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| Gibraltar Baptist Church erected when William Webb was pastor of the Stewart Town/Gibraltar circuit |
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| Ivan Parsons |
Ivan Cyprian Parsons was born in Goshen, Brown’s Town, the first of three children to Josiah and Flora Parsons. His siblings were Aubrey and Iris. His grandfather, Thomas Henry Parsons, the senior deacon at the Brown’s Town Baptist Church prayed that his infant grandson might early be dedicated to God and God answered his prayer.
Parson’s early education was at the Brown’s Town Government School under Mr. G. T. Brown and the Brown’s Town High School under Mr. T. A. Bramwell. Rev. George Henderson administered his baptism when he was fifteen and Parsons served in his church as Sunday School Secretary, Lay Preacher and
organist. After six years of training and work in business – as a clerk in the
business of J. H. Levy & Sons Ltd., -- he answered God’s call to the ministry
and entered Calabar College in September 1925, spending five years at the
institution with colleagues such as Albert Brown, Menzie Sawyers, Joswyn Leo
Rhynie, Clarence Whylie – all of whom were to play prominent roles in JBU
leadership in later years.
On Good Friday, 1930, a massive gathering was present
in Brown’s Town Baptist Church to witness Parson’s ordination to the Christian
ministry. Thomas Gordon Somers, Jamaica’s “silver-tongued orator” was the
preacher and Rev. George Henderson, the ordinand’s pastor, offered the prayer of
ordination.
Parsons started his pastoral ministry as assistant to Jamaica’s
“prince of preachers,” T. Gordon Somers in the Stewart Town/Gibraltar circuit of
Baptist churches. In 1931, after Gordon Somers’ death, the churches of the
circuit invited Parsons to assume full pastoral leadership among them. It is
said that, on the first Sunday after he became the pastor of the circuit,
something strange happened as he delivered the sermon from the pulpit of the
Stewart Town Baptist Church. A pigeon flew into the church and perched on his
right shoulder!
Parsons spent his entire ministry in the Stewart Town/Gibraltar
circuit where he was greatly loved. During these productive years, he helped
influence many young people to devote their life to Christ. Parsons also
influenced seven young men to answer the call to the ministry and they gave many
years in the service of churches associated with the Jamaica Baptist Union. The
group includes Azariah McKenzie and Luther Gibbs, two distinguished former JBU
leaders.
While fulfilling the duties of a busy ministry, Parsons found time to
serve in the JBU organization. He was the person who introduced the motion that
led to the introduction in JBU of the Young People’s Department, the Christian
Education Department and the former Building Committee. He was for many years a
member of the JBU Executive Committee and the Calabar Sub-Committee. He was
elected JBU Chairman in 1946 and again in 1958.
His service to education
included membership of the Board of Governors of Calabar High School. He was,
for 13 years Secretary, and then Chairman, of the Board of Governors of the
Westwood High School. He was also chairman for many years of the Keith School
Board.
Parsons had strong ecumenical instincts and enjoyed close friendship with
colleagues from several denominations. He was active in the Mandeville Keswick
Movement, in which he was featured preacher on several occasions.
Parsons was an
outstanding musician and some of the hymn tunes used in the Gibraltar circuit to
this day were his own composition. I grew up singing some of his tunes and, when
I never heard these tunes being used anywhere else and couldn’t find them in any
music edition of Baptist Hymnbooks, I investigated and discovered, several years
after Parsons’ death, that these tunes were Parson’s composition. The initials
“ICP” were written on the top right hand corner of the page of the large “Music
Edition” of the Baptist Hymnbook several organists used over many years in the
Gibraltar Baptist Church. I.C. Parsons composed several excellent tunes. None is
as precious to me as that for the hymn “Jesus, I, my cross, have taken.” It is
said that Parsons won several competitions organized in England for organists.
It was while he was in his second term as JBU Chairman that Parsons passed away
on December 7, 1959, after a brief illness. He died of cancer.
Two funeral
services were held for Parsons on December 11, 1959 – one in Brown’s Town led by
Rev. J. M. Bee and the other in Stewart Town led by JBU President Rev. Menzies
Sawyers. In the first service, the Brown’s Town church choir presented a song
that Parsons composed during his final illness.
In Parsons’ honour, JBU erected
a building at Calabar Theological College. It was to serve as a lecture room and
the students’ common room and was of adequate size to accommodate the increased
student population at Calabar College, now that students from Union Theological
Seminary would be benefiting from joint lectures with Calabar’s students. The
British Baptist Missionary Society donated £900 of the £1,300 required to
construct the building, which was officially opened as Ivan Parsons Memorial
Hall on September 21, 1960.
In paying tribute to Parsons, JBU general secretary,
Joswyn Leo Rhynie declared: “The passing of the Rev. Ivan C. Parsons has left a
great gap in the circles in which he served as pastor, member of school boards,
and lay magistrate.” Many years after his passing, stories about Parsons’
contribution were still alive in the Gibraltar Circuit.
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