Preacher pioneered radio ministry

For 55 years listeners of Christian radio station WJBY (930 AM) in Rainbow City have heard Floyd Crowe from 9:30 until 10  a.m. Monday through Saturday.
   
The 85-year-old Gadsden man is in his 65th year as a minister and has no plans of slowing down now.
   
Even though he has preached for more than six decades, he has had only a few pastorates. One began in 1945 at Second Baptist Church in Fort Payne and ended in 1951. Then, he spent the next 46 years at South Eleventh Street Baptist Church in Gadsden.
   
During those 46 years, he was actually heard on WJBY seven days a week because the worship service at South Eleventh Street Baptist was broadcast on Sundays. He jokes that the congregation of that church endured the plight of listening to the same preacher for all those years.
   
Nonetheless, according to Crowe, there were 1,051 baptisms at the church during that time. Crowe resigned from the pastorate at South Eleventh Street to care for his wife, Sara, who died less than two years ago.
    
Back in 1936, Crowe was working at Trion Glove Factory in Trion, Ga., when he felt called into the ministry.
   
“I just felt burdened to preach so much,” he said. He purchased a tent and led revivals in it at night.
   
At least four churches, Crowe said, can trace their beginnings to his tent revivals. From those revivals grew Minvale Baptist and Welcome Hill Baptist, both in Fort Payne; Moon Lake Baptist in Mentone and an interdenominational church between Trion and Summerville, Ga. He served as pastor of the latter for three years.
   
One of the tent revivals in Fort Payne was supposed to last two weeks, recalled Crowe. It went on for six weeks instead and 216 people made professions of faith.
   
Crowe began, while in Summerville, to use the broadcast medium as an evangelistic tool. His program aired on WROM in Rome, Ga. Then, at the pastorate in Fort Payne, he began to purchase air time on WJBY. “I’ve had a desire to reach people in every way possible,” he said of his use of radio.
   
He continues to purchase that air time, now at $560 a month. Sometimes, Crowe has to chip in a little to cover the cost. But most of the time, he said, love offerings that come through the mail meet the expense. “God has made it possible,” said Crowe. “I couldn’t tell you how God has kept it on all these years.”
   
Those letters that come in also report how his broadcast has changed lives. A woman near Fyffe and her parents, for example, all came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ through Crowe’s radio program.
   
Mike Hooks, vice president of WJBY and pastor of the independent New Life Tabernacle in Attalla, said many people in that church came to know Christ years ago through Crowe’s ministry.
   
“In my estimation, Floyd Crowe is one of the most dedicated in the ministry today,” said Hooks. “He’s my mentor” and a pattern for any young minister.
   
On Jan. 28, Twelfth Street Baptist Church in Gadsden, where Crowe is a member, held Floyd Crowe Recognition Day. At that time, Hooks presented two plaques to Crowe: one from WJBY for his 55 years on the air and one from New Life Tabernacle celebrating his ministry.
   
Crowe does not intend to give up his broadcasts, so long as he has good health. Now, he tapes the broadcasts in a studio at his home. He begins the segment with a song, performed by his grandsons Jeremy and Ethan Vice and accompanied by their mother and Crowe’s daughter, Martha Vice of Gadsden.
   
Though retired from his pastorate, Crowe continues to have a burden for people. He fills in for pastors, visits people in hospitals or health care centers and  seeks out opportunities to proclaim Christ.
   
“He is a pastor of all people,” said Hooks. “He still has the same heart for lost people as he did when he first started in the ministry.”