It was a crisp, cool, cloudless day on Oct. 2 for the 125th anniversary celebration at Big Island Baptist Church in Bedford County, Va. The distinctive temple-like church building had been spruced up for the big day. The menfolks had a cooker under the huge picnic shelter and they prepared hamburgers and hot dogs. The womenfolks brought their favorite vegetable dishes and enough deviled eggs to indicate that every hen house had been raided. Stalwarts were determined to eat in the shelter despite the chilly weather, but the careful headed for the warmth of the fellowship hall.
Fred Anderson
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Finding relief from the cool temperature and the wind, Edith Vaughan Parker sat in a friend’s automobile for the dinner on the grounds. Earlier she had thrilled the congregation with tales of her young adulthood in Big Island Church where her father, E.S. Vaughn, was pastor from 1938-45. His old car — now an antique — had been purchased by a local man and was parked once again on the church lot.
Proud to be 90, Edith recalled in the opening service the time before her call to Brazil where she served for so long as a missionary. “I knew that I wanted to be a foreign missionary; and every time I thought of something else, God would say, ‘No, you must go across the mountains.’ I thought God was going to call me to Africa; but when God called me beyond the mountains, it was to Brazil and I loved it!
“Brazil is a tropical country,” mused Edith. “I never saw frost or snow while there and I missed those things from Big Island, Virginia.” She told about her work at Freedom House, a community center in Brazil, and referred to a little girl whom she helped lead to Christ. Recently the girl, now a 70-year-old grandmother, phoned from New York City, asking her to visit and tell her grandchildren about Jesus.
Buena Vista Baptist Church
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Edith remembered that as a teenager her father asked her to be his assistant at Bible school. “What fun we had,” she said, “singing and learning about Jesus at Big Island Baptist Church.” Her father was on a field of churches which included Big Island and Hunting Creek. One summer Edith offered to lead Bible school at Sharon, an African-American Baptist church about half way between her father’s churches. “There were so many volunteers there that I had to make up jobs for them. We had a great Bible school program; and for the commencement Sharon was full of children and parents. The next year when I asked them if they wanted us to lead Bible school, they declined, explaining that they now knew how to do it themselves.” She asserted that her missionary career started at Big Island “where Daddy taught me how to tell little children about Jesus.”
Big Island Baptist Church
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The invitation to this columnist to attend the anniversary service originally had been extended by the pastor, Bryon LePere. He and his wife, Annie Cahoon LePere, attended the University of Richmond and Annie was a student assistant at the Virginia Baptist Historical Society. The couple had served the Big Island Church since 2003, but just prior to the anniversary celebration, they had moved down the road to Buena Vista where Bryon had begun his new pastorate at Buena Vista Baptist Church.
They — and this columnist — managed to be in two churches on the same Sunday. Annie and their children, Nathan and Mary, were at Big Island and Bryon came as soon as his morning service was over. It was good to observe the warm and loving relationship between pastor and people and everyone was wishing them well in their new church. By late afternoon, we all were in Buena Vista for the installation service.
Bryon had invited two of his pastor friends from Bedford County — David Williamson, former pastor of Hunting Creek and now serving on staff at Culpeper Baptist Church, and Dennis Moody, pastor of Sharon Missionary Baptist Church, the same church which Edith had mentioned in her remembrances. The Sharon pastor also brought his choir, and although there were only about 15 in the choir, they possessed the vocal strength of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They were spirited in their singing and the Buena Vista members appreciated their guests.
Bryon LePere
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Bryon told his new congregation that the Sharon and Big Island congregations began a fifth Sunday community sing, and through those experiences, the two pastors had “become like brothers.” Dennis Moody delivered the sermon for the installation service.
At the service Buena Vista Church proved that its reputation was still alive and well. Some 70 years ago, John Wayland, the eminent historian of the Valley, had observed that the church was “conspicuous for its hospitality as well as for its good business.” Julian Pentecost, editor emeritus of the Religious Herald, has shared that the church was welcoming, affirming and encouraging of him when he served there in the late 1940s as a young seminarian. He had agreed to be summer youth minister with pastor David Hammock who had been there since 1941, but he arrived to discover that Hammock had resigned to accept another church. Pentecost suddenly was thrown into the role of pastor. He found them to be “warm, understanding and supportive.”
At the installation service, Jim Cox, chair of the pastor search team, spoke about the church experiences over the last four years with an intentional interim pastor, undergoing the careful deliberation which ultimately resulted in the committee’s selection. Typical of such committees, the process included some 40 meetings over the past year. No wonder the big day of installation of a new pastor was such a time of celebration!
Pentecost once reflected upon his personal gratitude for the way in which Buena Vista Church cared about him as a young minister. “Whomever God commissions, he honors his promise to empower. This basic gospel truth took on new meaning for me in 1947-48 and since that time I have never doubted its validity.”
The truth is being understood once again in the unfolding ministry of the new pastor and in the life of an old and experienced church.
Fred Anderson ([email protected]) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies.
Bryon LePere was pastor at both Big Island (left) and Buena Vista.