2016-Present
Judson Felix Roberts
Martinsburg, West Virginia WV
Rev. Arthur Joseph (A.J.) Roberts, father of young Judson Felix Roberts, told why he named his son for the iconic missionary.
I went to India in 2010 for the first time and read To the Golden Shore while there (was there for a month). God stirred me and changed my affections. I was just from a small town in WV that is primarily Caucasian—no real diversity there. I had no view of the nations and no real grasp on God’s love for all peoples. That book changed me—there was no turning back from there.
We have four kids and have found naming them to be one of life’s greatest privileges. Knowing Judson’s story, we wanted to do two things in naming our own son Judson: (1) Create natural curiosity for our boy later in life to want to know who Adoniram Judson was. (2) Honor the legacy of gospel work in Burma.”[i]
Naming is important in the Roberts family.
+ The oldest son, Bera, is named for a national church leader in Orissa, India;
+ Eden carries the imprimatur of that original garden in the book of Genesis;
+ Haddon reminds us of the great English pastor, Charles Haddon Spurgeon; and
+ Nine-year-old Judson Felix represents the beginnings of the modern missionary movement and exudes the balance of unique and classical in the Latin name felix-happy and fortunate. “He finds a way to be happy in every situation.” Young Judson has an athletic physic and uses this size as a gentle giant to care for his younger sisters.
From the Church at Martinsburg, Pastor Roberts visits missionary projects in India annually and has taken Judson and Bera on these trips, the girls being too young to travel internationally. Dad looks forward to the day that Judson asks about his name and gets a copy of To the Golden Shore or some other Judson biography. “But it is most important that his name be written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”
Rev. A. J. Roberts is a trained physical therapist but now pastors the Church at Martinsburg, the congregation he grew up in. Birthed as a church plant in 2009, these 130 families have started two other churches and called-out four missionaries. His wife is a trained nurse but now invests her energy I homeschooling their four children.
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[i] A. J. Roberts email to compiler Jerry Cain, January 16, 2023.