Jim Roths of Sumner, who attends Redmond's Overlake Christian Church, left a high-level corporate position to move with his family to Central Asia to work as a missionary for eight years.

Betty Woodard, a grandmother of 13 and great-grandmother of three, founded a prison ministry at her church, Goodwill Missionary Baptist in Seattle's Central Area, and volunteers regularly, visiting shut-ins and nursing homes.

George Balagtas is a student minister at Seattle University, preparing the school's light-filled Chapel of St. Ignatius for Mass.

Three people from different walks of life, each with different ways of practicing their faith. Yet, at a time when Christianity has become politicized and polarized, these three also express a certain unity in what they believe it means to be Christian.

Today, some 159 million Christians in the United States, and about 1.9 billion worldwide, will celebrate Easter, marking the day they believe Jesus was resurrected. (Orthodox Christians use a different calendar and will celebrate Easter on May 1.)

It is, perhaps, one of the two days of the year — the other is Christmas — when the public expression of Christianity is most apparent, as the faithful flock to churches.

For Roths, Woodard and Balagtas and many other Christians, their faith is also lived day in and day out, in ways big and small.

The three articulate it differently. To Balagtas, it is living the life of Jesus, applying to his own life Christ's teachings and the hope of the resurrection story. Woodard calls it letting "your light shine that they may see your good work and glorify the Father." Roths sees it as a calling from God to be an example of how a Christian lives his faith.

HARLEY SOLTES / THE SEATTLE TIMES Betty Woodard reads a Bible passage to Juanita Thomas, left, and Mary Skinner at the Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church. Woodard leads a prayer meeting each noon at her church, along with visiting nursing homes and prisons.

Underlying their different statements are similar sentiments about what it means to be a Christian: to follow the example of Jesus to love others and do good deeds; and to trust that God has a plan for their lives.

As Roths says: "I think the best way we can impact society is to be an example ourselves, to live out our faith as best we can."

Taking a big step

Jim Roths admits that when the idea came to him, around 1989, to quit his job as operations director of a regional restaurant group, sell his home and move to another country to do missionary work, he questioned whether this was truly a call from God.

"Even if you have faith, that's a big step," he said.

He asked his wife, Donna Roths, a nurse, and fellow congregants at Overlake: What do you think of this idea, that God might be calling us to move on to another life? Is this really God?

The Roths decided it really was God's call. They sold their Sammamish Plateau house and most of their belongings and, for the next eight years, they lived in Central Asia, primarily in Uzbekistan, with their three children.

A large part of their work there, said Jim Roths, 48, was to show people that being a missionary did not mean coercing others into believing in Christ. "My faith says I can't force someone to become a follower of Jesus Christ. I can demonstrate and share what that decision is, but I can't force someone."

So Roths and his family did what they've always done: Spread the gospel by example — inviting people to their home, working with disabled children, letting people see what it means to live as a Christian.

But practicing their faith doesn't always involve dramatic steps like moving across the world. They do so through their daily decisions and how they interact as a family.

"When we have conflicts or struggles, we would try to find Scriptures that would help us understand how we should act in a particular way," Roths said. "Otherwise, it's just my opinion versus your opinion."

When his now-18-year-son was 7, for example, he stole something, Roths said. He gave his son some biblical passages to read and told him: "I want you to understand I'm upset. But the basis of that is because God is upset."

He struggles sometimes, he says, with judging others who do things that go against his beliefs or who don't hold the same values.

COURTESY OF ROTHS FAMILY Jim and Donna Roths worked as missionaries in Central Asia. They also practice their faith daily, often relying on Scripture for guidance.

"That's where I need to be Christ to them," Roths says. "Christ didn't spend all his time in the church. I need to look at Christ's example of how he treated those who were not among the faith." He reminds himself to, "in love, express what we believe to be truth as we know it, accepting that the other person may not believe it."

Easter, Roths believes, is a good opportunity for Christians to not only share their faith, but also "to remember, to remind ourselves of what we believe."

"Letting my light shine"

Life is full for Betty Woodard, what with visits to nursing homes and to shut-ins, ministry at two prisons, and coordinating food for her church's monthly work at a downtown shelter. There's also Sunday school, church choir and prayer meetings.

Being a Christian, said the 61-year-old Beacon Hill resident, means being Christ-like, and for her, that means loving and caring for others. "Jesus is love," she said. "He loved the lovable and the unlovable. I never read in the Word where he didn't love nobody." But, she admitted with a laugh, "I can't say that about me because I'm in the flesh."

She prays for patience and for strength when someone says something hurtful. "I pray about anything," she says.

It is behavior ingrained from childhood. Her first prayer in church, she remembers, was when her mother was seriously ill and her grandmother took her to church, told her to get on her knees and ask the Lord to spare her mother. But her mother died while Woodard was praying.

"I often thought about that," Woodard says. "Did I get angry at the Lord? I don't remember if I did. I guess the Lord gave me peace with it even as a child."

She never questioned the Lord. "We were raised with that. You don't ask: Why Lord, this? Why Lord, that? It's his will. Whatever is going to be is going to be."

In raising five children and at times when she just plain got discouraged, her faith sustained her. "Jesus told us we will have tribulations, but to be of good cheer, for we will overcome. When I go through something, that's where my mind goes back to."

Woodard, in turn, uses her gifts to sustain others. She restarted the prison ministry, and coordinates other outreach ministries at Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church.

"Being a Christian is letting my light shine," she says. But "it's not me. It's so people can see Jesus working through me."

And on this holiest day in the Christian calendar, "if the Lord's willing," Woodard will get an early start for the sunrise church service. Afterward, she'll visit a local nursing home, where she intends to talk about Jesus' death, burial and resurrection.

"Without that, I wouldn't be here today — I wouldn't have a life, wouldn't have something to talk about," she said. "I believe Jesus died and God raised him from death. He gave me hope through that."

A work in progress

For George Balagtas, a 27-year-old electrical-engineering student at Seattle University, a Jesuit institution, the Easter story has particular resonance.

As a child, he looked at the resurrection as more of a metaphor. But as his faith has developed, he said, "I look at it more and more as Christ rising with us each year. In a very real way, he rises from the dead each moment of each day that we need him. He's dying for our sins and saving us continually each day."

He tries to apply the resurrection story to his life, he says, so that "whatever misery I'm undergoing, I always look for the resurrection, trust that I've got my life in God's hands, that God has a plan for me."

That isn't necessarily easy. There have been moments when "I've felt at dead bottom or felt like things were hopeless."

Fall quarter, for instance, he suffered a partially collapsed lung, fell behind in his classes, and "got depressed over having to push my graduation date back for another year."

He prayed, sometimes twice a day, attended Mass daily and went on a spiritual retreat. "In the end, I came to peace with it," he said. For Balagtas, being Christian means trying to incorporate the life of Jesus, trying to see God in everyone and working to accept people with an open heart.

It's also about service. In addition to his role as a chapel sacristan, Balagtas works at the St. James Cathedral soup kitchen and, along with other Seattle University campus ministers, plans to do mission work in the Philippines later this year.

He believes that when people do service work, "there's an internal conversion that happens within your own hearts. It's not like: 'Oh, I did a good thing.' It's more: 'How has this changed my perception of my fellow brother or sister?' or: 'How does this enrich my relationship with God?' "

Balagtas acknowledges it's sometimes difficult to practice his faith consistently. But he also knows "faith is always a work in progress. You're always developing."

He tries to pray daily — "it keeps me sane," he says.

"If I go a few days without prayer or Mass, I notice I feel depleted."

At Easter time, he remembers that before Christ's resurrection, Peter had denied Jesus, Judas had betrayed him and others were fearful for their own lives.

"You can hardly expect a resurrection from that, but that's what Christ teaches," Balagtas said.

"Even in times of great distress, you can trust that resurrection can and will come."

Janet I. Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com