Dr. Haleblian, Pastor and Friend

(Right) Dr. Krikor G. Haleblian (1943-2007) and his wife

For well over 30 years, one of the major things I have been involved in is working with both Armenian and Assyrian Christians.   Back in my early college years, as a young preacher, I felt a stronger calling to do something more hands-on with these, "my people," and that led in 1995 to a trip to California where I was able to preach in two of their churches, one being an Assyrian Pentecostal Church in the city of Turlock, and the other was St. Nareg Armenian Church in Montebello, pastored by a dear friend of mine I also consider a mentor.  Dr. Krikor Haleblian was indeed a spiritual giant, but was also a capable scholar, which is why I want to talk about him now.

My first contact with Dr. Haleblian came in the late 1980's, at which time he was pioneering an Armenian Studies program at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena.  At that time, I was a young, very enthusiastic Pentecostal kid who was just starting out in Bible college, and the denomination I was part of then, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, was located in California, with their college being fairly close to where Dr. Haleblian's church was located.  At that time, I was attending a small Baptist college in the panhandle of Florida, but was increasingly feeling the desire to go out west where I could accomplish a two-fold purpose - first, to be more at the center of Foursquare activity, and secondly, to minister more closely to the people I felt I was called to.  Dr. Haleblian was more than happy to offer assistance, so in 1991 we began to talk, and it was decided I would be possibly working with his church once I arrived on the West Coast.  And, now that is what I want to briefly talk about.

My own youthful zeal at the time, coupled with pastor from the pastor of the church I was part of in Dothan, AL, to be educated at a specifically Foursquare college, prompted me to begin making preparations to go to Los Angeles starting in the Spring 1992 term.   However, my zeal was greater than my wisdom, and a series of situations made me go out there ill-prepared and my stay was very short (only in January) before circumstances placed me back on a Greyhound bus heading back east.  However, despite the bad timing of the trip, I did have one great moment, and that was meeting Dr. Haleblian in person.  We had corresponded regularly for several months prior, and I have to this day copies of some journal articles he wanted to gauge my opinion on at the time.  It was a great blessing to meet him, although I would not formally preach in his church until about 3 years later when we had a shorter and better-planned trip out there.  

That being said, let me tell you a little about Dr. Haleblian.  He was born in Syria on September 15, 1943, and after coming to the US at an early age, he completed his theological education and later founded the St. Nareg Church, which then was affilliated with the Armenian Evangelical Union of America as well as initially with the Church of the Nazarene and later with an independent Pentecostal fellowship.  It was in the late 1980's that Dr. Haleblian became a professor at Fuller, and he instituted a program of Armenian Theological Studies there which as of this time may or may not have continued.  He was a busy man, with teaching, pastoring, as well as being a prolific writer.  For a number of years he published a really good small journal called The St. Nareg Quarterly, and while in school in Graceville I had received a few of those on occasion.  At a later date, in 1996, he published a series of those articles dealing with Armenian Missiology and Theology into a very good reference work entitled The Armenian Church in Context.  This book, which essentially was a pioneering attempt at what is now commonly referred to as "Contexualization," was to be a text for people ministering to Armenians which would educate them in how to utilize what was already a Christian-based culture (the Armenians have been a Christian people for over 2000 years now) as an evangelistic tool for reaching the Armenian community in the US in particular.  Although in recent years "Contextualization" has become way too radical for my tastes (as well as incorporating much material that is unscriptural), I believe Dr. Haleblian did have a fantastic model that was perfect for contextualizing Armenian missionary work - use what is there to reach those who are familiar with it.  Although the point of this article is not to argue for missionary practices or theology, I have to say that I am in agreement with much of Dr. Haleblian's premise, as it also intersects well with my own ideas.  So, even today, his book (which he gave me as a gift, autographed and all!) is still a valuable resource in my own library.

Since St. Nareg never had its own building, it met in the chapel of this Methodist Church in the town of Montebello for a number of years.  As far as I can ascertain, they may still meet there today.

Any rate, going back to that first meeting with Dr. Haleblian back in January 1992, he made sure I was able to attend church that following Sunday at St. Nareg, and that was my first Armenian service of any kind I had ever attended.  Armenian Evangelicals will probably be somewhat alien to their American counterparts in that they have successfully incorporated much of the liturgy and tradition of the Armenian Apostolic Church that many of them had roots in, and it is a beautiful liturgical tradition.  The best way to describe the Armenian tradition is melancholy beauty - there is a joy of the sort one would expect of Eucharistic worship, but at the same time there is a sadness that reflects the pain of a persecuted people (the Armenians have been viciously persecuted for their faith over the centuries, in particular a nasty period of time just during and after World War I called the Armenian Genocide in which the Ottoman Turks slaughtered several million Armenian Christians just for simply being Armenian - after Hitler's evil Holocaust against the Jews in World War II, the Armenian Genocide is one of the most brutal and large-scale slaughters of a people group in modern times, and it is still commemorated on April 21st every year by most Armenian churches.  The Turks, unfortunately, still try to deny it happened) crying out in worship to their Lord to be there for them, and in that sadness is also a peace that God is with them.  The Armenian Liturgy (called the badarak) is to me one of the most precious liturgies of the Christian Church, and to this day it still brings tears to my eyes when I witness it being celebrated.  Dr. Haleblian, in his foresight, knew that the badarak and the sharagans (traditional Armenian hymnody) resonated deeply with his people, and given their thoroughly Christian root, he joyfully integrated them into the worship of his particular Evangelical congregation.  The beautiful thing is that it works, and still does - Dr. Haleblian's example is one reason for my own pilgrimage later into the Convergence movement, which I was briefly part of until I became formally Catholic myself later.  He presented a true model of Convergence based on the rich tradition of a people who carried this worship at the heart of their identity.  And, I got to see that first-hand in 1992, and it was a neat experience too.  Three years later, in 1995, I would revisit St. Nareg not as a spectator, but as a preacher.

It was after service also that Dr. Haleblian invited me for lunch over at his house, and I had my first taste of a delicious Armenian staple called lahmadzoon, which is similar to a pizza but consists of oregano, chopped lamb, and a tomato paste on a pita bread called lavash.  The meatless variety of this, called zaatar, is what I came to prefer later, but it was great to actually try real Armenian food for the first time, and it would by no means be the last.  He also gave me a little something to hold me over while I was at the Foursquare school in San Dimas out there, and it was much-welcomed, as my resources at the time were stretched thin.  However, as mentioned, it would be three years later before I would get to visit out there again, and this time I would be going to minister rather than observe.

The trip to California was a big disaster, and I basically found that out the hard way when I limped back to Dothan in a Greyhound bus and went through a rough readjustment.  In the next couple of years though, I would transfer to Southeastern University in Lakeland, and after getting married prior to that and also getting a culinary school certificate in AL before we left there, we would in time leave the Foursquare denomination for good as God was starting to move me into another direction at that point.  What began to happen was an old desire to minister to Armenians and Assyrians again, so in early 1995 I began to plan a trip for December of that year to go out there just to speak in churches, and Dr. Haleblian was more than happy to host us for a Sunday.  So, a week before Christmas, we headed out, and upon arriving in Baldwin Park that Saturday night, we prepared the next day to speak at St. Nareg, and that turned out to be a neat experience - Dr. Haleblian and his people were very gracious to us, and it was also the first time I got to speak with the aid of an interpreter (Dr. Haleblian himself).  It was also one of the first times I got to speak in clerics, as I had my collar and everything. And, I still recall the text, as I preached right out of the Book of Common Prayer.  It was a tremendous experience, and the whole California trip ended up being a tremendous success. 

This is me (on the right) preaching at St. Nareg Church in December of 1995 - Dr. Haleblian is translating on the left. 

After that California trip unfortunately, my enthusiasm for ministry began to wane, as my preparation for graduating that following spring, as well as a number of great personal challenges, began to take center stage.  As I completed college in April 1996 and began to figure out my own path, many obstacles began to take my eyes off of my original zeal and I began to grow somewhat complacent over the next several years.  Despite that, I kept in touch with Dr. Haleblian for many years up until his untimely passing in June of 2007, and at around the time he went onto his eternal reward, I was beginning to get my bearings spiritually again and although I would never have the zeal I once had regarding the Assyrians and Armenians, they are still people I hold near and dear to me and it turns out they were the ones who would eventually reach me, as I began to think more like them in my own Christianity.  Also, as I began a mission of re-discovering myself and what has made me tick over the years, I came to also revive a deep appreciation and love of these people that I once had, although now in a much different capacity.  That is what really led me to talk a little about my dear friend Dr. Haleblian at this point too.

Dr. Haleblian has long gone onto his eternal reward, but he was a tremendous man of God, brilliant in mind and humble in spirit, who wanted to serve his people in a way he believed God was leading him to do so.  Unlike so many today who want to eschew the past and try to re-write the teachings of the Church, Dr. Haleblian wisely chose to utilize them, build upon them, and by doing so he created a church (with God's leading of course) that was thoroughly Evangelical but also distinctly Armenian to its soul.  The idea of tradition is not to do away with it, but to use it as a foundation upon which to build - that is a very important lesson I believe Dr. Haleblian gave me personally.  To quote a good example of his philosophy on this, we turn to his book, where he says this: "Simply stated, the true Armenian Church is one that is faithful to the traditional Armenian culture while at the same time proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ clearly and effectively." (Haleblian, Krikor. The Armenian Church in Context. {Los Angeles, 1996} p. 95).  What he means by this is staying true to one's traditions while at the same time bringing them alive to the generation hearing them.  Many of our churches need this today, not just Armenians - there is too much of an iconoclasm against traditionally-held orthodoxy and orthopraxis, and it has been damaging to American Christianity in particular; the only time many churches adapt liturgical forms today is for some fad or social statement, and not for what they were truly intended (the "Emerging church" movement, which ironically has a bastion at the same institution Dr. Haleblian taught at, Fuller Seminary, is guilty in this regard) - it is "cool" for instance to many people to see candles and icons adorning Assemblies of God and Nazarene churches now, but often those liturgical forms are not used in the proper context, but are rather part of the fad and fashion of the times, which itself is a bad reason for church growth motivation.  Dr. Haleblian would not have advocated this, and it kind of goes against what he is saying.  However, the purpose of this is not to get into a theological discourse about the willful misuse of liturgical aids in Evangelical churches, but rather to commemorate Dr. Haleblian's legacy, but you get my point.  

That being said, I don't know the future now of St. Nareg since Dr. Haleblian's repose, but hopefully it will continue to carry on the rich legacy he gave them.   And, may he rest eternal, and may each of you reading this have God's blessing as well.