Lindsey Robinson: July 29, 1948-February 4, 2008. Photo supplied by E. Daniel Martin.

That choice took him from a nominal Methodist childhood in an African-American community on the south side of Chicago through fervent Roman Catholicism, student activism at DePaul University, and into the Pentecostal church – his wife Myra’s faith community.

But while Robinson valued the Pentecostal emphasis on personal righteousness, he missed the “gospel of social righteousness.” After reading Anabaptist history and meeting Mennonites while teaching school in Philadelphia public schools, Lindsey asked Myra, “Why don’t we move to the Mennonites?”

That was 26 years ago. Robinson deeply appreciated the way his new family of faith in Lancaster Mennonite Conference (LMC) was ready to get its hands dirty wrestling with issues of racism, poverty, violence, and warfare.

While serving as an LMC pastor first at Hamilton Street and later Locust Lane Mennonite Churches in Harrisburg, Robinson also served as an associate director of Home Ministries at Eastern Mennonite Missions, 1982-92, and then in various roles for LMC from 1993-2004, including Conference Minister for the last seven. He also served on the EMM Executive Committee 1997-2004.

Robinson last served as the general secretary of the New Testament Fellowship of Anabaptist/Mennonite Churches, a role he assumed after leaving his work with LMC in 2004. He died on February 4, 2008.

“When Robinson took his first pastorate with us in 1982, I never imagined the blessing he’d be to our district and conference, as well as the worldwide Mennonite church,” said John Kraybill, bishop of the Harrisburg District of LMC from 1981-1996, at a memorial service for Robinson at Mellinger Mennonite Church, April 26. Kraybill highlighted a much-appreciated sermon Robinson gave at the Mennonite World Conference in Zimbabwe in 2003.

Keith Weaver, moderator of LMC commented, “LMC was blessed to have 11 focused years of Robinson’s ministry after his time at EMM. He was always passionate about raising up leaders and had a heart for evangelism.”

Weaver added that in Robinson’s tenure at LMC he chaired the Leadership Council, worked with Damascus Road anti-racism training, and represented LMC on the churchwide integration committee. He was known as a man of deep integrity and transparency, who knew how to stand firm when others would have cut and run.

Richard Showalter, president of EMM, called Robinson “a radical disciple of Jesus with a movement consciousness” – a modern day Celtic-Waldensian-Anabaptist-Moravian-Pentecostal Mennonite.

“As a member of our Executive Committee he was a staunch, articulate evangelical Anabaptist Christian,” Showalter said. “With him on the committee, I always experienced that solid, committed spiritual covering which frees a mission organization to focus creatively and unapologetically on the core of our mandate – to share the gospel of Jesus Christ is places where the church is weak or nonexistent, seeking to catalyze movements of Jesus.

“As an African American leader in the context of a largely Swiss German church, he was crystal clear on the core of our faith, and he saw our spiritual blind spots better than most. When we were tempted to allow our ethnic loyalties to trump our loyalty to Jesus, he called our hand. He grieved for a weak and irresolute church. He suffered for a people who carry an inestimable treasure, but who too seldom value it.”

Lawrence Chiles, bishop of the Koinonia Fellowship of Churches, moderated the memorial service attended by about 200 people from as far away as New Haven, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Tanzania. The group represented not only LMC but virtually all of the new Anabaptist networks which LMC has spawned in the past decade.

Chiles remembered the day that he, Robinson, and Robert Suggs, a former pastor of Locust Lane, stood at the back of the LMC Leadership Assembly. As the three African-American leaders looked out on all the plainly clothed Swiss-German Mennonites, Suggs asked, “How in the world did we end up here?”

Robinson was attracted to Anabaptist understandings of the gospel, and while he experienced the sociological differences from Swiss German Mennonites, there was a deep spiritual and theological affinity. He once commented, “I joined the Mennonite church for theological reasons. If I ever leave it will also be for theological reasons. I don’t have sociological reasons for sticking with the ‘tribe.’”

In his tribute Chiles said, “Lindsey always had a stack of books, was always quoting authors. Being with him was a commitment to advancement and growth. He was a scholar, a teacher, a discipler.”

Michael Evans, pastor of Christ the King and who led foot-stomping worship at the memorial service, first encountered Robinson after a painful church split in 2000. “It was a complicated and chaotic time,” Evans said, “but he spoke an apt word. He invited us to serve on the leadership team where we still are today, and the church has grown from 40 to 200.”

Don Jacobs, a former EMM missionary in Africa, reflected on how Robinson’s life and ministry flowed so naturally with the East African revival streams that had transformed his own life during his 20 years in Africa. “It was impossible to maintain a judgmental or critical spirit around Lindsey,” Jacobs said. “He’d always say, alluding to Jesus and the adulterous woman, ‘I’m waiting to hear your stone drop.’”

E. Daniel Martin, who preached the closing sermon, noted that Robinson never allowed his health problems to define him. His life was defined by the worship of God. During the seven months before his death February 4, 20-30 people gathered weekly to proclaim the goodness of God in Robinson’s bedroom at 226 Reily Street in Harrisburg.

“God granted him four more years of life than doctors originally projected,” Martin said. “As we stay in God’s presence in worship, we hear and understand the word and will of God for our lives. May the mantle from Lindsey fall on each of us.”

In a moving tribute to her husband of 34 years, Myra Robinson said that Lindsey had been a voracious reader since the age of four. Deeply influenced by his godly grandmother whom he always saw reading her Bible, Lindsey once asked when she was going to finish reading that same old book. His grandma shot back, “It’s not when I’m finished with the Book; it’s when the Book is finished with me.”

Myra added, “On February 4, 2008, I think Lindsey heard the words, ‘close the Book.’” Then she led the group in singing, “All the Way my Savior Leads Me.”

-Jewel Showalter

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