Sunday, August 9, 1998

Abilene native opens church consulting office

By LORETTA FULTON / Abilene Reporter-News

Three years ago Ken Lomax watched helplessly as a small airplane carrying two friends crashed in the Alaskan wilderness.

As he raced to the wreckage, railing at God all the way, Lomax suddenly felt the presence of the Almighty asking him, "What have you ever done for me?"

The two friends survived the "unsurvivable wreck" and Lomax had some contemplating to do.

"I got this strong feeling that God had had me in a training ground for 25 years," Lomax said.

With a doctorate in organizational improvement, Lomax, a native of Abilene, had spent most of his life either working for ARCO oil company in Alaska or as a business consultant.

His "mid-life epiphany" showed him that God wanted more, and almost intuitively Lomax knew what it was.

The Lomax Consulting Group resulted, and now Lomax has two offices, one in Roseville, Calif., and the other in One City Center in downtown Abilene, where he recently rented a space.

Lomax and a partner now do consulting work for churches and other religious organizations much like they do for small businesses.

"We felt like that was where God wanted us to be," he said. "Our focus is to make churches efficient, effective, and adaptable."

After graduating from Abilene High School in 1968, Lomax served in the military and then earned his first of three degrees. He worked in Alaska 16 years before moving to California and starting his consulting business.

His elderly parents live on a ranch near Lake Abilene, and Lomax and his wife recently moved back here to help fix up the place. He hopes his business will take off in Abilene so the couple can stay here.

Lomax also is finishing a book, <I>War on Waste,<I> to be published by McGraw-Hill.

Standard operating procedure for Lomax is to be contacted by a church that feels a need for change. He does an initial assessment at a cost ranging between $1,500 and $4,000, although sometimes the work is done for a smaller amount.

Working from answers to a survey, Lomax lists the church's problems in order of severity and then works on solutions. One of the main contributions Lomax makes to a church is to get it to function as a team rather than a series of committees. Being led by committees leads to fragmentation, he said.

"Pretty soon the church becomes committee-focused rather than Christ-focused," Lomax said.

An ordained deacon, Lomax grew up in Northside Baptist Church, where the Rev. Don Greenway was his pastor and still is the church's minister. As early as the ninth grade, Lomax served as the church's music director.

Even though he grew up as a Christian and continued to practice the faith, Lomax said it took the plane crash in Alaska for him to listen to the still, small voice inside.

He believes he now is using his business skills in the way God intended, and he is hopeful that his Abilene office will prove to be successful enough that he can remain here to take care of his parents.

"I think it's going to work out," he said. "It's just got to work out on God's time, not ours."