THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511170008
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
The numbers for the First Baptist Church of Norfolk are impressive. The church has 5,000 members, 11 pastors, a ``parking ministry'' of 10 people, an orchestra of 47 people and a choir of 342 people. The orchestra and choir performed across Europe in 1988. Any Sunday morning, the ``parking ministry'' supervises buses shuttling worshipers from parking lots to the three services at the church at 312 Kempsville Rd. First Baptist's 190th birthday celebration last month was attended by 3,400.
The church is hardly resting on its numbers. It plans to build a veritable complex near Greenbrier Mall, roughly doubling the church's space. Membership growth is projected at 10 percent annually for the rest of the decade. (Seven years' growth at that rate would all but double the church's size.)
Amid all the big numbers, a key church figure might be 30. That's how many new worshipers that Jane Beil, a church member for 65 years, tries to meet every year as she and other veteran members strive to keep the largest Southern Baptist Church in Virginia personal.
Staff writer Esther Diskin recently reported, ``The church has a simple approach. Everyone has something to contribute, and it's the church's job to help them find out what it is.''
Healthy churches like First Baptist Church of Norfolk, not to mention other places of worship, have contributed immeasurably to this nation, for only a moral people can be free. An amoral or immoral people will prey on one another till freedom's forgotten. Laws alone cannot render a people civil. Even the communist Soviet Union, in its waning years, noticed that religious citizens tended to be responsible workers; government suppression of religions was relaxed. Today, in a free Russia, religion flourishes, surely to the nation's benefit.
Ministering to members' spiritual needs obviously should be a church's first priority, and First Baptist Church of Norfolk does that. How else could it attract and hold members by the thousands - and still grow? But it does much more.
Among many things, the church has a large all-male group modeled on Promise Keepers, the national Christian men's movement that makes seven promises, the sixth of which is especially needed today: ``Reach beyond any racial and denominational barriers to demonstrate the power of biblical unity.'' The Rev. Robert Reccord, the church's senior pastor, lists racial healing as one of his church's goals.
Although a predominantly white church, all of whose 11 pastors are white, First Baptist grew out of a church led by Jacob Bishop, a black free man.
It's said that Sunday-morning church service is the most segregated hour of the week. If First Baptist Church of Norfolk and other places of worship can close the racial divide, they will add to an already long and distinguished record of service, without which this nation would be an entirely different and far worse place.
Happy 190th! by CNB