My background

For 45 years the Lord allowed me to pastor the amazing Armitage Baptist Church in the heart of Chicago.  We watched God take 25 folks from West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, in a tiny frame structure on a side street and create a congregation of 40 ethnicities/nationalities with a constituency of several thousand, meeting in a giant former Masonic Temple, on a main boulevard.

Mayor Richard Daley said, “Working together, you have turned Armitage Baptist Church from a small community of the faithful into one of our city’s most influential churches.” 

I was born the oldest of eight siblings to my preacher-father and his wife, Vernon and Ruth Lyons.  Dad founded Ashburn Baptist Church Chicago and pastored that church for 69 years.

I grew up on the southwest side of Chicago, attended Bogan High School, and graduated from Baptist Bible College, Springfield, Missouri, in 1974 with a Graduate in Theology degree.

I married Georgia, my high school sweetheart, mother of our five children. She has served with me, pioneering home-schooling with our five kids, teaching a weekly women’s Bible study and was at the heart of the Worship ministry.

One month after college graduation I was called as Pastor of Armitage Church. Armitage grew in its reputation for aggressively addressing urban issues with the gospel.  The Church’s engagement in and service to the community was the frequent subject of media attention, including front page newspaper stories and frequent stories headlining the evening TV news. 

Along the way, we founded:

• Armitage Arts Group - artists/artisans employing their gifts in church ministry and creating events to reach into the community.

• Armitage Institute of the Bible – college level training for congregants of Armitage and surrounding churches, equipping hundreds for service.

• Chicago Hope – umbrella 501c3 for our mercy ministries, serving multitudes of needy families.

• Chicago Armitage Urban Study Experience (C.A.U.S.E.) – promoting urban missions and providing training for aspiring urban leaders, exposing thousands to the city call, training scores of leaders.

• HOPE Media – responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars of free secular media coverage.

• Peace Patrol - dispatching teams to violence hotspots.

• Chicago International Academy – a K-12 school aimed at serving several hundred families with the least educational options. 

For a number of years we served as the Midwest base for pro-life activities.  We pioneered Back to School rallies and led the way for other churches in conducting prayer vigils and community outreaches in response to endless gang violence.  We pioneered the bi-lingual, two congregations, one church model. 

God grew a $10K annual income to millions of dollars given by God’s people to advance the gospel cause in Chicago and cities across the nation and around the world.

We saw God guide and provide in the forming of global partnerships in Manila, Mumbai, Bogota, Mexico City, Almaty, Nairobi, and Cape Town.  Four of these congregations were pastored by natives of those countries and/or men who had come through our internship program in Chicago.

The Lord has opened doors for me to sound the call to urban missions, in ministry conferences, Bible colleges, and seminaries from Massachusetts to California, Florida to Washington.

My service at Armitage concluded in 2019 with a pastoral succession plan in place.

In the middle of a city infamous globally for corruption and violence, in one of the most gang-plagued areas of Chicago, God has allowed ABC leadership and church family to serve with integrity and God-honoring reputation for over half a century.

To be sure, I have racked up my share of bad calls, missteps, poor judgement, ‘wish I hads’ and ‘wish I hadn’ts’. They are helpful reminders that what we have witnessed over the years can only be accounted for in the words of the Psalmist, “The Lord has done great things!”

In 2020, Georgia and I founded City Hope International focusing on multiplying Jesus followers in cities by discipling next generation leaders.