Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 4, 1993 TAG: 9302040329
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE SPIRIT MOVES HER IN WAYS NOT SO MYSTERIOUS
In her 15 years as associate pastor of Deliverance Church Ministries, the Rev. Kathy O'Keeffe has seen some divisive attitudes washed away by the power of the Holy Spirit.O'Keeffe, a white associate pastor of a predominantly black church, says if a person feels truly loved by Christ, he or she "cannot tolerate racism."
Her theology bridges more than color as she directs a choir of black children for a Roanoke Christian weekly TV show. Her glowing enthusiasm for a God she feels ever present comes through as she relates how the Spirit led her, a Hollins College graduate from a privileged background, to the charismatic Christian church on a Northwest Roanoke hill.
It seems hardly a struggle any more for this woman of 43 who was theologically trained and ordained by her black congregation.
At Deliverance Church she works closely with the Rev. Lorraine Sample Alston, who started the fellowship more than 20 years ago. O'Keeffe and Alston both preach, counsel and administer the work of about 80 active members.
In addition, O'Keeffe is the self-taught choir director. She studied piano as a child in Lynchburg and played briefly in a school band, but she gives most of the credit to "the incredibly talented people who make up the Deliverance choir." Its 22 members have sung in many Roanoke Valley churches, sometimes giving a presentation of black history music from the era of spirituals to contemporary Caribbean rhythms.
Many viewers of WEFC-TV have seen the choir and its director during the past eight years that they have been part of the format of the Evangel Foursquare Christian network.
Recently O'Keeffe shared in a program on "Racism and Spirituality" for the interfaith Roanoke Valley Ministers Conference. There, along with a Charlottesville black educator, Muriel Wiggins, the Roanoke pastor told the racially mixed clergy group that she had to lose some of her own control when she followed God's call to seek out Deliverance Church.
It was an unlikely thing, but God works that way, O'Keeffe said later in an interview in her study, which is adorned with pictures of people of both races.
The call came as she listened to a Saturday morning radio show carried over WTOY radio in 1977. O'Keeffe recalls that the three ministers - Alston among them - talked about God and race. The discussion, she said, left her with a profound sense of connection to God.
"I was ready for this experience. God always knows when our hearts are able to receive him," the pastor says now. She next went to a prayer and praise service at Deliverance Church, during which she even more clearly felt that God wanted her to be there.
"I was," she said, "really born again."
It didn't happen all at once, but Alston at that point in her ministry needed help at the church. The founding minister told the inquiring O'Keeffe that she, too, felt they should minister together.
O'Keeffe's presence has not resulted in a fully integrated congregation. Currently five white people, all from different households, are members. Sometimes, O'Keeffe said, there have been more. But the church is growing, especially with children. Its fellowship and education space on the lower level of the building is overcrowded, the pastor said.
Coming to Deliverance Church meant a far greater personal adjustment to black culture than she had dreamed, O'Keeffe told the clergy group.
"I had to go to God, experience his love, to gradually feel at home among people of such a different background."
Her own life had begun in Tazewell though her family soon moved with her father's job to an Ohio town. In mid-childhood, O'Keeffe returned to Virginia and spent her next years in Lynchburg. Her mother and a lawyer brother still live there.
At Hollins College in the late 1960s, she was caught up in anti-war protests and other concerns of idealistic young adults of that time, O'Keeffe said.
Religion wasn't one of her interests even though "I respected [the Rev. Alvord]Beardslee around the chapel when I was Student Government president."
Today, she and Beardslee, retiring this year, are good friends. He was "pretty amazed," O'Keeffe recalls, "when he saw what the Spirit had done for me."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***