wfn.org | Lawrence Lacour, former evangelism director, dies May 3

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

May 6, 1999	News media contact: Linda Green*(615)742-5470*Nashville,
Tenn.     10-71B{000} 

By United Methodist News Service

The Rev. Lawrence L. Lacour, 92, a former staff executive of the former
General Board of Evangelism of the Methodist Church,  died May. 3.  

The funeral service was held May 7 at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church,
Tulsa, Okla.

In the 1950s, Lacour served as the director of a project to establish 29
churches in Japan before serving for 10 years at the former Methodist
General Board of Evangelism.  He left that position in 1967 to become pastor
at First  Methodist Church,  Colorado Springs, Co., and served there for 11
years.  

He became a professor of homiletics and worship at the seminary of Oral
Roberts University in 1978  and went on to pastor Boston Avenue United
Methodist Church, Tulsa. He and two other professors at Oral Roberts
University founded St. James United Methodist Church in 1982.  Before
retiring from the ministry in 1992, he served as interim pastor of First
United Methodist Church, Bartlesville, Okla.

Lacour also was a speaker and director of workshops on preaching and an
author.

"Larry Lacour touched a generation  of young ministers, but none more deeply
than me," said the Rev. Joe Hale, top staff executive of the World Methodist
Council, Lake Junaluska, N.C. "I first met him in 1958 at a National
Convocation on Evangelism in Washington. He encouraged me to answer the call
I had felt to become an evangelist, and two years later, invited me to be
the first to join the staff of a new department of evangelists he was in the
process of forming. . . .I was so young-just two weeks out of seminary-and
very inexperienced."  He said Lacour taught him and mentored him and he was
a man  "whose influence continues to shape my life today. "

He is survived by a wife of 64 years, Millie and two sisters: Helen Arms and
Jean Henessee; and nieces and nephews.

Friends are invited to honor Lacour's memory by contributing to "Missions"
at Boston Avenue United Methodist Church, 1301 S. Boston Ave. Tulsa, OK
74119.

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