ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 19, 1996 TAG: 9609190099
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
Several months ago Kirk Lashley, coordinator of Southern Baptist outreach ministries in the Roanoke Valley Association, wrote in the association newsletter of his concern for children. Becoming a grandfather, he said, made him realize how vulnerable many babies like his grandson are to the transiency and violence of central-city life.
Speaking of his concern recently, Lashley said this realization spurred him to a new effort to get God-centered people involved in the problems of central-city Roanoke. He and other members of the Missions Development Council of the association's board are trying a new way to reach folk who won't go near a church.
Called Acts 2, the effort is the formation of small groups in homes like those referred to in the New Testament account of early Christianity. The groups, which will have no more than 15 regular attenders, will include Bible study, singable music and time for prayer and other expressions of care for those with special needs. Informality of the groups will make it possible for children as well as their elders to take part, Lashley said.
"We're not looking to build a church. We'll use homes, garages, barber shops or vacant stores for the meetings," said Lashley, the coordinator of work for about 70 Southern Baptist congregations.
To get the plan started, two students from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., spent 10 weeks this summer visiting homes in Old Southwest Roanoke. Joe Wood and Glenwood Moore were given directions not to collect data for future church membership, but to find out from residents what services a church group might provide. They heard about needs for child care, medical attention, transportation - as well as religious education for children.
About half, the seminarians found, said they would come at least once to a house church.
Before their training term in Roanoke was up, the two young men, with the help of a woman who had lived for years on Marshall Avenue, began a weekly evening meeting in her home. So far, about a dozen people have attended, an encouraging start, Lashley said.
"I was surprised at the depth of commitment and the willingness to share feelings of fear and frustration and hope. It seems people who came were aware that, even if they didn't know each other like people might in a smaller place, they were in it together."
Now that the students have gone, Lashley and his committee are exploring the possibility of a church taking on one or more groups in sponsorship. This sponsoring church - one that serves primarily an urban neighborhood would be a logical choice - would provide just enough trained lay leaders to encourage group members in their own study.
As a group grew too large for a living room, some of its members would leave it to start another cell. In this way, Lashley said, groups might spread from low-income central-city folk to a suburban neighborhood.
"The basics are the same. This plan has worked in other cities. It's as old as early Christianity itself. We're not typing people as poor, but just trying to be flexible for folks who are always moving their houses or relationships."
A full-time paid coordinator of the cell groups is another need, Lashley said. With a minimum of interference in the activities of the house groups, he or she would encourage new cells. The approach to ministry each cell takes would depend on the practices of its sponsoring congregation, he emphasized.
A pastor taking a central-city church must be prepared to work doubly hard and experience constant frustration, the coordinator said he tells men and women considering such calls. The payoff comes, he noted, in seeing lives changed for the better.
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