HONORING THE REVEREND RONALD G. TONEY UPON HIS RETIREMENT AFTER FIFTY YEARS IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY

On 2026-08-24, Representative Sanford D. Bishop, Jr. (D-GA-2) delivered a floor speech titled "HONORING THE REVEREND RONALD G. TONEY UPON HIS RETIREMENT AFTER FIFTY YEARS IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY" in the House.

HONORING THE REVEREND RONALD G. TONEY UPON HIS RETIREMENT AFTER FIFTY YEARS IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY

Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 135 (Monday, August 24, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 135 (Monday, August 24, 2026)] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E803-E804] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] HONORING THE REVEREND RONALD G. TONEY UPON HIS RETIREMENT AFTER FIFTY YEARS IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY ______ HON. SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR. of georgia in the house of representatives Monday, August 24, 2026 Mr. BISHOP. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a man who has spent half a century doing the hardest and holiest work there is--the Reverend Ronald G. Toney, who retires after fifty years in the gospel ministry, thirty-three of them as pastor of the historic Lizzie Chapel Baptist Church in Macon, Georgia. An event to celebrate his remarkable ministry was held on August 22, 2026, at the Tubman Museum in Macon, Georgia. Mr. Speaker, when we mark a man's retirement in this Chamber, we usually recite a list. I want to do something different, because a list will not hold what this man has done. Ronald Toney is a son of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Now, Mr. Speaker, I want the House to sit with that for a moment. For the better part of the last century, the road out of Georgia ran north. Our people packed what they could carry and rode toward Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee looking for wages and dignity that this State would not give them. That was the Great Migration, and it emptied a great deal of talent out of the South. [[Page E804]] Ronald Toney ran that road in reverse. He was born up North, where our people had gone for refuge, and he came back down here--to Georgia, to the Black Belt, to the small cities and the working neighborhoods--and he gave this State fifty years of his life. He came back to the place his generation was told to leave. That is not a career decision, Mr. Speaker. That is a calling. He came by way of Morehouse College, where he graduated cum laude with a degree in religion. As a Morehouse man myself, I know that house does not hand out that Latin honor lightly. He went on to study at the Interdenominational Theological Center and at Columbia Theological Seminary, both in Atlanta. He believed--rightly--that a called man still owes God a trained mind. His ministry began in Milwaukee in 1976 at Greater Galilee Baptist Church, and continued at Damascus Baptist Church, where he served as assistant pastor. He came to Georgia in 1981 as an associate minister at Antioch Baptist Church North in Atlanta. In 1985 he was called to his first pastorate, Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church in Thomson, Georgia. And in April of 1993, he was called to Lizzie Chapel Baptist Church in Macon, where he has stood ever since. Mr. Speaker, thirty-three years in one pulpit is a rarer thing than this body may realize, and I want to say plainly what it costs and what it builds. Thirty-three years means he baptized children who came back and asked him to marry them and then brought him their own babies to bless. It means he stood over the caskets of the mothers of that church--the women who fed him, corrected him, and prayed him through his first years--and he preached them home one by one. It means he sat in hospital rooms at two o'clock in the morning with families who had nobody else to call. It means there are men and women walking around Macon today who made it through the worst season of their lives because a preacher would not stop calling the house. A pastor who stays that long stops being a hired man and becomes family. That is what Ronald Toney became to Lizzie Chapel. And he never confined the ministry to the sanctuary. In McDuffie County he served as president of the Ministerial Association, president of the County Health Coalition, and president of the NAACP branch-- because he understood that a shepherd who will not fight for the flock outside the gate is no shepherd at all. In Bibb County he served on the board of Citizens Advocacy and on the Economic Opportunity Council. He gave his time to the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia as an instructor in the Congress of Christian Education and later as president of the Tenth District Congress, and he served as Second Vice Moderator of the Union Baptist Missionary and Educational Association of Middle Georgia. Mr. Speaker, two of his services tell me the most about the man. He sat on the board of the Crisis Line and Safe House, and on the board of the Family Counseling Center. Any pastor who has been at it long enough knows the truth those two boards represent: that some of the people singing in the choir on Sunday morning are going home to houses that are not safe. Ronald Toney did not merely pray about that. He got up and took a seat at the table where something could be done about it. And he founded the Gifts of Grace Foundation--a name that tells you everything about how this man understood his own life. Not gifts he earned. Gifts of grace. Mr. Speaker, none of this was done alone. For all of these years, Reverend Toney has been supported by his wife, Patricia, whose name appears on no program and in no minutes, but without whom none of this record exists. And it was done alongside their four children--Jason, Ronald D., LaTai, and Erika--who shared their father with a congregation for their entire lives, and who gave up Sunday dinners and family evenings and a father's undivided attention so that other people's families could be held together. The pastor's family pays a bill that nobody itemizes. Let this Chamber itemize it today. Mr. Speaker, a man can retire from a pulpit. He cannot retire from what he has already built. The counseling he gave is still working. The children he baptized are still standing. The church he served is still open. Fifty years of that does not stop when a man steps down; it simply keeps walking around Middle Georgia in the shape of other people's lives. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, whom the world still calls the Prince of Preachers, once said of his own life's ambition: ``I know of nothing which I would choose to have as the subject of my ambition for life than to be kept faithful to my God till death, still to be a soul winner, still to be a true herald of the cross, and testify the name of Jesus to the last hour.'' Mr. Speaker, that was Spurgeon's ambition. By the grace of God, it has been Ronald Toney's record. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join my wife Vivian and me along with the more than 765,000 people of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District in honoring the Reverend Ronald G. Toney for fifty years of faithful service in the gospel ministry, for thirty- three years of devoted pastoral leadership at Lizzie Chapel Baptist Church, and for a lifetime given to the people of Georgia and beyond. We wish him and Patricia every blessing in this new season, and we say to him what he has spent a lifetime helping other people become ready to hear: Well done, thou good and faithful servant. ____________________