Having it his way

By Fred Anderson

It has been said that when an old person dies, a library burns. If this is so, Virginia Baptists lost an extensive library last week in the death at age 87 of John Sterling Moore Jr. The good news is that much of his accumulated historical knowledge will never be lost.

John Moore was an adopted Virginian. Born in Memphis, Tenn., and reared and educated in Alabama, he enrolled at Auburn University with the intention of becoming a mechanical engineer. Since childhood, he had shown mechanical abilities. At age 5, he was able to take apart and put back together an alarm clock.

While at Auburn, he felt a call to the gospel ministry. His own father felt that he did not have the personality suited for a minister. But John persisted to have it his way and enrolled at the Alabama Baptist school, Howard College (now Samford University), with the aim of preparing for the ministry.

After graduation, he headed for Southern Seminary. While in Louisville, he came under the good influences of a pioneer in social justice, Clarence Jordan, who later founded Koinonia Farms, the interracial community in South Georgia. Jordan told the seminarians to take pastorates in “unlikely places” because that was where they were most needed.

In 1943 John was leading a Training Union group at a Louisville church when he met a young woman studying at the WMU Training School. Her name was Martha Paulette, the daughter of a Baptist minister from Smithfield, Va. They fell in love and planned to be married.

John told the placement office at Southern that he wanted to serve country churches. He had it his way: the first call was to “the Pamplin field,” deep into the countryside of Virginia near Appomattox. John had four churches: Elon at Pamplin and Matthews, Providence and Glenn Memorial. If all the churches could have been combined, the congregation would have been more than 500. Together, all four, paid the new pastor $1,890 a year. The parsonage was a big old wooden house in Pamplin and one of the church treasurers loaned the new pastor $75 to furnish the living room. Members donated old furniture and John, already skilled with woodworking, made a kitchen table and benches. The parsonage was ready for his bride.

In 1947, at age 28, he was elected to represent the Appomattox Association on the Virginia Baptist Board of Missions and Education (now simply the Mission Board). When the slender slip of a young preacher arrived for his first meeting, some wag said, “When did they start sending boys to serve on the board?” He would have it his way and was undaunted.

The story is told that once while preaching at one of the country churches, perhaps Providence at Red House, John was in the pulpit and noticed that the choir and the deacons kept craning their necks at something just below his sight range and near the front of the platform. Suddenly, a man came forward carrying a stick and used it to bash a copperhead and then threw the snake into the pot belly stove.

From 1949-57, John served as pastor of the Amherst Church. One fall he had gone to participate in a hog killing when a couple showed up at the parsonage wanting to be married. Martha gave the strangers her husband’s best suit and sent them to the site of the hog butchering. She didn’t want to lose the $15 which grooms were paying preachers in those days. John cleaned up, put on his preaching suit and married the couple and then went back to securing the pork for his family.

In 1957 the Moores, now including three school age children—Sterling, Marshall and Paulette—settled in Lexington, where John was called to the pastorate of Manly Memorial Church. It was his last and longest pastorate, serving until retirement in 1984. He was a fixture on the Lexington scene and relished life in a college town. He did everything at Manly Memorial, including keeping the old church boiler running.

In the ’50s, he joined the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and quickly became active in its “ministry through history.” From 1972-2001, he was editor of the society’s annual journal, the Virginia Baptist Register, and brought into print some 100 historical articles. He wrote at least 30 major articles himself. He and fellow historian Bill Lumpkin co-authored a popular history for the BGAV. He served twice as president of the society; and for an unprecedented 47 years, he was on the society’s executive committee. He would have “rotated off” in May.

As failing health and declining strength took their toil, he still managed to have it his own way at Lakewood Manor, the Baptist retirement facility. He remained in his book-filled apartment. Near the end, he persuaded a neighbor to loan him a car jack so he could change a flat tire. The neighbor reminded him that the Manor had men who could do this job, but John Moore, right to the last, was determined to do it his way. It always was the best way.