Photos by SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Father Claude Franklin of St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church and his parishioners will hold the 10th annual Lebanese Festival at the end of the month.

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Some congregations can be slow to accept new pastors. One way that the Rev. Claude Franklin may know he's really becoming an integral part of St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church in Northwest Roanoke may be the amount of applause he gets for being the guest drummer in a Lebanese band that will appear there for a three-day gig starting May 30.

That's because Franklin is the first non-Lebanese priest to lead St. Elias in its 91-year history, at least in the memory of current congregants who researched church records. And historically, St. Elias has been known as a Lebanese church, which has its origins in the Middle East. At Maronite Catholic churches, Aramaic, the language of Christ, is spoken during a portion of the Mass. Franklin is comfortable with the language requirement, even though he was born in Fayetteville, N.C.

"I was on assignment in Lebanon for six months" in 1998, working in a seminary there, said the 36-year-old Franklin. He's comfortable in a band, too. "I have been playing the drums since I was 5 years old," he said.

Still, he isn't Lebanese, and about 40 percent of his congregation, while increasingly of mixed ethnic descent, still is. And his predecessor, the popular Rev. Rodolph Wakim, who was transferred to a church in Pittsburgh nearly a year ago, was Lebanese.

"My first homily here was about the positive aspects of change," said Franklin. "Some changes are obviously good. If I need to lose weight, and I do, that's a positive change."

But Franklin is no lightweight when it comes to knowledge of Maronite Catholic Church traditions. He was a postgraduate student at Rome's Pontifical Oriental Institute, a center for the study of Eastern Christianity established by the Vatican, from 2003 to 2006, graduating with a master's degree in the study of liturgy. He's currently finishing up his doctoral dissertation in liturgy.

As an expert on customs within the sanctuary, Franklin is well aware that those traditions give his church its distinctive personality -- and have the power to attract new members, although they can seem too foreign to outsiders at first. For example, there's the Aramaic language -- also displayed with some artwork in the sanctuary. But Aramaic accounts for only about 5 percent of the service, the rest being in English, he said. "Our liturgy is really very warm and welcoming."

Also friendly is the church's annual Lebanese Festival, a celebration of the food, dance and music of the country's rich culture that is scheduled from May 30 through June 1. Attendance last year was estimated in the range of 4,000 to 5,000.

And for anyone who wants to learn more about Maronite worship, tours of the church will be offered. For more information, call St. Elias at 562-0012.