Biographical Sketch

Rev. Dr. R. Lawton Higgs, Sr.
Biographical Sketch

R. Lawton Higgs, Sr. was born in Bauxite, Arkansas, June 26, 1940. He is married to Nancy De Vore Higgs, and the father of three children: Lawton Higgs, Jr., Thomas Kevin Price Higgs, and Elizabeth Ann Higgs; and grandfather of four grand children: Mary Hannah Grace Higgs; Dylan Campbell Higgs, Sophia Grace Higgs, and James Kai Barnett.

He finished high school in Huntsville, Alabama in 1958. He graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree in Electrical Engineering in 1966. He worked with Alabama Power Company in Birmingham, Alabama as a power distribution engineer for eight years before responding to a call to ordained ministry.

Lawton graduated from Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia in 1977 with a Master of Divinity degree. He is an ordained elder in the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. He completed a Doctor of Ministry Degree at Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey in 1988. The focus of his professional project was Urban Congregational Development and Revitalization. He is presently serving in his 12th year as the pastor of Church of the Reconciler, a multicultural, interracial United Methodist Congregation in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Lawton was the organizing pastor for this congregation.

Lawton has served as dean of the North Alabama Conference Cooperative Schools of Christian Mission and as a study leader in United Methodist annual conferences and regional schools of Christian Mission since 1985. He has led short-term volunteer in mission teams to Chile, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic. He has served as Chairperson of the North Alabama Conference Task Force for Volunteers in Mission. He has served as president of the board of directors for United Community Centers, Inc. (Southwest Community Center). He has served as the chairperson of the North Alabama Conference United Methodist Church Board of Social Concerns.

Lawton serves on the boards of Greater Birmingham Ministries, Alabama Arise, Congregations for Public Health, Community Affairs Committee of Operation New Birmingham and the Birmingham Region of the National Conference of Community and Justice.

Lawton was selected by President Bill Clinton to be a part of the Presidential Party at the 1998 State of the Union Address as a white man that had experienced a conversion around issues of racial inclusiveness and was active and effective in working for racial justice in America to be representative of the Clinton Administration’s commitment to One America for the Twenty First Century.

Lawton was honored to participate as an official delegate in the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders held in New York City at the United Nations in August of 2000.

His hobbies are gardening and photography.
RLH 11/9/04