New Church

What Paul Meant Garry Wills Viking / 193 pages / $24.95 Everybody should be as lucky as St. Paul. Not only did he have a transformative spiritual experience and become a founder of one of the world's great religions, but 2,000 years later he has Garry Wills to explain, interpret and defend him. He needs defending because Paul is widely thought to have taken the liberating message of Jesus, turned it inside out and made it into a kind of moral and...

When the 10:30 a.m. worship service ends at St. James Episcopal Church in Mount Airy today, congregation members will carry the altar and a large wooden cross out of the sanctuary while singing "The Church's One Foundation." That procession will mark the closing of the little 119-year-old red brick church at 204 N. Main St., where through those years, Mount Airy residents worshiped and have been confirmed, baptized, married and mourned. Then, parishioners will begin the final move to a new building at 1307 N. Main St., about a mile north on a hill that overlooks tree-covered hills to the east and the Catoctin Mountains to the west.

An overlooked burning candle, a prayer vigil's symbol of seeking God's help for the future, will force a tiny Eldersburg congregation to make a quick decision about whether to build a new church.A fire that started when the large candle fell off a sanctuary stand next to the organ damaged the Church of the Nazarene, in the 300 block of Liberty Road, Saturday. The Rev. Joe Ward's congregation is deciding whether to repair the damage or accelerate plans for a new building."We will meet with insurance adjusters as soon as we can and look at our options," said Ward, who became pastor in September and is working to expand the congregation of about 50."

As the youth choir sang out "I know that I can stand, with Jesus I can take it,' " four women in a back row rose to their feet with the measured dignity of age.Others in Macedonia Baptist Church yesterday stood too, but the gospel lyric carried particular resonance in that back pew. Those four women represented 233 years of worship in the towering marble structure at 718 W. Lafayette Ave."I've been a member for 82 years," Gladys Brown said proudly.The other three weren't far behind: Evertia Grant Tunstall has attended Macedonia Baptist for 59 years, Jannie V. Imes for 55, and Ina Lee, a relative newcomer, for 37 years.

To expand the quality and variety of its ministries, and to encourage individual congregations to look beyond parish boundaries, the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland embarks today on its first fund-raising appeal.The Episcopal Appeal, planned as an annual event, will emphasize raising money for the work of the church, not for church buildings, said the Right Rev. Robert W. Ihloff, bishop of Maryland. The aim, he said, is to promote a new energy in the church."This has to do with moving from a maintenance mode into a mission mode," Ihloff said.

UNEXPECTED BLENDS of old and new, sacred and profane, are juxtaposed often in Elkridge. And many times a personal connection between those elements sustains meaning in our community life.The stories of three men, Rick Bowers of Columbia and Elkridge residents Carmelo Torres and Gary Kaufman, illustrate how those intertwining relationships work. The three are nurturing a new church.Bowers, a Howard County native, decided at midlife to begin a church in Elkridge. Torres, raised in the Bronx, N.Y., who moved to Elkridge three years ago, was drawn to the church and now serves as its youth minister.

The Rev. Cynthia Belt doesn't often use African storytellers and teen dancers in her services at the 140-year-old, tradition-laden Mount Tabor United Methodist Church in Crownsville, but she used both yesterday for the first service at her new church at Van Bokkelen Elementary School in Severn."

The Rev. Cynthia Belt doesn't often use African storytellers and teen dancers in her services at the 140-year-old, tradition-laden Mount Tabor United Methodist Church in Crownsville, but she used both yesterday for the first service at her new church at Van Bokkelen Elementary School in Severn."

The Rev. Robert A. F. Turner has been in Columbia only five years, but he has already made an indelible impression on the community.As pastor of St. John the Evangelist Baptist Church, he has established a mentoring program, gotten involved in political campaigns and attracted so many new members to his congregation that he has begun a fund-raising campaign to build a new church in Ellicott City.Though he usually gets accolades for such work, tonight it will make him the target of jokes.Turner, 40, will be roasted by nine Howard County politicians and community activists at a fund-raiser at Turf Valley in Ellicott City.

ST. ANDREW'S Episcopal Church on Tick Neck Road starts a "Month of Sundays" in October to celebrate completion of its new church.A series of fairs, speakers, concerts, dinners and special events are planned and will culminate with the consecration of the new church Nov. 29 by the Rt. Rev. Robert Ihloff, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland.The program is being organized by church members Emerson and Ruth Champion, Marge Burr, Jane Savarola, Joan Forsythe and Bob Goodman, with Mary Heine as chairman.

FREDERICK - Manbae Kim was taking a pummeling. Deputized to explain his church's plans to build a Walmart-sized worship complex at the foot of Sugarloaf Mountain, he had spent the better part of an hour politely parrying complaints from an increasingly hostile crowd about the project's impact on local traffic, the water supply, the area's rural beauty and the global climate. One woman warned that clearing and construction for the Global Mission Church would chase animals out onto adjacent Interstate 270, causing accidents.

Betty L. Johnson, an indefatigable church worker and a founder of the City Temple of Baltimore Baptist Church who also ministered to the homeless and hungry, prison inmates and pregnant teenagers, died Aug. 13 of a stroke at the Joseph Richey House hospice in Baltimore. The longtime Elgin Avenue resident was 94. Betty Law, the daughter of a Baptist minister and a homemaker, was born and raised in Merry Hill, N.C. After graduating from C. G. White High School in Powellsville, N.C., Mrs. Johnson earned a teaching degree from what is now Elizabeth City State University.

Open space menaced in Padonia, Roland Park As I read Nick Madigan's article "Unwelcome plan" (Sept. 1), I thought: It's deja vu all over again - acres of green space in a residential area are now at risk of being paved over. Trees will yield to buildings and parking lots. There will be more traffic. More burdens on public water lines and other systems. No more quiet streets. A community's quality of life threatened. As a Roland Park resident living near the proposed development on 17 acres at the Baltimore Country Club in the city, I sympathize with neighbors who live near the Padonia Park Club in Timonium, where Grace Fellowship Church intends to build a new facility.

One by one, the people at the meeting stood and spoke, voices sharp with indignation. Their concerns, directed at the pastor onstage, were based on a single imperative: Keep your megachurch out of our neighborhood. The gathering a few days ago in Timonium, convened at the invitation of the Rev. Daniel K. O'Brien of Grace Fellowship Church, had been intended to assuage residents' concerns about his plans to build a 2,500-seat church on the site of the 30-acre Padonia Park Club, whose owner has agreed to sell the property.

Thousands of churchgoers walked through a gate adorned with royal purple and gold balloons and ribbons. A large sign trumpeted: "Holy City of Zion." To many, they had arrived at a promised land - despite the mounds of dirt, the construction equipment and chain-link fences. "In the providence of God, we have come of age," said Bishop Walter S. Thomas, senior pastor of New Psalmist Baptist Church. He stood in front of about 2,000 from the congregation who brought lawn chairs and parasols to a field where the church's new sanctuary will stand.

In the stark cinderblock room known as the chapel at the state prison in Jessup, Bishop Oscar E. Brown gave 75 inmates a message yesterday that they are not "second-class citizens" and that they will emerge from prison better men. In turn, the inmates gave him a check for $650 to help rebuild his church, First Mount Olive Free Will Baptist Church. The church's steeple was hit by lightning in July, causing a fire that devastated the building. For years, members of the church have been volunteering at the Maryland Correctional Institution-Jessup to lead inmates in prayer and fellowship.

When the 10:30 a.m. worship service ends at St. James Episcopal Church in Mount Airy today, congregation members will carry the altar and a large wooden cross out of the sanctuary while singing "The Church's One Foundation." That procession will mark the closing of the little 119-year-old red brick church at 204 N. Main St., where through those years, Mount Airy residents worshiped and have been confirmed, baptized, married and mourned. Then, parishioners will begin the final move to a new building at 1307 N. Main St., about a mile north on a hill that overlooks tree-covered hills to the east and the Catoctin Mountains to the west.

For the second time in a history that spans 160 years, the Church of St. Patrick in Havre de Grace blessed a polished slab of granite and rededicated its imposing stone building to another century of ministry. The blessing of the cornerstone, imprinted with a cross between the years 1847 and 1907, launched a yearlong celebration of the building's centennial and drew nearly 500 parishioners on Thursday. They posed on the church steps and followed a bagpiper to a social in the church hall, which was filled with parish memorabilia.

On July 3, 1873, G.G. Curtiss, a Harford County resident and surveyor, made this record in his journal: "Surveyed and laid off a lot of one acre along west line of J.K. Hamilton's wood lot, south of Baltimore Pike, west of his new building, once used as a tavern, afterwards as a public school, and lastly as a meeting house. Lot now surveyed is for a church 26 x 36 to be built this summer." Around 1872, with no Presbyterian church in Fallston, the Rev. E.D. Finney of Bel Air suggested that he might start preaching in the area on a Sabbath afternoon.

The Rev. John J. Kelmartin, who taught generations of priests at several schools and later served in area parishes, died Thursday of heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice. He was 83 and had been a priest for nearly 60 years. Father Kelmartin had retired in 1994 after seven years as pastor of Our Lady of Victory Roman Catholic Church in Arbutus. However, he continued to fill in at many parishes, insisting he was "not ready to be shipped off to a home yet," according to a newspaper account of his retirement celebration.