The theme of the annual meeting of the General Association set for Nov. 8-9 in Richmond is “ReJoice, ReClaim, ReJesus.” It is a repetitive use of the prefix which refers to “back” or “again” or “anew.” Hidden within the three words like some acrostic are the words: “I Claim Jesus.” Can you find them?
Fred Anderson
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Usually the prefix is used without a hyphen unless it is needed to show clearly the meaning of a word which has been coined to serve a particular need. A hyphen might help “Re-Jesus.” A hyphen might also help the coined word “Re-journey,” which is what Lloyd Jackson has done through his new book entitled Reflections of a Journey. It is an autobiographical treatment of a history of several ministries which occupied Jackson’s nearly 30 years service with the Virginia Baptist Mission Board.
Through its pages Jackson makes a re-journey through the Baptist camps for boys, the long and important work of Baptist Men as well as the beginnings, development and involvement of Virginia Baptist disaster relief.
He is re-living a period of our history from the late 1960s to the recent past. It is an eyewitness account because at every step and stage Jackson was there.
Lloyd Jackson
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It is not always a pleasant and enjoyable experience to re-journey. It means that the traveler has to plow through memory and unearth things which have been long buried. It requires the traveler to check names, dates, facts to be certain that the mind has not played tricks. It invites speculation as the traveler wonders “what if” the other fork in life’s road had been taken.
The Center for Baptist Heritage & Studies commissioned Jackson to write the memoir. The re-journey claimed the better part of a year but the final product is more than a trip diary. It is the collective story of thousands of Virginia Baptists who shared a journey in ministry unto others. The new book will be available at the Heritage Center and Historical Society’s booth at the BGAV meeting. Jackson also will be present to greet friends and share stories from a common journey.
Lloyd F. Jackson Jr. has been on an eventful journey since his birth in North Carolina in the summer of ’35. Even as a boy, Lloyd was engaged in missions through the Royal Ambassadors. Little did the boy know that as a man he would spend his life in missions.
It was while a student at Southeastern Seminary that he met Barbara Dunn of Bladenboro, N.C., a fellow seminarian who became his wife. The early years of their marriage were spent in Gaffney, S.C., and Franklinton, N.C., where Jackson served as a pastor.
In October 1968 Jackson joined the staff of the Virginia Baptist General (now Mission) Board. It was the same time that the Brotherhood Department changed its name to Baptist Men. It was more than semantics. The change indicated that greater emphasis was placed upon all of the men of the churches rather than just those involved in an organization. The emphasis also moved from “greet, meet and eat” to hands-on missions projects. It was about being doers and not hearers only.
Adult construction teams were part of the Baptist Men’s mission work when Lloyd was on staff at the VBMB. In his memoir, Jackson tells about an early trip in 1978 to Honduras where a team constructed an addition to a church building. A local family lived behind the church and they helped the Baptist visitors in many ways. In one instance, a family member stopped the group from buying pineapples from a street vendor, offering instead to walk two miles and buy them pineapples which were a nickel cheaper! The story reveals that developing relationships with people was as important as laying concrete blocks.
The camps — Piankatank and Peaks of Otter — provided challenging outdoor experiences and fun activities for boys as well as opportunities for learning and spiritual development. Many of the men active in churches today benefitted from those days at camp. In 1968 the board opened the camps to all boys regardless of race. One of the first African Americans hired for the program staff was Danny and at camp he learned to swim and was quickly accepted by the staff. He became a police officer in Richmond and as such once visited Camp Piankatank. Jackson’s son was working there at the time and Danny told him: “Tell your father what I am doing now. I am sure he thought I would be under the jail by now.” The story reveals that developing the total person was at the heart of Baptist camping.
Lloyd Jackson is a household name among Baptist men and boys but he gained a wider reputation through disaster relief. He has served as “the spot man” for many an emergency situation. He is known within the Red Cross as someone who knew how to get things done. He experienced some of his finest hours in the worst of times such as hurricanes and floods as well as the horrid national disaster simply known as 9/11.
Virginia Baptists can be glad that Lloyd Jackson took the journey in the first place and was willing to re-journey through his memoir.
Fred Anderson (fred.anderson@vbmb.org) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies.