Mary Rives Black, a resident of Lakewood Manor, remembers watching young Lawson Pankey, about age 4, padding down the aisle of Elon Baptist Church at Pamplin where her father was pastor. The little boy was headed to the most enticing part of the church — the Sunday school. No one at Elon realized that the Pankey boy would grow up to lead the Sunday school work of Virginia Baptists.
Fred Anderson
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The Pankeys lived in the countryside. Lawson was a member of a large family and he was only 8 years old when his mother died in 1933. In time, his father remarried and other children were born into the family. A sister was a schoolteacher and she likely was an influence upon Lawson in seeking higher education. Without such inspiration, his education might have ended at Pamplin High School and his life would have gone into other directions.
Lawson Pankey
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Instead, he entered the University of Richmond when it truly was a Baptist institution. As a UR Spider, he immediately flourished. He was elected president of the freshman class and joined fraternities, the literary society and the Baptist Student Union. By the close of his college years, he was president of the campus ministerial association. He was focused upon pursuing his high calling for the ministry.
In 1950 he married Mary Rudasill; and the following year, he completed studies at Southern Seminary. Lawson and Mary established a family which, in due order, included David, Tom, Susan and Libbie. Together they also participated in church and denominational life and ministries. In the first half of the Fifties, Lawson Pankey was pastor of Skinquarter and Chesterfield churches just outside Richmond and at Azalea Church in Norfolk.
It was from Azalea that the young minister at age 39 was tapped by the Virginia Baptist General (now Mission) Board to serve in the training union department. He joined the staff in 1965 as an associate working alongside Walton Connelly Jr. The department included “Tootie” Moore, children’s worker; and in 1967 another associate, Cecil Marsh, came aboard. In 1968 Connelly resigned to pursue graduate studies and Pankey was named acting director; and in 1970, in the first of several restructurings of the board staff, Pankey became director of the department of teaching and training.
When Pankey came to the board, it was still a heyday for training union and there were training union conventions held at Eagle Eyrie which drew upwards of 600 to 800 and an annual summer assembly which attracted 1,700. It was the time of tournaments in areas including essays, memory drills and public speaking.
Titles and job descriptions kept changing at the board, but basically the ministry and emphasis remained the same. By the time Pankey retired in 1990, after 25 years of service, he was head of what was known as the division of Sunday school development. It included all phases of Sunday school work from cradle roll to senior adults, as well as special education and church architectural services. There were Sunday school conventions, Vacation Bible School clinics, retreats and conferences and training conferences for individual district associations. The division even published its own paper, Sunday School Times.
In his last report as director, Lawson Pankey stated: “It is our philosophy that local churches provide the main bases for most teaching, corporate worship, evangelism, Christian development and ministry. We focus much attention on helping churches of any size and location in developing useable programs of Bible study, outreach, witnessing and nurture.” In 1989 his division was even engaged in the Tanzania partnership, the first overseas missions partnership of the General Association. His staff was teaching and equipping missions volunteers who spent weeks in Tanzania doing Sunday school leadership training.
Lloyd Jackson was once a part of Pankey’s team. He recalled that Pankey was “a friend, colleague and, come to think of it, my boss.” He added: “But he was not a bossy-boss; instead he was a supervisor who said you have been hired to do a job, so do it. It was a matter of trust.”
Rod Hale was another member of the team. “He was an easy person to enjoy and respect,” remembered Rod, “and he reminded me of Chaucer’s knight in The Canterbury Tales: ‘He never had in all his life time an ill-bred word … true and perfect knight.’ I never heard him speak ill of anyone. You could always believe and trust what he said. He was blessed with a gentle spirit and wise insight. He would speak loudly his convictions. Those of us who served [on the staff] learned that we better be perceptive and alert because he meant what he meant and expected his staff to follow. He possessed a sense of humor shared from life’s circumstances. He was a true Virginia gentleman; a man full of grace.”
Michael J. Clingenpeel became Lawson Pankey’s pastor at River Road Church in Richmond and he lifted a line from Pankey’s obituary to serve as a text for his funeral message at Pankey’s memorial service on Jan. 5. The line read as follows: “He dedicated his life to service in the Baptist church.” The pastor emphasized three key words: dedicated, service and church. “When a young student at UR he set his course on the ministry. Lawson kept on dedicating himself. It has to be done on a continuous basis. One must rise and say, ‘This day I dedicate myself to God’s work’ and that’s what he did. Long before the term ‘servant-leader,’ Lawson was a servant-leader. What he did was not about himself or about a paycheck or professional advancement or awards. It was about the work of discipleship, ministry and Bible teaching and people.
“Lawson spent more than half his professional career in denominational work; but what he loved first was the local church. He worked so that pastors and laity would have better Bible teaching in the churches as well as for Baptist men’s ministry, missions and church administration.”
Frank Lawson Pankey, a Virginia gentleman, would have been 86 next week. He died on Dec. 12, 2010. He left behind a legacy of dedication to his family and his calling and of service to the many Baptist churches of Virginia.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies, located on the campus of the University of Richmond. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.