Interviewer: Laura Ek

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I met Mr. Luther Burney the Wednesday previous on 11/3/2010 at First Baptist Church in Lafayette at the weekly church dinner. Lillian Miller referred me to speak with Mr. Burney, saying he was a good person to talk to because of his knowledge of Lafayette history, especially around the 1970s and 1980s.

Luther Burney is originally from Monroe, Louisiana. He moved to Lafayette in April of 1967 for the first time, where he became the minister of music at First Baptist church in Lafayette. He attended the University of Louisiana at Monroe, and then went on to a seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, graduating in 1961. From 1963-1966 he was working on his Masters’ at the seminary, but was called to active duty for the Berlin crisis. He would hitch hike back and forth so that he could still attend to his Masters’ work in Shreveport, Louisiana. Though officially retired as of 2005, he still acts as the assistant to the current pastor, Steve Horn. In the interview, he discusses Lafayette as a town, what changes he has seen within his church congregation and the Lafayette community. To a lesser degree, he describes some of the ins and outs of his job, which included getting sponsorship from oil companies to put on some of the larger church productions. As a previous music minister, he contributed a unique perspective on the roll of the church through the 1970s onwards.