He may not look it, but 88 year-old Dr. Roscoe Lowry is the oldest official delegate at the Adventist Church's quinquennial world session.
He may not look it, but 88 year-old Dr. Roscoe Lowry is the oldest official delegate at the Adventist Church’s quinquennial world session.
Born to missionary parents in India in 1917, Dr. Lowry completed his high school education before moving to the United States in 1935 for tertiary education at Southern Adventist University.
After transferring from Southern to Pacific Adventist University, Dr. Lowry graduated in 1940. In the same year he moved to India to follow his family’s long tradition of mission work in the area.
“I was on the last ship to take missionaries to the region before the bombing of Pearl Harbour,” Dr Lowry said. “The ship was sunk on its way back.”
Dr. Lowry served in several positions in the Southern Asia Pacific church region, a term which extended the Lowry clan’s unbroken service in the area to a few months short of 80 years and spanning three generations.
Initially sent to serve in administration of the St. Helena Sanitarium and Hospital, he says, “I never saw a hospital.” Instead Dr. Lowry began a three-year term as principal of the Western India Union High School.
In 1994 Dr. Lowry began departmental work for the church in Western India before earning his masters in education while on furlough in Denver, Colorado.
Dr. Lowry once again returned to India to serve at the Lowry Memorial High Secondary School, which was opened and named as a memorial to the contributions of the Lowry family.
After a 12-year term in the Education Department of the Southern Asia region, ending in 1962, Dr. Lowry and his wife Louise returned to the United States due to her illness.
At the 1962 world church Session in San Francisco, California, Dr. Lowry was unexpectedly elected as president of the Southern Asia-Pacific region, despite being employed for only two months as head of education and psychology at La Sierra University.
“I never even got to teach class—I had been employed for two months,” said Dr. Lowry, whose father had also held the position of region president.
Dr. Lowry remained president of the region for 18 years, the longest of any region president, before taking up the position of field secretary in 1980, a position he retired from seven years later.
Moving to Chehalis, Washington, Dr. Lowry and his wife now enjoy spending time with their three children, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
“Study should be given to the size and cost of [these] meetings. In those days,” he says, “It was much more orderly, mainly due to its size,” said Dr. Lowry who attended his first world church business meeting as a child in 1924.
But, he adds, “I see a greater participation, involvement, concern and interest of youth and teens in the church. The fact that we have young people here is amazing when we look back 20 years there were none.”
He believes young people should be given a greater opportunity for leadership in the church, however he says they must “be patient, as there is an innate tendency to be impatient,” and also, “be trusting of the church and the senior element.”
“You have to be adaptable to be a missionary.” It is this adaptability, Dr. Lowry believes, along with “a sense of humor and cheerful accepting attitude” that has allowed him to belie his age.
