Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 7, 1993 TAG: 9303050086
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
WESLEYANS CREATE CLOSE-KNIT COMMUNITY
When the Rev. Jim Cochran arrived in Radford for his first pastorate nearly seven years ago, he decided "God must have put me here."He had grown up in Michigan and worked as an engineer for General Motors before entering Asbury Theological Seminary. Upon graduation he found no pulpits open in his home area, but his family had come from Southwest Virginia and he had some connections with the Rev. Dale Reynolds, who administers Wesleyan Church work in Virginia.
Radford Wesleyan Church needed a pastor, and Cochran and his young family found a place of service. Now - though the church has not grown as much as he'd have liked and suffers from its location at Radford University's back door - Cochran said he is grateful "to be able to stay in one place."
Radford Wesleyan, he said after the service Sunday, is pretty typical of congregations of the denomination. It's small, with 52 people considered active; they, said the pastor, have formally agreed to follow a set of disciplines intended to promote holiness in the Christian believer.
Tithing - the giving of one-tenth of one's income to the Lord - is "strongly encouraged," but Cochran said he hasn't put anyone out of the church because they don't conform to everything.
Wesleyans are conservative in their outlook on Christianity. Known as Wesleyan Methodists before 1968, they became plain Wesleyans that year when they merged nationally with the Pilgrim Holiness group.
They are followers of some of the tenets of John Wesley, the 18th century Englishman who lived by a combination of warm faith in God's free grace and a strong sense that Christians should behave differently from people who do not take the Lord seriously.
Nearly 150 years ago, objections to bishops and to slavery took the Wesleyan Methodists out of the mainstream of their denomination. Today the only connection they have with the much larger United Methodist group is their respect for some of Wesley's ideas.
When the national merger of Pilgrim Holiness and Wesleyan Methodists took place, it was unusually convenient for the denominations in Radford, for their houses of worship were nearly in sight of each other.
Marion Sheckler became a Wesleyan Methodist in 1966 and remembers when the Pilgrim Holiness folk came down the hill for their first service together in what was then a new Wesleyan building at Clement Street and Third Avenue. Today the bonds of kinship are strong, she said.
Sheckler played the piano and led the singing in a strong soprano last Sunday. The only other special music was a solo with a theme on the sacrifice of Jesus. It was performed by Bobby McGuire. His cousin, Danny McGuire, led congregational singing in the absence of Sheckler's husband, who was ill.
That's the way things go at Radford Wesleyan, said Cochran. Most of the members not only know each other well, but many are related. Some of the 14 children who were cared for in the large room beneath the worship area had grandparents participating in worship on the main floor.
Cochran, 36, spotted me as a sojourner as soon as I entered. At 10:50 a.m. the tiny entrance, on which the rest rooms open, was filled with people waiting for the adult Sunday school class to leave the church.
Some of the children had been in the white house next door, which used to be a parsonage but now is used for fellowship and education. The church has been buying a better house for Cochran and until it is paid for there's no chance, he said, of relocating.
He'd like more parking space, more distance from the university students who were having snowball battles in the street as some worshipers entered, and facilities for those in wheelchairs.
Meanwhile, the community cares for itself, with a few taking part in Radford's service ministries such as the Daily Bread meal program.
Cochran promotes such activities as the Ladies Retreat in Williamsburg and encourages his people to support Young Life, the Christian social organization for high-school students. In his five-minute pastoral prayer, his knowledge of his people and denomination was evident; the sick were not only mentioned by name, but specific requests were made on their behalf.
Radford Wesleyan is reaching out to the international needy through its pastor. Cochran, accompanied by the Revs. Ricardo Rodrigues and Flavy Brown of Vinton, is in Haiti now, preaching and teaching national pastors some new ways of proclaiming the Gospel.
The doctrine of free grace - God requires no work from any Christian to win his love - was the theme of Cochran's 25-minute sermon from John 3:16. He called the familiar verse "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son . . . " the heart of the Gospel.
Worshipers took from racks in their unpadded pews copies of the New International Verson of the Bible to follow their pastor's several references to God's love. God wasn't stingy with that love, Cochran asserted, and could have found an easier way to assure salvation than to allow his only son to be crucified.
"God gave gladly, because he was the only one who could meet our need."
Though Lent was not mentioned, the Radford Wesleyans are joining others of their denomination in the 40-day period of prayer and fasting that began on Ash Wednesday. Thursday they will enter into a 24-hour period in which participants will agree to pray for national, community and church needs in a rotation of a half-hour each.
At Radford Wesleyan, most music is sung during the first half of the service, with both an evangelical Christian hymnal and a paperback praise song book used. A Charles Wesley hymn was among the several Sheckler accompanied, and "Amazing Grace," keyed to Cochran's sermon, brought out a strong response.
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.