The Reverend Lyon Walkup, 75, (Murfreesboro Presbytery) died December 29, 2019. Lyon was bom March 15, 1944, in Readyville, Tennessee. His parents, Horace Ray and. Fancye Lyon Walkup, were members of Cripple Creek Presbyterian Church. His great, great grandfather, Nathan Lyon, was a Cumberland Presbyterian minister in the early l800s.

Lyon was educated in the public schools of Rutherford County, Tennessee, and graduated from Middle Tennessee State University. He became a Cumber1and Presbyterian in 1969 when he joined the Bates Hill Cumberland Presbyterian Church near McMinnville, Tennessee. He worked in industrial management with Samsonite and Carrier, and he was a farmer.

He married Myrna Joyce Smith in 1971. She was a member of Blues Hill Cumberland Presbyterian Church near McMinnville, Tennessee. The couple had three children, Philip, Felicia, and Amanda.

Lyon served as stated clerk of Murfreesboro Presbytery :from 1973 to 1984. In 1987, he began serving the Jerusalem and Mount Tabor Cumberland Presbyterian Churches in Murfreesboro Presbytery as a lay speaker. He came under the care of Murfreesboro Presbytery as a candidate for the ministry at the spring meeting in 1991 and became the pastor at Jerusalem in April. He completed the Program of Alternate Studies in 1994. He also served the Blues Hill and Dibrell Cumberland Presbyterian Churches in Murfreesboro Presbytery.

To honor Lyon and Joyce, in 2004, Jerusalem and Mount Tabor congregations established an endowment to benefit the Commission on the Ministry (now the Pastoral Development Ministry Team) and “to support the ministry to clergy and their spouses,” including, “providing support, continuing education, counseling, ongoing theological reflection on the practice of ministry, and nurturing a healthy growing and active ordained clergy.”

The Reverend Walkup was interred at Blues Hill Cemetery.

For more information: http://www.mcminnvillefuneralhome.com/obituary/rev-lyon-walkup