DR LUCILLE BAIRD’S fervent demonstration of commitment to her life’s pastoral mission catapulted her into the spotlight many years ago. Her unrelenting stance on national issues and her firebrand style of delivering her message have attracted both converts and many detractors.
It is now 30 years of her ministry and the outspoken pastor says: “I have endured 30 years of bashing and ridicule.” Last week, in an interview with Easy Magazine, she made the admission: “I really want to share my heart . . . .I want to be as naked as I can be in terms of who is Lucille Baird and where my heart is and what I want to see happen in my country . . . because I am a strong woman.
“Because I speak to issues nationally, people have defined me as this aggressive person who is uncaring and radical, an opportunist. That is not me at all.”
Who, then, is Lucille Baird?
“I am a woman that loves the Lord with all my heart and all my soul and all my being and as a result of loving God, I would do anything for my people and for my country.
“I am a patriotic Barbadian . . . a compassionate mother, a loving wife and a 24-hour on-call pastor.
“I do what I do only because of the call of God upon my life . . . . I wanted to be a lawyer, I never wanted to be a pastor.”
She maintains that she is not the overly-aggressive woman “portrayed out there”, though she admits “I am aggressive when I am dealing with national issues that seek to undermine the country and to undermine our youth and to undermine our morality and our ethics and our Christianity”.
Apart from those times, “I am the softest person”, she declares.Nonetheless, there are issues which are “like fire in my bones, in my belly, something that is upon me that does not stop until I have dealt with the issue”, she concedes.
These are matters which she says she is moved by the Holy Spirit to address fearlessly.
At times becoming emotional even to the point of the occasional tears, Baird described a life committed to God ever since she first knelt at the altar of Sister Greene’s Mission in Weston, St James, at age nine “and gave my life to the Lord”.
One of ten children, she grew up in a home where her late mother was a Christian and her father an alcoholic.
“You don’t have any idea of what it is like to live in an alcoholic home,” she said. “Why I care for people so much and I try to help people and try to prevent young people from being hurt is because I have been hurt a lot and so I understand people’s pain, being the product of an alcoholic father and seeing abuse at its worst.”
The church leader, who describes herself as “an extremist for God”, says she has had no life apart from life in the church; she has never been to a dance or to the theatre.
It was in the church that she met her husband of 36 years, her “Rock of Gibraltar”, Apostle Chris Baird, senior pastor and co-founder of Mount Zion’s Missions International.
Male-dominated area
However, when she started Mount Zion’s Missions in Rock Dundo, St James, conducting Sunday school classes for children in the neighbourhood under a mango tree and later attracting adults to the wooden church once located in the complex where an impressive million-dollar edifice now stands, she was alone.
Her husband had continued at his church. He decided to join her six years later. Recognising his wife’s drive and passion, he stepped back and allowed her to go forward as she grew in her ministry.
“He made a concerted effort to push me into visibility,” she acknowledged. “He told me ‘I will decrease so you will increase’.”
He explained: “I made a point early in our ministry that I would make sure that she gets as much exposure as possible . . . . I found quite frankly that in our society there have always been issues with a male-dominated society . . . . I am aware God does not have a gender problem.”
Baird calls being a female in a male-dominated area one of her “big” challenges.
Another is “the fact that I am not the stereotype pastor because I wear make-up and I wear jewellery”.
She explains: “When I became a pastor that (make-up and jewellery) was taboo and so I had to be a pioneer for the female pastor wearing make-up and jewellery and dressing nice.” From early she broke the tradition of the matronly appearance of the female pastor. Hers is the picture of a fashionably-dressed woman, always immaculately turned out.
Defending her choice, Baird asserts: “People cannot connect the fact that you are dressing well, looking well, speaking well and loving God. You have to have an agenda. It must be ambition and not vision.”
The mother of two and grandmother of one is clearly an inspiration to many. Her daughter Porchae, a marine scientist and university lecturer, says: “Because of her openness and her loving nature, I have had to share my bedroom with several females.”
The Bairds’ son Alexander is a consultant civil engineer and, like their daughter, manages a ministry in the church.
Prison inmates have had the benefit of Baird’s mission for 25 years as she has reached out to assist with the rehabilitation of convicts.
In her church tremendous resources continue to be expended on feeding and providing for the social needs of members, in addition to their spiritual needs.
Her work in the community has been recognised with the award of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).
Farther afield she spreads her message as the “covering apostle” for a network of churches in the Caribbean, Nigeria and Ghana.
“A woman of order”, a church leader who fights like a lion, an “extraordinary woman” who loves God with all her heart, and a very powerful and compassionate woman are some of the descriptions given by members of her church.
Lucille Baird is determined to forge ahead with her mission. However, in the face of criticism over the years, she submits:
“While I smile with the world, they don’t know the cost of the oil in my alabaster box.”
