M. E. W. Sawyers: A Gifted, Selfless Servant of God

Menzie Sawyers

 Penhurst (later called Penshurst) Estate, which was some six and a half kilometres from Brown’s Town in St Ann, might have acquired its name from Penshurst castle in Kent, England. It was a relatively small coffee-growing estate with consistently less than 100 enslaved persons of African descent.

Strangely, it seems, the Estate bequeathed to the Baptist cause both James Finlayson and Deacon Nathaniel. It is fortuitous that, in the nineteenth century, George Henderson, Baptist minister at Brown’s Town from 1876 to 1926, acquired the Penshurst property from John Scarlett of Worthy Park Estate. In later years, John and Mary Bee, late of Brown’s Town Baptist Church, became the owners of the property.

It was at Penhurst that the celebrated abolitionist James Williams was born into slavery in 1819. When Joseph Sturge, the British Quaker businessman and abolitionist, was on a visit to Jamaica to enquire into the treatment of formerly enslaved person who remained on the plantations in Jamaica during the period of apprenticeship, Sturge was introduced to then eighteen-year-old Williams. Impressed by the story Williams told about the excesses faced by apprentices in the Penshurst area, Sturge arranged Williams’ travel to England where he shared a powerful and credible witness to the suffering faced by people under apprenticeship on plantations in Jamaica. While he was in England, Williams wrote Narrative of Events since the First of August, 1834, by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica – an autobiographical text by a Caribbean person who had experienced slavery and apprenticeship. The book that was first published in 1837 – and again by Duke University Press in 2001 – catalogues the hardships suffered by apprentices on the slave plantation at Penshurst.

It was there at Penshurst that, in 1834, several apprentices heard and responded to the challenge to make a personal commitment to Christ. When they achieved their emancipation, some of them joined the Baptist church at Sturge Town and their minister, John Clark, who was pastor of the Brown’s Town circuit of churches, then comprising Brown’s Town, Bethany and Sturge Town, named the leader of the group Deacon Nathaniel. “In Nathaniel,” Clark said, “there is no guile.”

Nathaniel had a daughter who was active in the life of the church and she was selected to be a “leaderess.” She married and had two children, naming one of them Effie. Effie attended Westwood High School, which was formed through the initiative of Rev. William Webb, pastor of the Stewart Town Baptist Church in Trelawny from 1863 to 1912.  Effie married Terrence Sawyers, who became a minister of the Jamaica Baptist Union who was trained for the mission field at Harley College in England and had gone to serve on the Congo-Balolo mission team sponsored by a British Baptist Missionary agency, founded by Henry Grattan Guinness II in 1873. The Society began its work in India and later added Congo and Peru to its mission field. It operated with an interdenominational focus. In 1900, the name of the Society was changed to Regions Beyond Missionary Union. The mission operated in the Belgian Congo from 1889-1915.

After Sawyers returned to Jamaica, his union with his wife Effie produced a second child and their first son, whom they named Menzie Edward Williamson Sawyers. Menzie was born in Claremont, St. Ann on July 18, 1905, while his father served as pastor at Coultart Grove Baptist Church. From Menzie was a little child, his parents treasured the hope that he would become a Baptist minister. Their dream became a reality and through Menzie, Terrence and Effie Sawyers made a wonderful contribution to the life and ministry of the JBU.

At first, Menzie’s mother home-schooled him and, when his parents moved to the Thompson Town circuit of Baptist churches, Menzie attended Smithville Elementary School, Clarendon, and later, Titchfield High School.

When he was twelve years old, Menzie became a Christian and he formed the view that he would be a reliable layman in the church. The direction of his life changed after he met Rev. T. I. Stockley, an emissary in Jamaica from the Baptist Union in Britain. Stockley was the commissioner British Baptists sent to Jamaica to establish a Sustentation Scheme to lend stability to the financial situation faced by Baptist ministers in the country.  Stockley served as Superintendent of the Sustentation Scheme in Jamaica in the early 1920s.

It was while Sawyers resided at Smithville that Stockley paid a visit to the township and saw young Sawyers’ performance at open air meetings in Smithville, Leicesterfield and Grantham in Clarendon. Stockley spoke with him and convinced him that he should enter the ministry.

In 1924, Sawyers entered Calabar Theological College, where he excelled as a student. In his final year, Calabar’s President Price recommended to the Jones Pen (now, Jones Town) Baptist Church, which was located close to the site of Calabar College, that Sawyers should serve as Student Pastor there. The Church membership warmed to this suggestion and, one year later, the church issued a call to Sawyers to become their minister.

In 1928, Sawyers, who was only 24 years, was ordained a minister in a service arranged by the Jamaica Baptist Union in June 1929. Rev. Glaister Knight of the Second Baptist Church,  Montego Bay, delivered the charge to the newly ordained minister.

Sawyers received a generous welcome and strong support from the Jones Pen church and community who joined in the effort to complete and furnish the church building that had been under construction. “Christchurch,” as the church was named, erected a lovely edifice that was cruciform in design. Sawyers led the circuit, comprising Jones Town and Canaan Mount churches, to welcome into circuit fellowship Mount Bethel and Constitutional Hill churches, both in the hills of St Andrew. In addition, Sawyers served several years as Moderator of Tarrant Baptist Church at Molynes Road, Kingston. Sawyers remained at Jones Town until his death in 1980. He served Christchurch for more than fifty years; Canaan Mount for fifty years; and Mount Bethel and Constitutional Hill for over 30 years.

Ivorall Davis, who wrote frequently about Sawyers in The Gleaner newspaper, reported that “In his early days at Jones Pen, [Sawyers] did his visiting by foot and bicycle. For his visits to Canaan Mount he travelled by tram car to Papine and used a hired horse to cross the mountain slopes. All this he did cheerfully and well, growing in stature with God and man.”

The Jones Town church became an influential centre of Baptist work both in the corporate area and in Jamaica Baptist Union. The church hosted a large Women’s Federation branch and a very strong branch of the Christian Endeavour Society. In 1933, Sawyers was elected president of the Christian Endeavour Union of Jamaica. He served in this position again in the 1942-43 year.

A committed Baptist, Sawyers placed his gifts at the disposal of the Jamaica Baptist Union (JBU). Apart from his faithful service as a pastor of Baptist churches, Sawyers occupied the position of JBU Chairman (now President) from 1945-46. With the illness, and later, the passing of JBU President U. N. Leo-Erskine in 1959, Sawyers acted as JBU President, for 1959-60. He served another term as JBU President, 1960-1961. He also was, for many years, a manager of Calabar Theological College and High School.

A committed ecumenist, Sawyers made his gifs available for service in wider Christian circles. He served five terms as Secretary of the Kingston Ministers’ Fraternal and became the Fraternal’s Vice President in 1941. It was from this fellowship that the Union of Evangelical Churches in Jamaica was born in 1895, which eventually became the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC) in 1971. Not surprisingly, Sawyers was elected President of the Jamaica Council of Churches, 1957-1959 and again from 1966 to 1967. 

In 1933, the Christian Endeavour Union of Jamaica chose Sawyers as its president and the Christchurch branch of the movement was one of the strongest and most effective Christian Endeavour Societies in Jamaica.  He was re-elected to this post in 1942-43.

Meanwhile, Sawyers manifested his social consciousness in his advocacy for holistic human development through various channels. In the 1930s, he was co-founder and Secretary of the School Children’s Lunch Fund. The Fund sponsored a children’s lunch  programme for the community of Jones Town and, later, much of the Greater Kingston area. In addition, Sawyers served as Secretary of the Kingston School Board, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Mico Training College from 1949 to 1971, Manager of the Board of several Schools, such as Jones Town Primary, Chetolah Park Primary, Greenwich Town Junior and Primary, and Trench Town Primary.

On the international scene, the Baptist Missionary Society of England invited Sawyers to deliver the annual sermon of the Society at a service held at Westminster in central London in 1948. Sawyers was the first person of African descent to preach from that pulpit and the first Minister from an overseas area to deliver the Society’s annual sermon. He was followed in this role several years later by JBU minister, Rev Dr Horace Russell. During Sawyers’ visit, he also preached in some of the leading Baptist Churches in London, Birmingham and Liverpool.

The story is told of Menzie Sawyers who, on a visit to England, was walking down a street in London with two of his fellow countrymen when they encountered a group of white Englishmen who exclaimed, “Darkness covers the land” to which Sawyers promptly responded, “And thick darkness the people.” This was the quick-thinking, proudly Black Sawyers at work.

In the 1950s, Sawyers returned to England to work to help increase understanding between the English people and West Indian migrants in Britain.

Sawyers represented Baptists of Jamaica and the Caribbean at the World Young Men’s Christian Association Conference in Japan in 1958, following which the World’s Young Men’s Christian Association (WYMCA) commissioned him to prepare the churches in Trinidad for an assembly under W. Y. M. C. A. auspices that was scheduled to take place in Jamaica in 1962.

According to Ivorall Davis, Sawyers’ favourite Scripture passage was Philippians 3:12-14. "Not as though  I  had  already attained,  either  were  already perfect:  but  I  follow  after it  that I  may  apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press forward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

When, on Saturday, May 24, 1980, he breathed his last,  Sawyers left a legacy that all Jamaicans could celebrate. In a statement issued at Sawyers’ passing, Jamaica’s governor general, Sir Florizel Glasspole, said of the deceased, “He earned the respect and love of all the people with whom he had contact. Never sparing himself, [Sawyers] gave devoted and dedicated service to the people.” A gifted, selfless servant of God had completed his earthly pilgrimage.