Heritage column for Dec. 16, 2004
By Fred Anderson
It happens at least a hundred times a year in Virginia and thousands of times across the country. A new pastor is called to serve a Baptist church, and each time, it is almost like a new beginning for the church and certainly for the pastor. There are fresh opportunities, new relationships and high expectancies.
This Sunday a church in Alexandria welcomes a new pastor. Baptist Temple Church called Benjamin Todd Thomason, a recent graduate of McAfee School of Theology of Mercer University in Georgia. At age 30, Todd Thomason comes to his first pastorate.
For church and pastor, in a very real sense, a new beginning takes place.
Thomason has impeccable academic credentials. He received McAfee's “Outstanding Scholar Award” for earning the highest grade point average in his class. In his undergraduate work at UNC Greensboro, he graduated summa cum laude. He made Phi Beta Kappa.
And soon he will hit the ground running in the fast-paced and challenging environment of Northern Virginia. He will begin to learn his flock, community and neighborhood; and as in any new beginning, there can emerge creative ideas.
Baptist Temple always has been a church receptive to creativity. Constituted in 1908 as the Second Baptist Church of Alexandria, it has operated much like the old advertising slogan for a certain car rental agency. It tries harder!
In the last 45 years several highly gifted pastors served the church: James Fox, Glynn Ford, Wayne Yawn, Michael Allen, Nancy Foil, and most recently, a young minister with a heart for social ministry, Stewart Perry. It is interesting to look at the church's beginnings and see that it always has been on the cutting edge of ministry for the times.
The church began in a modest way, listing 32 members in its first year. All of the gifts to the various missions causes in 1908 totaled $20.75. Even so, Kelly Hobbs, the founding pastor, baptized five persons the first year. At the time, he also had four other churches to serve in Northern Virginia.
Hobbs was 39 and already known “to possess the trait of kindness.” He was recognized as “a champion, to the best of his ability, of the cause of righteousness, whether in or out of the pulpit.”
Hobbs possessed a scholarly air yet was never aloof from people. A layman observed: “He is unique. No other like him. He is always busy, knows everybody, knows how to find the people and cultivates the policy of never going into a home without leaving memories of something purely religious.”
The Religious Herald reported: “[This church] is beginning to see the great opportunities that immediately await her, and she is proving herself capable of seizing and improving them as they come. People and pastor are very happy together.” A member described the church's can-do attitude: “We know there's a great work here that ought to be done and we feel that what ought to be done can be done and what can be done we will do by the help of God.”
When Hobbs left the church in 1913, he reflected: “I don't know of a field in a city that offers a greater opportunity to accomplish a great work in the near future than this field does.” His successor was O.W. Triplett who came when he was 39 and soon led the church to build a new house of worship on King Street. The next pastor, Owen Lloyd, built further on the foundation laid by his predecessors. He helped the church to become self-sufficient and no longer depend upon financial support from the State Mission Board.
When he left, Lloyd said: “These are among the best people to serve and the relationships have been wondrously sweet. I am praying God to send them a good man.”
The answer to those prayers surely came when Ryland T. Dodge became pastor. He was only 34 years old when he began what would be a long and distinguished pastorate. He led the church to relocate to Commonwealth Avenue, erect its handsome building and change the name to Baptist Temple. As pastor and pastor emeritus, he was associated with the church for some 54 years and became one of the Baptist statesmen of Virginia.
It was once said of the founding pastor, Kelly Hobbs, that there was “nobody like him and nobody would be like him if he could [because] that would be to desire the impossible.” Pastors are their own unique persons. And now another new pastor and a congregation known for able lay leadership will experience yet another new beginning.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He can be reached at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.