December 18, 2012: “Our office today is based in Charlotte, North Carolina...years
ago, blacks and whites worshipped in segregated conditions in New York where there
was discrimination against black clergy and even at the baptismal font.. I believe
a common denominator is music and I think it’s one of the great ways to establish
unity among the Churches….and one of the things I hope to do this spring is to bring
some praise dancers to present our dance culture here”, said Pastor Roe Nall from
Georgia in the United States, who was here in the Vatican last week meeting with officials
at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
While speaking to
Vatican Radio, the Methodist minister said that ‘It is my desire to be as ecumenical
as John Wesley was…….Wesley saw the world as his parish and he wanted to make things
better for everyone in the world, to do all the good he could by all the means he
could in all the places he could for as long as he could…. Back in 2007, Pastor
Nall brought a choir to Rome to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Charles
Wesley, one of the founding brothers of the Methodist movement in England. Following
on from the success of that visit, Nall is planning to bring a group of praise dancers
and singers to Rome next spring to share this worship tradition from his African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church. That Church today numbers close to one and a half million members,
mainly in North and South America, Africa and the Caribbean.