Retired Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) leader Henry Lyon celebrated 50 years of ministry Nov. 10 at Snowdoun Baptist Church, where he was ordained on that date in 1952.
Lyon, 67, was a senior in high school when he accepted his first pastorate of Snowdoun, taking over the position from a bivocational pastor injured on a construction job. Lyon was a 14-year-old at RA camp in Shocco Springs when he felt God calling him into ministry and made that commitment public.
He preached his only 15-minute sermon at Snowdoun the first Sunday he substituted for the injured pastor, then had to come up with another one when he was called back again. When it became clear the injured pastor would never be able to return to the pulpit, the church turned to 17-year-old Lyon. “‘He’s just a kid,’” Lyon said the association director of missions pointed out. “‘He doesn’t know how to be a pastor.’”
“‘That’s OK,’” a church spokesman replied, according to Lyon. “‘We don’t know how to be a church. We’ll grow up together.’”
For the next five years, church and pastor did exactly that. While Lyon attended school — Sidney Lanier High School in Montgomery and afterward Samford University — the church grew, starting with seven to 15 in Sunday School and about 25 in worship. Constituted shortly before Lyon became pastor, the church, which originally met in an old gas company building, built a facility with limited resources.
Along the way, Lyon was learning some important lessons in serving as pastor. “At a very early age it showed me if people pray, and you’re following God’s will and vision, and you’ve done everything you can, God will do the rest.”
A year into his pastorate, Lyon became very ill in the midst of a polio epidemic in Montgomery. During a coma-like state he had a vision of himself in the pulpit preaching in his church, and watched six of his friends to whom he had been witnessing receive Christ.
Barely recovered, Lyon went back to church after losing 35 pounds. His six friends were sitting in the exact pew of his vision, and Lyon preached without notes the message of his dream.
All six responded, coming forward in the order that he had envisioned. When his parents later wanted to know what he had preached, Lyon couldn’t remember, and neither could anyone else. Today all six men serve Christ, according to Lyon.
“That’s one of those moments in life that showed me only God could do it,” Lyon said. “I couldn’t remember because it was God’s.” Pale, emaciated and hanging onto the pulpit, Lyon realized that “when I am weak; then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).
Lyon also received precious training at home in what it means to serve God. His late father was pastor of Highland Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery after serving as an army chaplain during World War II. His uncle, the late Herschel Hobbs, opened his home to Lyon and his mother at one point for a few years when his father was away with the military.
Although both men served as key role models, neither pressured Lyon to emulate them. In fact, Lyon was initially disappointed in his father’s low-key acceptance of his vocation.
He advised his son that if he could do anything else and be happy, then God had not really called him to preach.
But preach is the only thing Lyon ever wanted to do, and as a child he preached to the chickens in the back yard and to his cousin Jeremy Hobbs. The chickens never made a decision, Lyon quipped, but Jeremy always did — even a genuine one at his cousin’s invitation. It appeared Lyon was destined to follow in his father’s and uncle’s footsteps.
“I learned very quickly that I really could not be just like either one of them,” said Lyon. His father was a powerful, dynamic orator, and his uncle was a theologian. Lyon developed his own style, becoming known, in part, for his preaching and humor.
After serving at Snowdoun for five years, Lyon served as pastor of Pike Road Baptist Church while attending New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Eastern Valley Baptist Church in Bessemer and First Baptist Church of Anniston.
He met his wife, Sarah Jane Flowers of Ozark, at Samford. They have two children and three grandchildren.
Although Lyon, then 29, was content at Anniston, where he had just baptized more than 100 that year, a pastor search committee from First Baptist Church, Selma, looking for another candidate, ended up at his church instead.
Declaring themselves there in an unofficial capacity, they soon considered Lyon as prospective pastor, despite their never having had a pastor younger than 45. Lyon rejected the idea outright until his mother pushed him to pray.
“It was as clear as handwriting on the wall that God said I was to go,” Lyon recalled. He accepted the position and was on the church field a month before either party remembered to discuss salary.
His wife, who had just given birth to their son, went to the church field without ever having previewed it. It was May 1965, just a couple of months after the historic Selma march.
“With all that was going on, it was a wonderful church,” Lyon said. He spent the next 21 years at the downtown church, baptizing 100 people two years in a row. He particularly valued ministry to Air Force pilots who were coming to Craig Field, then going straight from there to combat school and on to Vietnam.
He received letters from pilots requesting tapes of his sermons, which they passed on to others. Lyon got back reports of men receiving Christ in the midst of the Vietnam War.
His reaction was to thank God for using him in the midst of this terrible time of war.
Lyon eventually resigned the Selma church to take leadership of a newly created department at the SBOM, which encompassed ministry to senior adults, singles and families, and eventually evolved into the office of deacon and family ministry. He went to work with no budget and no job description but recognizing responsibilities that “I could really sink my teeth into” and spent the next 15 years in that role.
He and his wife discovered new opportunities to minister, traveling together as they conducted deacon and wife workshops and marriage enrichment seminars. They would look at each other as Lyon would say, “Can you believe I get paid for this? I would do it anyway.”
Meanwhile, opportunities to preach continued. Since retiring from the SBOM in January 2001, Lyon continues to serve as consultant to the office. “I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough to do,” Lyon said, but after conducting nine revivals and preaching 53 other times, that fear has been allayed. “In retirement I’m getting to do what I love to do most, and that’s preach.” Through the years Lyon relied on a philosophy of ministry that put trust in God.
“I always felt if we pray through it and know God’s will — He’ll provide an answer.” To critics who have called this “simplistic,” Lyon responded, “Then don’t disturb me. It’s served me quite well.” Although Lyon just celebrated 50 years of ministry he sees no end to his labors.
“I think the great thing about the preaching ministry is as long as there’s breath, it doesn’t end.”
Share with others: