Church Leaders

After making emotional appeals for mercy while acknowledging responsibility for illegally bringing a dozen young people to the United States and forcing them to work at menial jobs, three leaders of a Woodbine church were sentenced to prison terms yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.The events leading to yesterday's action began in 1992, when organizers of the Word of Faith World Outreach church left Maryland for Estonia, a small country on the Baltic Sea.After delivering Bibles and preaching for several years, church leaders returned with young Estonians under religious and student visas.

HE WAS THE PERFECT candidate to lead a national panel scrutinizing the Roman Catholic church's response to the sexual abuse of children by its priests. Frank Keating was a tough former prosecutor, a governor with a national profile, a devout Catholic unafraid to speak his mind. His resignation this week - after he publicly accused church leaders of obfuscation and likened them to the Mafia - was premature and regrettable. But it shouldn't deter the year-old citizens review panel from holding the bishops accountable in ensuring that children are safe.

BEFORE ROME can put its stamp of approval on the U.S. Catholic Church's strict policy on clergy abuse, the powers that be want to discuss it. What more is there to discuss? Priests who prey on children for sexual gratification don't belong in a collar. Due to the often-serial nature of this crime, a sex offender's presence in parishes poses a threat to children. Period. But the Vatican, in a letter issued last week to American church leaders, said the "zero tolerance" policy adopted by the bishops in Dallas last June conflicted with church law, apparently as it relates to a priest's due process rights.

The county Police Department has been awarded a $900,000 federal grant to hire 12 officers and will soon receive another $4,600 grant to train church leaders in arson prevention.The money to assist in hiring and training a dozen new officers over a three-year period is coming from the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Universal Hiring Program. The county will pay 25 percent of the officers' salary and benefits and a one-time expense of $37,000 each to buy patrol cars and other equipment.

United Black Clergy of Anne Arundel County Inc. has met its goal of raising $10,000 to help refurbish Rapture Church in Lothian, which was desecrated with racial slurs and had its food pantry and equipment looted last month. At a rally scheduled for Saturday in Glen Burnie, United Black Clergy officials will present the donated money to church leaders to help pay expenses not covered by insurance. Church officials estimated the vandals did more than $20,000 worth of damage. "We are stronger than any attack that can come against a church," said Bishop Larry Lee Thomas, president of United Black Clergy, which represents about 75 African-American churches.

Anne Arundel church leaders say they're worried that proposed changes to the county zoning code would unfairly restrict the size of new churches and would place an undue burden on them to pay for road improvements. The changes would limit new church parking lots to 250 spaces in residential areas and would require churches to pay for traffic studies when they build or expand, just as commercial developers do. "We would just like a little more flexibility rather than having the county legislate the maximum size of a church," said Brian Mallare, operations pastor at Bay Area Community Church in Severna Park and a spokesman for a coalition of religious leaders who oppose the changes.

Taking their work from the church sanctuary to the streets, a group of ministers has forged an alliance with the Baltimore Police Department to reduce crime and violence in the inner city. Last night, in a gathering that at times took on overtones of a Pentecostal revival, officers and clergy celebrated the first birthday of Community Liaison Ministers, a program that trains church leaders in police work and pastoral counseling and then sends them back to their communities. "We are onto something," Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier said.

A day after his housemate was reported missing in Harford County, Alexander Kinyua went to church with his family and asked the pastor if he could borrow a Bible. "I said, 'Sure, take it, but bring it back,' " Pastor Eric T. Campbell, of Baltimore's Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church on East North Avenue, recounted Sunday. Campbell said he was unsure whether Kinyua did take a Bible with him last Sunday, three days before the Morgan State University electrical engineering student was charged with killing 37-year-old Kujoe Bonsafo Agyei-Kodie and confessed to eating some of the man's internal organs.

BOSTON -- In this proper town of tradition, where churche meet the future by clinging to the past, a tiny band of Christian Scientists is pursuing a bold and costly vision. Jettisoning the old ways, church leaders are spending millions to build up a worldwide radio and television venture that will tackle global issues in secular terms.Proponents say they are developing innovative strategies to set the spiritual agenda of the next century. But critics contend that church leaders are selling out the Christian Science birthright -- the disciplined practice of spiritual healing -- for secular success.

Wading into the controversy over Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church's expansion, Baltimore County Executive C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger said yesterday that the county would seek alternatives to a 37-acre Owings Mills site church leaders have chosen.But the Rev. Frank M. Reid III said the 11,888-member city church will continue to pursue its ambitious expansion plans on a site within three miles of Owings Mills Town Center. "We still have a commitment on the Owings Mills site," he said, noting that the church is studying the property under a pending sales contract.