Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 30, 1994 TAG: 9401290016
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-9 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Added to 160 who came to the identical 8:45 a.m. service, they made a gratifying number for any pastor to address on a gloomy but warmer January Sunday.
"People are so glad to get out. . . . Maybe they just feel like praising the Lord," the Rev. Herbert Hobbs, pastor, observed as he finished greeting the stream of worshipers at the Church Street door.
I remembered Hobbs from his 18 years as chaplain at Ferrum College. Students, he said, have been in his life for most of his ministry.
When the 59-year-old pastor was finally rotated out of the Western Virginia mountains eight years ago, he went to Virginia Beach "to learn how to work with a real parish again." In 1992 he was assigned to what he regards as the best of both worlds, the big-town church with its members of all ages and a heritage going back more than 200 years, to the earliest days of Methodism in America.
Working in college communities has given Hobbs the chance to follow some contemporary forms of worship made possible by the 1989 hymnal with its many optional services. Last Sunday, for instance, a laywoman, Wanda Price, led the congregation in a reading with sung responses from the Book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha.
Hobbs gives his pastoral prayer toward the end of the service and calls it "a guided meditation." As he asks for prayers for the world, leaders, families and other concerns, worshipers in the red-padded pews have about 30 seconds between each petition to offer their private petitions and thanksgivings.
The hymnal and worship book also gave Hobbs the theme for his sermon last week. Touching lightly on the New Testament reading from I John about God being found where love is, the pastor preached the second in a series of messages on "God's Nature Revealed."
To do this, Hobbs is using a section of the hymnal which includes sacred songs covering God's mystery, unchanging nature, strength and power, nearness, sustaining comfort as well as love.
He mentioned hymns in which these attributes are emphasized and quoted several. Others, such as "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy" and "Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise," were sung by the congregation.
Methodists, Hobbs told the his people, have always liked to praise God through music, and the hymnal, which was extensively revised five years ago to be more inclusive of people and language, offers theology as well as melody.
The hymns grouped around "The Nature of God" reveal the awe and majesty of the Father Creator and the transcendence he commands in much of the Old Testament, Hobbs said. But it is in the New Testament in the person of Jesus that God is best understood as a human being who lives and acts in love.
Another contemporary note at the Methodist service was the offertory anthem. The Rev. Richard Bethune, a tenor soloist as well as one of the associate staff members, sang "A Simple Song" from the Leonard Bernstein "Mass." In a subdued Broadway rhythm the work praises God, using familiar language from the Psalms.
Bethune, whose wife, Virginia, has been organist at Blacksburg United Methodist for about five years, is the former minister of First Presbyterian Church of Pulaski. Upon his retirement from full-time ministry last year, he was invited to continue part-time service visiting members with Hobbs. He remains officially affiliated with the Presbyterian church.
Hobbs started worship with a cheerful greeting. Then a member invited the many students to come out for a Wesley Foundation supper for $2 and a project of making sandwiches for Super Bowl watchers. Gina Evans-Scudder, who directs the choir and teaches at Ferrum College, asked for new voices in her 20-member adult group.
The choir, which wears white robes trimmed in red, faces the congregation for anthems but sits in stalls behind the pulpit at other times. It presents an introit to open the service and a benediction to close it. Hobbs knew its director from his Ferrum days.
Both men and women received the offering midway through the service.
About 20 minutes into worship Hobbs presents a children's message for which a score or so were present Sunday. Measuring himself and several youngsters with a yardstick, the pastor at eye level told the children that Jesus gave to them the honor of being the most worthy for simplicity and honesty.
Students and other young adults abound at Blacksburg United Methodist. Much of their enthusiasm and fidelity comes from the years of work the Rev. Glenn Tyndall, the United Methodist campus chaplain, has put into keeping the church relevant in the lives of students who would otherwise leave it.
Some, said Hobbs, enjoy participating in parish programs, while others devote their religion time to the foundation. In any case, the work is complementary.
A long-range planning committee is studying the future of the parish, Hobbs told me after the service. The church occupies most of a block, but parking space in small lots and on the streets is scarcely adequate. The original Victorian building, once the Whisner Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, was built in 1906 and is used as fellowship space. The present church, cruciform and spacious but not air-conditioned when built in 1954, is uncomfortably full at times even with the early service, Hobbs noted.
The space also includes a 1965 education building with all the units joined by cloisters.
Does the Blacksburg area need another United Methodist Church, Hobbs and the committee asks? Nearby Christiansburg and Montgomery County are well supplied with smaller congregations, some served by the same pastor. Like the congregations of other denominations, Blacksburg churches tend to be more contemporary in flavor and welcoming to change, Hobbs points out.
Sunday Sojourner appears monthly in the New River Current. Its purpose is not to promote a particular point of view but to inform readers of a variety of worship styles.
by CNB