Heritage Column for March 9, 2006
By Fred Anderson
Clergy and laity can be friends. W. Landon Miller and Vince E. Richards proved it. When Vince and Elsie Richards moved to Richmond from Fredericksburg in 1966, they joined Northminster Baptist Church in Richmond’s Ginter Park neighborhood. W. Landon Miller became their pastor. It was the beginning of a long friendship between member and pastor.
W. Landon Miller and his wife, Katherine, came to Richmond in 1965 willing to assume the challenges of a city church. He kept trying new methods—a bus ministry, televised worship services, a senior adult activities group. A gifted preacher and Bible scholar, Miller often was invited as a guest preacher at other churches. He delivered the annual sermon for the BGAV in 1976. He consistently hit the mark Sunday after Sunday while preaching at Northminster. When the service became televised, he relied on a stopwatch which he carried around his neck.
The Virginia pastorate allowed a minister to wear a robe and Landon Miller always cut a dramatic figure in his clerical attire.
His earlier pastorates included an interim at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas; First Baptist churches in Brookhaven, Miss., and Sherman, Texas; and at Ruhama Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., where he, along with four other civic leaders, was invited by President Kennedy to come to the White House for discussions concerning the pressing social and racial problems of that time.
A native of rural Tennessee, Miller went into the city to attend high school in Chattanooga, where he was valedictorian of his class, an early indicator of his scholastic abilities. He was accepted into Harvard, but the Great Depression prevented attendance. His diligence and passion for scholarship (along with encouragement from his high school sweetheart) led him to Carson-Newman College, the Baptist school from which he graduated first in his class with gold medals for scholarship and Greek. (Today a gold medal named in his honor is presented to the top academic student at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.)
He married his sweetheart and they went to Louisville to attend Southern Seminary. He also pursued post-graduate work at Princeton and worked on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago. He earned his doctorate in theology from Southwestern Seminary.
Everyone always said that Landon Miller should have been a seminary professor, yet he found a way to present Bible studies and gospel truths in such a way that a small child could comprehend. He possessed the voice, physical build, dramatics and heart for the pulpit.
He also kept studying and made constant use of his large library. The day before his fatal stroke he was making research notes in Hebrew. By then, he had passed his 70th anniversary as a minister.
He discovered that there was a larger world beyond the American South. He loved to travel and to lead groups. He went three times around the world. He served on preaching missions to England, Japan and the Near East.
For 10 years he served as chaplain to the Richmond Bureau of Police. He was their first chaplain to wear the regulation police uniform. His co-chaplain was Robert Taylor, the well-known African-American Baptist pastor in Richmond.
He also was my pastor. When one of our sons was very young, he asked me if Dr. Miller was “the boss” of the church. It gave me an opportunity to teach Baptist polity and to think that if he were, he probably would have ordered things far different. But he was Baptistic and knew the roles of the clergy. He knew about Baptist democracy. He also respected the role of the laity and encouraged their active participation.
Vince Richards—gentle, kind, and highly capable—was one of those laymen who had opportunities for leadership. He was a businessman, a baker by trade, and he found avenues of service in the church. He was active in his men’s Bible class and in the choir. He was an ordained deacon. For awhile he led the personnel committee.
The two men, clergyman and layman, did not always agree on every single matter but each respected the other’s Baptistic right to disagree.
In 1985, Landon Miller retired, declaring that he really did not know why he must retire; after all, as he said, his hair was still naturally black, his teeth were still in place and, like Moses, his strength had not abated. Later, Vince Richards joined another church across the city and became involved in its life. For the first time, he was in a Sunday school class of men and women; and on occasion, his own wife taught the class. He relished the energetic music program, including the choir for senior adults.
On Feb. 13, the layman died in Richmond at age 89 without knowledge that his pastor-friend had died in Hollywood, Fla. a week earlier, on Feb. 6, at age 88. Both men are survived by wives with whom they had shared 65 years of marriage. In the faith they both shared, surely the pastor, already in the heavenly Jerusalem, greeted his former deacon. Imagine the hugs and handshakes. After all, the place is populated with friends.
Fred Anderson may be contacted at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173. He also is director of the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies.