The Misunderstanding of Christianity (Part 6: Finding Unity Across Denominational and Racial Lines)

Ernie, our early elementary-school-aged daughter, and I were sitting in a guest room, alone in an African American Pentecostal Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on a Saturday night. How did we get there?

Jesus prayed that His disciples all be one, as He and the Father are one. Christians have ignored Jesus and divided themselves into multitudes of denominations and religious organizations, but God had different plans for us.

I had been invited to preach a trial sermon in a Church of God in Christ (COGIC), a Black Pentecostal church in Chattanooga pastored by Bishop Scott. We had driven to Chattanooga that morning and spent the day doing tourist things. Early that evening, we went to the church and met someone we didn’t know who let us into the church, kindly showed us to a guest bedroom, and left us alone there for the night. It was the result of an inner prompting that came to me about 20 years earlier and a series of recent phone calls.

While at Memphis Theological Seminary, I felt prompted to approach the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) and see if I could become a pastor in their denomination. However, I had neglected to act on that inner leading. About twenty years later, while Ernie and I were ministering in Natchez, the historic Black neighborhood in Franklin, Tennessee, that prompting came back to me.

I decided to obey it this time and began to call the few COGIC churches in Nashville. I got an answering machine on every call and left a message something like this: “Hello, I am a white minister, and I feel like God wants me to become a pastor in COGIC. Can you help me?” For a while, there was no response.

Eventually, Pastor Larry Britton called me. He was very friendly and likeable, and I could tell that he really loved Jesus. We talked a few times on the phone and then met in person. Larry told Bishop Scott about me and suggested that I call him. When I talked with Bishop Scott on the phone, he invited me to come to Chattanooga to preach at his church. He said I could bring my family, and we could enjoy Chattanooga and then spend Saturday night in a guest room at his church.

So here we were, way out of our comfort zone, spending the night alone in a black church. What to do? We went into the sanctuary and began to sing praise songs, dance, and do Jesus cheers. (After all, it was a Pentecostal church.)

COGIC traces its origin back to the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles at the beginning of the 20th century that lasted several years. It was led by William Seymour, a one-eyed Black man whose small church had experienced speaking in tongues. For a few years multitudes of people of all races and various ethnicities and nationalities came from all over the world to Azusa Street to experience God’s gift of speaking in tongues.

During the age of intense, cruel, and forced segregation in the USA, at Azusa Street (for a few years) God the Father answered Jesus’ prayer that His followers all be one. Bishop Charles Mason had started a few churches in the Memphis, Tennessee area. When he heard about Azusa Street, he rode a train to Los Angeles and received the Holy Spirit’s fire and the incredible gift of tongues. When he returned home, he told his churches about his experience and soon most everybody was praising God in tongues and celebrating Jesus like Pentecostals.

Mason’s small group of churches (COGIC) began to grow and eventually became the second largest African American denomination in the USA. However, in the beginning many white pastors were affiliated with COGIC, so I wasn’t going to be the first one.

Because of the extreme and often violent racism in the South, almost all of the white pastors and members eventually left to form the Assemblies of God denomination and further the disunity of Christianity. (It’s estimated that today Christians have shattered themselves into more than 40,000 denominations.)

The next morning at Bishop Scott’s church we were warmly and enthusiastically welcomed. I preached with spontaneous fire and passion. To my surprise Bishop Scott invited me to come back to Chattanooga to meet with him and some of the pastors he supervised. When I met with them, I shared some of my story and told them that I felt that God was telling me to be a COGIC pastor.

One of them spoke up and said something like, “If God wants him, we do too. I move that we receive him as an elder (a fully ordained minister). Bishop Scott said, “All in favor,” and everyone raised their hand. Then they all jumped up and began to hug me. When we set back down, another one of them said, “You do believe our doctrine, don’t you?” And to their relief, I answered yes.

All of a sudden my wife and I had spiritual and emotional support for the church we had started in the Black neighborhood of Franklin, TN. I was almost immediately invited to teach an ongoing church history course during the monthly jurisdictional meetings for pastors in Chattanooga (a jurisdiction in COGIC is a group of churches overseen by a bishop). Pastor Larry Britton, Will Pride another amazing man of God, and I would drive to Chattanooga together each month. Spending time with those two men was an incredible blessing. (Will died a few years later and I still miss talking with him on the phone.)

Once a quarter Ernie, our daughter, and I would attend divisional meetings led by our Divisional Superintendent, Pastor Larry Chrisman in Shelbyville, TN. People from around Middle Tennessee would be there and even though we were almost always the only white folks, we were made so welcome that we forgot about color.

Once Ernie and I went to Memphis Tennessee, the denominational headquarters, for their annual Convocation where tens of thousands of COGIC folks gather for several days of praise and worship, teaching, and fellowship. It was incredibly powerful. We loved our time in the Church of God in Christ. It was a wonderful experience with a group of incredible men and women of God.

One day I received a call from Pastor Britton, who was the editor of the denominational magazine called, “The Whole Truth.” He asked if I would begin to write articles for it and he published several of them.

We were connected with COGIC for about three years. Once we were given a contribution to help fund the church in Franklin, but as I mentioned our local funding dried up and we couldn’t afford to keep it going. I looked into pastoring an established COGIC church but there were no openings. Ernie and I were in deep financial trouble, but God was about to rescue us and send us into more new wineskins.

If you want to know more about Ernie and my Spirit-led interracial experiences, google: Off the RACE Track–From Color-Blind to Color-Kind. (Pastor Larry Britton wrote a beautiful endorsement for it.)

Stay tuned for Part 7: New Wineskins in The Salvation Army

#ChurchOfGodInChrist #COGIC