M.O. Owens Jr. preached his last sermon as the pastor of the traditional service at Parkwood Baptist Church in Gastonia on Sunday, July 26. He is pastor emeritus and founding pastor of the church.
In September Owens will be 102 years old. He preached a closing celebration sermon at the 11 a.m. traditional service, a ministry he has pastored for seven years at the church. The service will be discontinued with Owens’ departure.
Parkwood’s senior pastor, Jeff Long, spoke of Owens’ strong commitment to the integrity of scripture and widespread influence across the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina (BSC) and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He said Owens is “a very humble man” who did not seek recognition.
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The service celebrated Owens’ 80 plus years of faithfulness in ministry. He pastored churches in Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina. Since retirement, Owens has been an interim pastor at 15 churches, including a year at an English-speaking Baptist church in Belgium.
He has held numerous leadership positions in the BSC and SBC. Owens served on the BSC Board of Directors and its various committees, and also served as president of the Pastors’ Conference for two years. He was instrumental in the process of buying property for the NC Baptist Assembly at Fort Caswell and for Fruitland Baptist Bible College, where he taught for a number of years.
On the national level, Owens was engaged with the ministries of the Baptist Sunday School Board, Home Mission Board and Education Commission. He was present at the annual meeting of the SBC in 1925 when the Cooperative Program was adopted.
The M.O. Owens Chair of New Testament Studies was established at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2013. Seminary President Danny Akin noted in an article the high standards set by men like Owens. He said, “One way we encourage future generations of gospel-ready champions for King Jesus is by challenging them to learn from examples like that of M.O. Owens.”
Milton Hollifield, executive director-treasurer of the BSC, said the convention honored Owens with the Lifetime Award in 2013. “M.O. Owens Jr. is one of my great heroes,” Hollifield said. “I am grateful for what he has meant to us as North Carolina Baptists and to the Southern Baptist Convention. Few people have had more influence in helping move the SBC, its seminaries and the BSC back to its conservative theological roots than Owens.
“I respect, admire and appreciate M.O. Owens for many reasons,” Hollifield added. “He has demonstrated integrity and he has been faithful as a role model for those who serve as ministers of the gospel. He has based the decisions of his life upon the truth that he learned from being a faithful student of the Word of our God.”
Throughout his ministry, Owens never strayed from his commitment and passion to tell people about the life-transforming message of the gospel.
“Just preach the gospel,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”