Jon Laughinghouse

          Jon Laughinghouse is a pastor at Belmont Baptist Church in Southeast Roanoke. Mr. Laughinghouse, a 42 year old man, is from Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, he has lived in the Roanoke area since 2007. In the late 1950’s a factory shut down that took away hundreds of jobs from the community, ever since the factory shut down the community has been on a steady decline. People have left Southeast Roanoke, the average income has greatly decreased, and there has been crime and drug use all over Southeast Roanoke.

          When Mr. Laughinghouse first moved into the Roanoke area he and his wife have helped the people of Southeast. They started helping selflessly by going into the Southeast community every weekend to help serve a pancake breakfast to the people of Southeast Roanoke. As Mr. Laughinghouse said, “In some ways it was kind of unfair to leave all these kids behind and take my own kids back to our neighborhood.” Mr. Laughinghouse wanted to help more than just with a pancake breakfast he and his wife bought a home in the Southeast neighborhood and joined forces with Belmont Baptist Church in January of 2016. When they joined with Belmont Baptist Church they started to generously give even more of their time to help the community. Mr. Laughinghouse said, “It was a lot of work, kind of like a marriage,” when talking about joining Belmont Baptist Church.

In the past year Mr. Laughinghouse, his wife, and many other people who have decided to help with the move to Belmont Baptist Church have given a ton of time trying to reach out to these people. It is easy to be inspired by someone who has made so many efforts to help others. As he says, “I feel like I am an ambassador for Southeast Roanoke,” Mr. Laughinghouse has gone into the heart of the community to help these people in a broken world and a worn down neighborhood. When asked about how the people have responded to his actions and how it has gone in helping these people Mr. Laughinghouse says it best, “A lot of the time that’s what people in these situations need is a friend, someone to talk to, vent to, get encouragement from, because a lot of times they don’t have the support system we have.” Mr. Laughinghouse’s outgoing and friendly nature has made it easy for him to talk to and get to know the community of Southeast Roanoke.

Mr. Laughinghouse has gone from helping serve pancakes to being the lead pastor at Belmont Baptist Church. His efforts teamed with support from family, friends, and other churches have allowed him to reach out to this community and do something to help the people, businesses, and community of Southeast Roanoke, in some ways you could say he has been a hero to the Southeast community.