O. Benjamin Sparks III, pastor, ecumenist, dedicated Presbyterian scholar, is the recipient of the Ernest Trice Thompson Award. He received the honor June 15 in Birmingham, Ala. at the Outlook’s dinner held in conjunction with the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
He currently serves as pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Va., where he has been pastor since 1982.
Ben with Jack Haberer (left), editor-in-chief of
The Presbyterian Outlook and (right)
William Stacy Johnson, Outlook Foundation Board chairman.
The award is presented by the Presbyterian Outlook Foundation in honor of Ernest Trice Thompson was an educator, historian, a leader in the church for social justice and journalist. He was founder of The Presbyterian Outlook and longtime editor and board member. Recipients are selected on the basis of their service in the areas of excellence represented by Dr. Thompson.
Ben Sparks grew up in Atlanta, Ga., and has served churches in Nashville, Tenn., Jacksonville, Fla., and was Urban Minister for Montgomery Presbytery in Roanoke, Va. He is a graduate of Davidson College (B.A. 1961) and Union Theological Seminary (B.D. 1965). In May 1992, he was awarded the Doctor of Divinity degree by Davidson College. He is married to Annette Smith and they have two daughters: Elizabeth, a potter, who lives in Statesboro, GA, and Kathryn, who works in Washington, D.C. and is a liturgical Dancer. Mrs. Sparks is retiring this month from Union-PSCE where she has worked in the library, the bookstore, and has been Director of Music and Chapel Organist for twenty years.
He is a member of the Iona Community in Scotland, a worldwide ecumenical community committed to the renewal of worship and ministries of healing, justice, and peace. He lived in Iona in 1965 and served two years in a parish church as assistant pastor from 1965 to 1967.
The training of young pastors has long been one of Sparks’ interests. He co-taught courses in Urban Ministry for several years at Union Theological Seminary (now Union-PSCE). Before moving to Richmond he assisted in teaching homiletics at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tenn.
He has a long record of participation in Presbyterian Church life. Sparks served on the Peacemaking Committee of the General Assembly before and after reunion, and chaired the committee in the mid-1980s. He directed the Montreat Peacemaking Conference in 1983. He served on the Task Force to reorganize Presbytery of the James.
As a pastor in Richmond, he is active in serving his community. Sparks was on the organizing committee that created Homeward, Richmond’s comprehensive strategy to address the needs of the poor. He helped establish CARITAS, a citywide ecumenical organization that houses and feeds the homeless. He served on the founding board of Richmond Hill, an ecumenical urban retreat center. He was in the 1984 Leadership Metro Richmond Class and has been actively involved in their program and fund-raising efforts.
Sparks is an avid reader and writer. He has served on the Advisory Board of Journal for Preachers, and for more than two decades has been a director of the Presbyterian Outlook Foundation, Inc. In February 2004, he accepted the call of his fellow board members to serve as The Presbyterian Outlook magazine’s interim editor-in-chief, without compensation. He continued in that capacity for nearly two years while continuing his fulltime pastorate.
Second Presbyterian Church is a thriving downtown congregation with membership coming from the entire urban region. In the past few years, Sparks has led the congregation in exchanges and ministries with churches and organizations in Ghana, Malawi, and Guatemala.
In accepting the award, Sparks recalled the influence E. T. Thompson had and his influence on his seminary students, including Sparks himself. Visiting Thompson in his home years later, Sparks commented to his former professor about seeing Dr. Thompson on the podium in Richmond when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached in Richmond.
“Do you remember the title of the sermon?” Thompson asked Sparks. “No,” he replied.
“It was ‘Balm in Gilead,'” said Dr. Thompson. “It was 1963 in Richmond and tensions were high. He (Dr. King) could have burned the city down. But he chose to preach on ‘Balm in Gilead.’ This is a word to the church’, Ben Sparks concluded, ‘at a time ‘so full of peril and promise.'”
Correction
In the OUTLOOK issue for July 3, in the story “Sparks awarded 2006 Ernest Trice Thomson Award’ recipient O. Benjamin Sparks recalls a discussion with Ernest Trice Thompson. One quotation from that story was inadvertently shortened. The last sentence should read: “This is a word to the church”, Ben Sparks concluded, “at a time ‘so full of peril and promise.'”
