Azariah McKenzie His earthly journey ended on April 21, 2007, eighty-one years after it began in the rural village of Watt Town in St Ann, Jamaica, where Azariah McKenzie was born as the youngest of three sons to Charles and Eliza McKenzie on November 16, 1925.
During his childhood, Azariah was mentored by Eustace Atkinson, the head teacher of the Watt Town Primary School he attended, Ivy Francis, a teacher at the school, and Ivan C. Parsons, the pastor who baptized and helped to disciple him in his early years.
At the age of seventeen, he professed faith in Christ at an “open air” evangelistic meeting in the village square and was baptized shortly thereafter. With the benefit of private tuition, Azariah sat and passed the Jamaica First, Second and Third, Local Examinations and, at the age of twenty, he entered Calabar Theological College to prepare himself for the pastoral ministry. A gifted student, he completed the four-year course of study in three years.
Recognizing his potential, Calabar’s principal Keith Tucker encouraged Azariah to pursue further study in England and, in 1949, at the age of twenty-four and fresh from his studies at Calabar, Azariah travelled on a banana boat to England to study at Rawdon Baptist College in Leeds, West Yorkshire. This institution was run by the Northern Baptist Education Society, established in 1859.
In 1953, Leeds University conferred on Azariah the Bachelor of Divinity degree. In later years, Azariah satisfied the requirements for the Master of Sacred Theology from Andover Newton Seminary in Newton, Massachusetts and the Master of Sacred Theology degree from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
While Azariah was studying in England, he renewed his friendship with Marion Gibbs, from Gibraltar, just eight kilometres from Watt Town. Marion was then a student nurse in England and, like Azariah, her development was influenced by Baptist values instilled in part by the same pastor who influenced Azariah. In 1954, after their return to Jamaica, Azariah and Marion were married. The union produced a son named Everton. Marion became school nurse at Calabar High School, which was established by the Jamaica Baptist Union.
Azariah’s first pastoral posting was at the First Baptist Church (now Burchell Memorial Baptist Church) in Montego Bay – a church that is traceable to the ministry in western Jamaica of Moses Baker, a former enslaved African American who was second to George Liele as Baptist pioneers in Jamaica. Later, the witness was strengthened by Thomas Burchell who was one of the outstanding British Baptist missionaries to Jamaica. First Baptist Church was the church of Samuel Sharpe, one of Jamaica’s national heroes.
Azariah brought to Burchell and its daughter churches at Granville and Tower Hill youthful zeal and energy, and his developing administrative and organizational skills. To supplement his meager salary of twelve pounds (£12) per month, Pastor McKenzie was allowed by the circuit and the Jamaica Baptist Union to teach part-time at Cornwall College, the much respected boy’s high school in Montego Bay. His experience at this school stood him in good stead in later years when Azariah served as a member, and later chairman for many years, of the Board of Governors of Calabar High School.
In 1960, the JBU Annual Assembly decided to call Azariah McKenzie as its first full-time General Secretary and Azariah’s ministry as the principal JBU leader began in 1961. At first, Azariah combined this role with that of the first Chaplain of Calabar High School.
For nineteen years, Azariah served as JBU General Secretary during which he distinguished himself as the architect of the modern Jamaica Baptist Union (JBU). He was a visionary with a sharp and disciplined mind. He was a hard worker who applied himself with vigor and diligence to the duties of his office and carved out for JBU a distinctive role within the church community in Jamaica and the Caribbean. Thorough, meticulous, cautious and always well-prepared, he conducted research that led to JBU introducing new policies to aid the churches’ faithful fulfillment of their ministry and the strengthening and consolidation of the Union’s corporate witness.
Under Azariah’s watch, several significant new projects were undertaken. These include the following fourteen developments. A new Global Financing Scheme was introduced to streamline the financial operation of the Union. The JBU also cooperated with other major Protestant denominations in Jamaica to form the United Theological College of the West Indies (UTCWI) in 1966. The move of Baptist students from Calabar to UTCWI was smooth and efficient.
A new post-collegiate two-year probationary period was included in the process of ministerial training. This obviated the need for graduating students to receive a personal call to the pastorate leading to immediate ordination.
The lengthy process leading to JBU’s incorporation was brought to completion under Azariah’s watch, when the Jamaican Parliament passed Law 16 of 1969 effectively incorporating all properties held by the churches associated in JBU under the JBU Corporation.
Azariah worked to establish and strengthen the Associations formed on a parish basis. He promoted the restructuring of the JBU Annual Assembly to achieve greater participation and effectiveness. He supported a programme to establish Baptist witness in parish capitals where none existed and an initiative to revive Baptist churches that enjoyed earlier years of great vigor and effectiveness.
Azariah introduced new conciliation procedures to resolve conflicts between pastors and their church or circuit. He promoted a plan to reduce the size of circuits and bring about a more rational geographical alignment or grouping of churches into circuits. Azariah skillfully negotiated the potential conflict between local church autonomy and corporate Union initiative to ensure that the glory of God and the welfare of the churches were always the priority concerns.
Under Azariah’s watch, the JBU Youth Department was restructured into the more comprehensive Christian Education Department. Two Baptist ministers, Horace Russell and Joseph Edwards contributed significantly to this development.
Local churches were encouraged and facilitated to undertake training programmes in Christian stewardship and to be involved in educational ministries geared to meet the needs of the whole person.
A notable achievement of Azariah’s tenure was the establishment of the Jamaica Baptist Union Conference Centre at Nutshell, Duncans, Trelawny. Major contributors to this development were Stephen S. James and John M. Bee, pastors of Duncans and Brown’s Town Baptist circuits respectively, and Luther Gibbs, JBU President. The Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, USA, gave liberal financial support to establishing the Nutshell project.
One major contribution of Azariah was related to partnership and collaboration by JBU on the local and international levels. Within Jamaica, Azariah contributed to the deepening of respect for the JBU as a partner ecclesial body within the local ecumenical movement and the local ecumenical theological college already mentioned.
Within the Caribbean, McKenzie was primarily responsible – and he received great assistance from Clarence Samuel Reid – for mobilizing Baptist unions and conventions in the formation in 1970 of the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship, which he served for sixteen years as Executive Secretary-Treasurer until his retirement in 1996. One of the major projects of the CBF was the production of indigenous and culturally-relevant Sunday School literature through Caribbean Christian Publications.
Also within the Caribbean, JBU, under McKenzie’s leadership, contributed significantly to the formation in 1973 of the Caribbean Conference of Churches as an ecumenical organization.
On the international level, JBU streamlined relations with the Baptist Missionary Society in the United Kingdom and developed positive relations with Baptists in USA and Canada.
On the global scale, JBU continued to nurture relations with the Baptist World Alliance, in which Azariah, as General Secretary of the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship, was appointed BWA Regional Secretary. He so excelled in this role that some BWA Executive members tried to recruit him to serve as BWA General Secretary.
When he died on April 21, 2007, McKenzie left a lasting legacy that commands the respect of the Baptist community, locally, regionally and internationally. Personally, I learned much about leadership and servanthood from Azariah McKenzie.
* The author has drawn extensively on essays on Azariah McKenzie written in 1996 and 2007, by Arthur Edgar, distinguished Jamaica Baptist minister. Now retired, Edgar is the celebrated former head of the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship’s Caribbean Christian Publications, and former member of the leadership team of the Caribbean Baptist fellowship.
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