A Failed BAPTIST Including SCOTTISH Pedigree FINDS Comprehension AS A Vicar IN THE GREEK Conventional person House of worship
BY ANITA CREAMER - acreamer@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, Grand 29, 2008Story appeared in Energy Covering part, Slip K1
Sometimes, the flock at Sacramento's Annunciation Greek Conventional person House of worship uninterrupted ask the claim. They furrow to their comrade priest, Set out Timothy Robinson, as he reads the liturgy in fluent Greek, rooted by gleaming candles and icons furious with gold call in this church steeped commonly in ancient rituals and pioneer studio traditions.
And they ask him someplace in Greece, tangy, his people originated.
"I say, 'They're from the far northern part of Greece, roughly Edinburgh,' " says Robinson, 53.
It helps once upon a time pastors and their flocks concede a have a high opinion of of spoil, not to extol a accommodate of contemporary trends in their church.
Robinson, this sandy-haired liberate from the Southern Baptist position, has served at Annunciation for in basic terms two years. But for the get stronger part of two decades, the comrade priest normal at the church cater-cornered from McKinley Put has been burdened by a liberate, as contradictory to someone raised in the position and brought up in a Greek studio.
The Greeks are a considerate people. Also, in the belatedly 1980s, a date of lush evangelical preachers probing for added traditional priestly experiences began bend to the Eastern Conventional person House of worship, drawn by the fact that its rituals date back to archaic Christianity.
And so the example of the Conventional person church in America is upset. Non-Greek students make up added than unfinished the group of people at Greek Conventional person seminaries, according to Annunciation's presiding priest, Set out James Retelas.
Measure Annunciation parish itself waste in a thick layer Greek - settled with the third- and fourth-generation forebears of the immigrants who founded it in 1920 - added and added converts plague its pews.
It's a bits and pieces of long-term trade for longtime members and converts total. And for Robinson, too.
For blueprint, says Retelas: "He loves to speak out. He preaches longer than we're recycled to equally of his Baptist situation. He'll go 20 report, but in our tradition, going before 10 is historically dazed.
"It's not a stroke, really, but it's subtle of a progress in culture."
That cultural progress has executive Robinson and his ensemble, Marsha, who go on in Folsom, to find a spiritual home at continue.
He likes to say he was innate to be a high priest. His parents, Howard and Juanita, now any dead body, were intensely priestly. When they remained unfruitful behindhand every years of marriage, according to studio lore, they asked God to mediate.
"They told God that if they could concede a child, they'd deliver him back to God," says Robinson. "And nine months future, I came unhappy."
By age 4, an in basic terms child, he was telling people he meet to be a priest one day.
Otherwise, he had a unassumingly run of the mill Bay Degree childhood. His mother was an Air Disturb qualified and school keeper, his mother a housekeeper. Robinson graduated from California Obtain Researcher, Hayward, and Western Baptist School in Portland, Ore.
By next, he was married to Marsha, this vivacious lush human being he'd met in church hip their teen years. By next, he was inquiring his commitment to Protestantism, which adheres to the New Testament of the childish church but not its liturgy or sacraments.
"When you've ready up in the scheme and you find yourself on the outs with it, someplace thrust you go?" he asks.
For the get stronger part of a decade, he had no supreme. So he worked for Xerox Corp. in Oakland, and his parents, retired and living in Arizona, tense for his champion.
"They were very apprehensive about us," he says. "We'd make sure them, and I'd go to church with them. They stuck very knowingly with the Baptist fundamentalism they were raised with. I due unloved it. I debate it was the worship of an urgent God."
When he finally asked God for a way out of his spiritual harsh environment, he says, God answered in the form of a Xerox consumer who worshipped at Oakland's St. Vartan Armenian Apostolic House of worship. Sometime, Robinson was an altar server nearby. And he sincere to return to the ministry.
Churches of the Eastern Traditional values, the world's instant principal Christian religion, are about to by job - Armenian Apostolic, for blueprint, and Russian Conventional person. And, of course, Greek Conventional person.
The same as the priesthood in the Armenian church tends not to be ethnically diverse, Timothy Robinson attended Consecrated Beside yourself Greek Conventional person Work out of Theology in Boston starting in 1996. A decade future, behindhand dollop at churches in Irvine and Temecula, he came to Sacramento.
"We really love Sacramento," says Marsha Robinson. "The people award concede been highest enthusiastic to us and concede really reached out.
"I'm not Greek. My husband's not Greek. And this community is very Greek uninterrupted. Assorted of them uninterrupted go home to Greece in the summer. It's a astonishing studio community."
As the comrade priest's ensemble, she shares manifold duties with her spouse, attending baptisms and blessings unhappy with him. Sundry him, she doesn't speak the words.
"Not at all," she says. "I know all of the provisions words, so that's good. Sure of the lofty women award are uninterrupted added Greek-speaking than English-speaking. I try real shoddily, and they try real shoddily."
And somehow, on any sides, an understanding. An cocktail party. A helpfulness to take up the new and enclose the upset church.
"Set out Timothy is a incredible frequent," says Retelas, "and he's really intense with seniors. His recess is medical center visits."
By chance so, but illustrate this scene of the man from Despina Kreatsoulas, 38, a longtime parishioner and Sunday school supporter.
"He makes a enormous grind to associate with our young people," she says. "He likes to concede fun with them.
"I was teaching Greek shift to the kids, and they meet to practice in their altogether feet. Set out came in and took off his shoes and danced with them. They debate that was the coolest thing."
He adopted the church, and he adopted its culture. The same as his people, behindhand all, are from the far northern part of Greece. In Scotland.
"Robinson was raised a Southern Baptist and attended a Baptist institution to the front he found himself called to the Eastern Conventional person priesthood. "
"Big screen, holy water and books crowd Robinson's church sanctum. Brought up in a fundamentalist Baptist tradition, Robinson bare that he pet the liturgies and sacraments of the childish Christian church. "
"Set out Timothy Robinson lights candles to the front a reason service at the Annunciation Greek Conventional person House of worship in Sacramento. He served in Conventional person churches in Irvine and Temecula to the front coming to Sacramento two years ago. "
