the doors of backsliding church members and trying to talk them into filling the pews.
What he did like was going into the Franklin County jail and talking to inmates. Because he considers the abortion of his child to have been murder, Rick said, he can talk to a murderer and empathize with the feelings of guilt and the difficulty of accepting the forgiveness his Rick and Sarah Poland say his quitting his position with his congregation made it easier to face the financial insecurities of their missionary trip to Ukraine. religion teaches.
Some of the inmates joined his congregation, Rick said.
Rick and Sarah also concede that their "baptism of the Holy Spirit" and embrace of Pentecostal or charismatic Christianity may have put off some parishioners.
Pentecostals or charismatic Christians believe in the manifestation of the Holy Spirit through speaking in tongues, healing and other gifts. Most mainline and evangelical denominations, including most Southern Baptist churches, reject the modern manifestation of the gifts.
So while their foster son's rejection by the congregation in 1991 was the occasion for their split from the church, it wasn't the only reason, they said.
Nevertheless, it was a bad time to lose a job. Sarah already had given up her physical therapy job to educate one of her children at home.
But the Polands, who own their home and don't have a mortgage payment to make, say they've gotten along fine for the past year and a half on Rick's part-time job as a hospital chaplain.
In fact, they say, that experience made it easier to face the financial insecurities of their missionary trip, which is being sponsored by a North Carolina-based mission organization called Christian Believers United.
Christian Believers will pay part of the expenses, and the Polands' home church will be sending contributions as well.
The mission assignment officially lasts until August, when both the family and the church they're serving will have the opportunity to decide whether to extend the mission. The hospital is holding Rick's chaplaincy position until October if he wants to come back to it.
The Polands - Rick, 35; Sarah, 34; Corey, 12; Chris, 8; Stephani, 5; and Danielle, 3 - left the United States last week. They will live in the Ukrainian city of L'viv (pronounced le-VEEV and formerly spelled L'vov), where Rick will become the first full-time pastor of a young, 60-member evangelical church.
An older son, 21-year-old Ted, is staying in America.
Sarah's father, John Gruver, 75, also made the trip. He and his late wife once housed Ukrainian refugees in the United States after World War II, and almost 50 years ago they considered full-time missionary service in the Methodist Church.
Gruver is retired after 31 years as a teacher and principal in Franklin County.
The family will have to adapt to food lines, less fuel for heat, cleaning clothes on a washboard, sharing much smaller living quarters and home-schooling for all the children.
Rick admits to sometimes wondering how his children will hold up to the changes; how he and Sarah will bear up, as well.
But he doesn't think he can wait. "The doors are so wide open now. . . . I don't want to look back when I'm 50 and wish I had done this."
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