Celebration's GLOBAL FOCUS draws people

By Diana Chandler, Regional Reporter

Celebration Church has a global focus with a number of members serving abroadMETAIRIE – International Missionaries Walter and Purnima Bowen say they felt a comfort at Celebration Church that reassured them their Hindu and Muslim friends would be welcomed there with an agape love.

She, the daughter of a Kolkata, India, Christian minister and he, an Arkansan whose mother has served as a missionary to Johannesburg, South Africa, visited many area churches while students at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the months before Hurricane Katrina.“If Christians don’t accept me and I’m a Christian, how are they going to accept someone I bring who is not a Christian?” She posed. “When we first came to Celebration that wasn’t the case. We felt comfortable enough to say we can bring our non-Christian friends here and they can be accepted.