Gordon Cosby and Church of the Savior had (have) a wonderful vision of Christian community and life, one grounded in experiencing God in prayer and taking that into community service. In addition to 'activist' ministries, for a time they also ran a retreat center. The Potter's House is a wonderful gathering place in the Adams Morgan section of Washington, DC. We were blessed to have him.

Gordon Cosby was unique. Yet, he was not too different from many Christian leaders of my father's generation who lived in Lynchburg, Virginia at one time or another and who lived productive lives well into their 80s and even their 90s. When I first moved to Washington, DC in 1978, I knew I wanted to be in NO other church than the one Gordon pastored, for he was no novice in the Christian faith but a seasoned man of God. Moreover, those associated with that congregation, were highly committed to Christ in much more than a nominal way.

Part of my attraction to my husband was the fact that he had grown up in Church of the Savior, where his parents were members and part of the Potter's House Mission Group in its early days. (Ironically, after we married, we joined a church closer to our home in Northern Virginia.)

Cosby, first and foremost was a disciple of Christ who lived what he taught, and he was not enthralled with celebrity or the type of ministries that take on the name of the founder but lived out Jesus' own realization that "my meat and drink is to to do the will" of the Father.

My own father, 94, a clergyman and member of the same church Gordon came out of -- Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church -- had attended Crozier Seminary which educated M.L. King, Jr. In Lynchburg my father left the full-time ministry to desegregate a formerly all black school and refused to join then segregated country clubs in Lynchburg because he did not want to belong to organizations that would not welcome all of God's people into their memberships.
(At 94, he he now happily plays golfs in Lynchburg, Virginia, visits the sick, and is asked by people 10 years' younger if he will officiate at their funerals.)

His sister, a director of nursing for Virginia Baptist Hospital, inspired so many young women to go into nursing as a Christian vocation that when she was 90, these former students -- not extended family members -- organized her 90th birthday party and came from all over the country not only to celebrate her life and Florence Nightingale-like devotion to her profession but to roast her. My aunt died at 93 after having pneumonia for one week , what she called an "old person's friend" because it takes people quickly. It was my honor to speak at her Memorial Service at Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church.

Dot and Tom Leachman, others of the same age group, were a significant duo in Lynchburg. Dot, college mate of Mary Cosby who had grown up in Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church when Mary's father was pastor , lived into her 80's. She played the organ at Mary and Gordon Cosby's wedding. Tom, now 103, the oldest alumnus of the Architectural School at UVA, and Dot were my youth directors in high school, and I recall when he was in his 90's, he was still walking up the hillside on summer retreats we both attended at Shrine Mont in Orkney Springs, VA. I asked this cheerful man just this past Christmas what had contributed to his longevity. He smiled and said that he and Dot had attended a Catholic retreat center in NM, Pecos for one month at an earlier juncture in their lives. When the abbot had asked Tom how the former should pray for the latter, Tom had responded, "for long life."

Clearly these Virginia Baptists who have lived to be nonagenarians and whose lives intersected with Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church -- speak to how a church or group ( " may make a significant contribution to its/their time in history. The lives of the aforementioned individuals (and that of Beverly Cosby, founder of The Lodge of the Fisherman in Lynchburg, a man I never have met), also speak to a rationale for childhood evangelism, in that all these individuals became Christians at young ages and were nurtured heavily in the church and for the most part were products of several generations of Christians.

Interesting, too, is that Randy Wallace of Braveheart fame grew up in this church which also has attracted a number of strong preachers over the years including the father of Mary Cosby, a grandfather of Pat Robertson, and more recently a 5th generation Baptist minister, Princeton educated, Dr. Jim Baucom currently senior pastor of Columbia Baptist Church in Falls Church, VA.

Gordon's life and death gives me pause to thank God for a life well lived. It also causes me to thank God for other contemporaries of his ilk whose lives have been touched by just ONE church. These individuals remind me of the Clapham Sect in their own way in their own Virginia Depression ERA/post WWII milieu.
"Iron sharpens iron/so one man sharpens another."pp

There are stories about preachers, and there are stories about preachers. Now and then, we get a new story that is above and beyond. The story of Gordon Cosby is one of those. As he went to places where caring hearts and hands were needed the most, he never for a moment saw himself as doing ministry that we would think of as above and beyond. Herb Shreve, the founder of Christian Motorcyclists Association, was a man like that. He started riding alone to motorcycle rallies, going to large gatherings of hardcore bikers with "nobody to minister to their needs." His dedication so infected others that Christian Motorcyclists Association became a global ministry.