Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990 TAG: 9003300263
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANCES STEBBINS CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Lashley, who was recently named executive director of the 71 congregations of Southern Baptists in the Roanoke Valley Association, was brought into active Christian fellowship by friends. He was 17 before making the profession of faith in Jesus familiar to many younger Baptist children.
Lashley, who came to Roanoke from a Danville pastorate a month ago, said he is not too sorry for his childhood ignorance of Baptist practices and doctrines.
"I had few models for bad ministry," he said, as he was being interviewed at his Plantation Road Northeast office. "I had to carve out my own niche."
Lashley was a student at the University of Richmond and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, pastor of several rural churches, a campus minister, college professor and guidance counselor and finally minister of a city congregation.
In the early 80s he earned a doctor of ministry degree from Southeastern Baptist Seminary.
After the former executive, the Rev. Rolen C. Bailey, announced that he would take early retirement last year, a search committee of clergy and laity from churches of the association interviewed many possible successors.
Lashley's varied background made him an early choice for the job. He was unanimously approved in January by representatives from association churches.
Lashley, 51, and his wife, the former Barbara Norman of Martinsville, are getting settled in a suburban Vinton home. They said they are pleasantly surprised at "the diversity of the valley."
Lashley said he had thought of Roanoke as an overgrown industrial town. Barbara Lashley, an artist of impressionistic and abstract tastes, has exhibited at Center in the Square and is looking forward to becoming one of its supporters.
As a Southside Virginian, Lashley also has been surprised at the relatively small black population. He said he has seen little racial integration in churches, at least among Southern Baptists.
But, he said the valley seems to have an unusually wide variety of religious groups. Lashley said he is concerned that many Roanoke Valley Baptist churches are still "moving into the 1990s with the programs and ideas of the 1950s."
He said many programs that were effective 30 years ago are poorly supported today and should either be discontinued or adapted to changing family lifestyles.
It's easier to name outmoded programs than it is to suggest what may keep Baptist churches healthy for the years to come, he said.
Like most church administrators, Lashley is concerned about the lack of support young adults are giving the institutional church.
When most mothers stayed home, it was expected that they would give as much as two weeks each summer to teach in vacation Bible schools. Today, even with many schools moved to evenings to accommodate working mothers, it is hard to find staff, Lashley said.
And despite a current promotion of Southern Baptist simultaneous revival meetings, Lashley considers them a doubtful way to bring people to Christ.
He remembers the days of two-week revivals, sometimes longer. Many churches long ago dropped such services in favor of other types of evangelism.
The youth music that was a fad among young Baptists 20 years ago doesn't have much appeal today. Young people take jobs early, buy cars, and take pride in the independent thinking modern education fosters, he said.
Yet, as was true with him growing up in Emporia, young people seek a source of strength that only familiarity with God can give.
Lashley, the father of three adult children, said the church must not give up its efforts to develop relevant programs but must engage in planning to see where neighborhood needs are.
Few churches, Lashley said, attract many for evening services today, but small groups, often using videos, can bring people with special needs together.
When a church is considering expanding its staff, it may well want to seek a person to work with senior adults over one who "will keep our children in the church," he noted.
Churches in the '50s, he said, had little for old or young single people, for the divorced or for children from broken families.
This, he said, was because programs were set up for extended families and allowed for less change in society.
The family-life centers that some large churches are erecting can provide some of these programs, Lashley said. But if the congregation is too small to have a family-life center, it can train laity to help.
Lashley, like administrators of many denominations, would like to see mergers between small congregations barely able to pay a pastor. But he is equally aware of the difficulty because settled members refuse to give up their territory and accept the challenge of change.
by CNB