Longtime journalist Adams retires from The Layman
The Layman Online, December 27, 2006
Longtime journalist John H. Adams, editor of The Layman, has announced his retirement, effective Dec. 31.
“With Jack Adams, what you see is what you get,” said Parker T. Williamson, editor emeritus and senior correspondent of The Layman. “With impeccable integrity, he has fearlessly defended the truth. His presence at the press table not only guaranteed an unvarnished account from his pen, but it put other reporters on notice as well. The fact that he was there meant the story would be told.
John H. Adams“As editor,” Williamson said, “Jack applied his prodigious Biblical knowledge – he is one of the few laypersons I know who studies Scripture in its original languages – to Presbyterian policies and programs. His often blazing editorials beamed God’s light into the darker side of our common life.
“Yet,” he said, “Jack was not without hope. Trusting a sovereign Lord, he knew that, although we may see in the glass darkly, we will see him face to face. I have treasured the privilege of working beside this man.”
On the eve of his retirement, Adams said there are two problem areas plaguing the Presbyterian Church (USA).
The first, he said, is “a misinterpretation of the person and work of Jesus Christ and the claims he has on our lives.”
The second problem area, Adams said, is “an attitude that prevails among many Presbyterians that each of us has the right to interpret Scripture according to our own preferences or reject it according to our own biases.”
Before joining the Presbyterian Lay Committee, he worked for many years at newspapers in Georgia and North Carolina, as well as operating for 10 years his own consulting business with political, industrial and development clients.
Adams became editor of The Layman in 1997 – attending every General Assembly, as well as filing stories about news events in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from many places throughout the country.
“Jack Adams has worked hard for years to inform people about the inner workings, and the implications, of decisions and actions within the Presbyterian Church (USA),” said Craig M. Kibler, director of publications for the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
“He has labored hard in this corner of the Kingdom,” Kibler said. “I wish him a long and happy retirement.”
Peggy M. Hedden, outgoing chairman of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, said, “Jack goes right to the heart of a story. His headlines always get your attention and point you to why you need to know what is happening.”
“Lots of people inside and outside the denomination trust him,” she said, “so he’s been told things here and there that have allowed him to bring to public view important decisions that might otherwise have gone unremarked. Jack’s long and wide experience – as a newsman and as a Christian – have given his articles a perspective that readers of The Layman have appreciated greatly.”
An avid student of Reformed theology for many years, Adams said he was raised in a non-Christian family. “I miraculously stumbled into a Methodist church when I was five,” he said, and starting attending Sunday services. The longer he attended, he said, the more he felt the need to do something to help out. That willingness to get involved in the church led him to “fold bulletins for Sunday services every Friday for four or five years.”
At age 11, Adams said he “experienced salvation while attending a Methodist youth camp where an evangelist was preaching. All of the kids went forward except for me. I felt guilty about it, and went and sat in a chapel by a lake. I bawled my eyes out, not knowing what was wrong. After a while, I began to feel wonderful and a peace came over me. ‘Lord Jesus, thank you,’ I said. That has been a benchmark for me ever since.”
Years later, married and with three children, Adams said he was a Sunday school teacher and active in his church, but felt troubled. “I was frustrated with my Christian life,” he said. “It felt insincere. The problem was that I wasn’t a student of faith. I really needed to know what I believe.”
He went back to the University of North Carolina, primarily to study Biblical languages. “That began a continuing passion for the Word of God – Scripture,” he said. “I couldn’t read enough of Scripture because it helped me to get to know the Christ I experienced as Savior, Lord of Lords and King of Kings.”
Adams said he and his family stayed active in the Methodist church, first in Chapel Hill and then in Durham, both in North Carolina.
“I was teaching a class in Romans and reading, rereading and translating the book of Romans,” he said, “and I came to the great revelation that it wasn’t all about me, but the grace of God, and that was not what was being taught in that church. I attended one service where the teaching essentially was ‘can-do’ theology – ‘You can do it if you want to.'”
The next Sunday, Adams said, “was supposed to be ‘Commitment Sunday.’ At lunch after the service, we decided that we couldn’t make that commitment to that church.”
He and his family joined Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church in Durham, where they were members for 18 years and where he became an elder.
“The pastor, Ed Henegar, was a big influence,” Adams said, “and so were the elders in the church. They were people of deep devotion who took a major role in teaching the people of God with true meaning.”
In retirement, Adams said he has some “writing projects a-moldering in the box,” and he and his wife Nancy plan to spend more time with their three sons – Philip, Michael and John – and their grandchildren – Alex, Lily, Jack, Sarah, Caitlin and John. Philip is the director of the senior program in Burke County, an elder and a commissioned lay pastor serving a rural congregation in the PCUSA. Michael is the deputy managing editor of The Fayetteville Observer and an elder in the PCUSA. John, who attends a Methodist church, is a computer programming analyst.