Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507150011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
All around the valley, churches went about their business as usual. Same old hymns. Same old preacher. Same old language.
But in two houses of worship, in different parts of town, men were being ordained to the Christian ministry with words that the thousands who went to church elsewhere probably would not have understood.
At 11 a.m., Castin Mesadieu translated his ordination service into the French-influenced Creole language of Haiti for members of the Haitian Baptist Mission, which meets at Ridgewood Baptist Church.
At 4 p.m., members of the Korean Baptist Church of Roanoke, meeting in the chapel of Grandin Court Baptist Church, ordained Seung In Jung, a recent graduate of Liberty Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, in a Korean-language service.
Most of us probably don't think of Roanoke as being exactly cosmopolitan, but spending a day watching two vibrant congregations made up almost entirely of people who speak a language other than English can give the place an international flavor.
There is a diversity in our community that is evident all around us if we will only look and see.
The Korean Baptist Church - which has close ties to Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg and his Liberty Theological Seminary - draws 50 member families from Blacksburg to Lynchburg.
More than 100 people packed the chapel for the ordination ceremony. Two brief portions of the service were given in English by professors from Liberty Seminary. The Rev. Daniel Kim, who presided over the service, translated those portions into Korean afterward.
The Haitian ceremony was a joint service of the Ridgewood Baptist English-speaking congregation and the Creole-speaking Haitian Mission congregation. There, the service was conducted in English but with simultaneous translation into Creole by Mesadieu.
Though the congregation has been in existence less than a year, more than 100 different Haitian immigrants have participated in its services. Considering there are only about 200 such immigrants in the valley, that is an impressive evangelization effort, the Rev. Kirk Lashley pointed out. Lashley, executive director of the Roanoke Valley Association of Southern Baptists, preached the ordination sermon for Mesadieu.
Watching the little cultural differences in the expressions of Christian worship serve as a reminder of diversity in a faith we may sometimes see as homogenous.
Where one service is relatively noisy, another is very quiet. One included gifts for the new pastor, the other did not. One included lengthy admonitions to both the newly ordained minister and his flock about their Christian responsibilities, the other had shorter "charges." One lasted two hours, the other half that long.
In the last several decades, Christians have gotten a lot better at focusing on their similarities rather than their differences. A lot of people, pollsters say, don't care so much anymore about the name of the denomination they join.
While that may be a positive development, we shouldn't forget the benefits of denominationalism either.
Both the Haitian and Korean congregations who ordained ministers are Baptist. But one is Southern Baptist and the other is not. There are theological differences - to an outsider, slight; to an insider, important - between the two. Their differences are even greater with Methodists, Episcopalians or Catholics.
Pastors often talk of finding a church "home." It's an apt analogy. Affiliating oneself with a religious congregation seems most beneficial when members care about each other as well as about doctrine. Having so many denominations and congregations helps ensure that there are such places for almost anybody who calls himself or herself "Christian."
Getting out to see two congregations with so much - and so little - in common was enough to give one hope in the church again; hope that it can be relevant to believers whatever their denomination, their color, their culture, or their community.
by CNB