THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 16, 1995 TAG: 9504140009
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
The membership of Norfolk's Park Place United Methodist Church, as staff writer Mike Knepler reported on a recent Sunday, has dwindled from 2,600 in the 1960s to fewer than 600 in the 1990s. The church's middle-income whites died off or drifted away as formerly middle-class Park Place became a deteriorating settlement for low-income blacks.
Now, while ministering to its smaller congregation, Park Place United Methodist Church also shelters a half-dozen ministries designed to improve the life chances of neighborhood youths.
This is the season of Passover and Easter. Prophets of Judaism, the religious tradition within which Christianity's founder was reared, stressed generosity to the poor and tongue-lashed the rich who ignored the plight of the less fortunate. In preachment and practice, Jesus - the Savior whose Resurrection Christians celebrate again on this Easter day - expressed special concern for the poor, the outcast, the ill, the imprisoned, and he treasured children.
Park Place children are the focus of the day-care and before- and after-school enrichment, tutoring, summer-jobs, summer-camp and youth-support programs based at the church. The Park Place Academy Enrichment Program was the first activity to be housed there. Christ & St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Ghent, which recently established a Park Place mission church, is strongly involved in the tutoring, homework and jobs programs.
Aiding the poor is a fundamental duty of Christians and Jews. Locally, homeless men, women and children find food and safe haven during the cold months inside churches and temples participating in the all-volunteer NEST network. There are similar arrangements for the homeless, though never enough, in other places.
Caring about and for others is the great imperative at the core of great religions. Countless people in material and spiritual want have been, are and will be helped along life's way by countless believers' gifts of time, talent and treasure.
Ronald Reagan once suggested that every house of worship in America ``adopt'' a needy family. That hasn't happened, but it is a worthwhile ideal, and Mississippi, where there are 5,000 churches, officially encourages the practice.
Demographic change cost Park Place United Methodist Church - as it has many inner-city churches - much of its membership. Some churches in such settings have withered and died. But Park Place United Methodist is now a lively center serving the surrounding population as well as its traditional one, and the adaptation becomes it. by CNB