National Baptist Leader Sets Agenda : Leadership: The Rev. Henry J. Lyons, elected president of largest U.S. black church, says African Americans need to make themselves felt economically and politically.

A politically active pastor who says the black church should be a force to be reckoned with in Washington was elected to lead the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc. into the third millennium.

The Rev. Henry J. Lyons, who headed the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns in Florida, was elected recently to a five-year term as president of the nation’s largest black church.

At a victory celebration, Lyons vowed to work to increase the political and economic power of blacks.

“Our presence must be felt, must be made known and our counsel sought,” Lyons said. “We’ve got to let it be known we will not be taken for granted.”

Lyons, 52, a convention vice president and pastor of Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Church in St. Petersburg, received 3,545 votes to win the five-man race. The Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson, a pastor in the Westchester County, N.Y., town of Mt. Vernon and the convention’s longtime general secretary, finished second with 3,014 votes.

The Rev. William J. Shaw, a Philadelphia pastor who is director of the ministers’ division of the National Congress of Christian Education, finished third with 2,311 votes, while the Rev. C.A.W. Clark, a convention vice president and nationally known revival leader from Dallas, was fourth with 1,344 votes. A write-in candidate, the Rev. Jasper W. Williams of Atlanta, received 141 votes.

After the votes were announced, Richardson, Shaw and Clark promised to work with Lyons, who asked for their ideas in shaping a new Administration.

Lyons succeeds the Rev. T. J. Jemison, the Louisiana pastor who was prohibited from seeking reelection after 12 years in office.

The election of the convention’s third president in 42 years comes at a critical juncture for black churches that are under increasing pressure to deal more aggressively with AIDS, violence, poverty and the dissolution of family life.

In 1961, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and some other civil rights leaders left the convention to help form the Progressive National Baptist Convention after their candidate lost a turbulent bid for the presidency.

“America continues to look to this group for leadership . . . and we’ve never offered them anything,” Lyons said. “We want to turn that whole image around.”

With an estimated 8 million members in 33,000 churches, the convention says it is the world’s largest black organization.

Lyons says that when he was 11 his pastor told him he would one day be president of the National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc.

In 1966, during his seminary training at Morehouse School of Religion in Atlanta, “God quite emphatically gave me my marching orders.”

Before he was married 23 years ago, he asked his wife if she could live with the rigors of being married to the head of the nation’s largest black church. And prior to assuming the pulpit at Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Church in St. Petersburg, Fla., he gave his congregation the same warning about his intentions.

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So in a sense his successful bid to become the convention’s third president in the last 42 years was a prophecy fulfilled.

Now comes the hard part.

Lyons takes over the convention presidency at a time when many black colleges are in trouble, black youths are turning to Islam in significant numbers, and drugs, crime and violence have reached a crisis stage in many communities where the convention’s 33,000 churches are located.

“I come to this moment with a lot of humility,” he said. “I really do have a sense of service.”

Having received just over a third of the total vote, the first thing Lyons did after his victory was announced was pray for unity.

“I don’t have a minute for reprisal,” Lyons said in a later interview. “We’ve got to hit the ground running.”

In restructuring the convention, the Florida pastor has said he wants to expand the Home Mission Board to address issues such as AIDS, economic discrimination and other issues of importance to black Americans.

On the political front, Lyons said the convention will be a more active force in Washington, working closely with the President and groups such as the Congressional Black Caucus.

“We’ve got to let it be known we will not be taken for granted,” Lyons said.

Lyons said he would like to see the convention take the lead in helping to develop mentoring programs that pair adult church members with youths in the community.

“I don’t mean some football player. I mean some John Doe who gets up to go to work every morning,” Lyons said. “We have to get to our children. That’s our first priority.”

Another priority promised by Lyons is to increase financial aid to struggling black schools.

“Our black colleges are closing at an alarming rate,” Lyons said. “We’ve got to get in and bail those schools out.”

But to finance his proposals and to make the church a major player on the American religious scene, Lyons says, the convention is going to have to reach a lot deeper into the tills of its 33,000 churches.

To replace the current system in which churches pay a set fee ranging from $100 for smaller churches to $1,200 for the largest churches to register with the convention, Lyons is proposing a system more like the Southern Baptist Convention, in which churches give a percentage of income to a national cooperative program.

The money will come, Lyons said, as the convention also offers its members regular, audited financial reports that show how the money is being spent.

“Financial responsibility and integrity will be a hallmark of the Lyons’ Administration,” said the Rev. Roscoe D. Cooper Jr. of Richmond, Va., the new general secretary of the convention.