On October 1, 1881, a group of about thirty people met together in a church in the little village of Beaver Dam, Indiana. The village sat on the shore of Yellow Creek Lake in Kosciusko County in the northern part of the state. One of the people, a man named Daniel S. Warner, rose to his feet to speak to the group.

At that time Daniel Warner was the pastor of a church in Indianapolis and editor of a religious newspaper called the Gospel Trumpet. Earlier in his life he had been a soldier in the Civil War. Then in 1865 he decided to become a Christian and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Soon after that he became a minister. He was a pastor in Ohio and Indiana, and he worked as a home missionary in Nebraska in the 1870s when that state was still part of the "Wild West."

All eyes in the room turned to Warner as he asked for permission to speak. His exact words were not written down, but we know that his speech attacked a problem in the lives of Christians in America. D. S. Warner saw that the problem was that Christians had divided into too many different church groups, "Why should there be so many different churches?" he asked himself and the people around him. "Why must we divide ourselves into Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and all the others? Why can we not live together as brothers and sisters in one great church family under God?"

Warner believed that it was possible for Christians to live together in the unity that comes when God's love is present in people's hearts. At the Beaver Dam meeting he stood up to say that he was forever finished with all religious groups that divided Christian people from each other. From then on, he said, he would be part of God's church (or, the Church of God) and not others.

Warner asked the group if any others felt the way he did. Five people said they agreed with him. Two weeks later, in Carson City, Michigan, Warner made much the same speech. He had been invited there by Joseph and Allie Fisher, who agreed with him. Out of these two meetings, one in Indiana and the other in Michigan, the Church of God movement was born.

Early Church of God people were very determined not to be organized like the churches of their day. So they did not have church buildings and congregations as we do today. Instead they often met outdoors in what were called "brush arbors" when the weather permitted them to be outside.

In these early days they had neither church buildings nor pastors, as we think of them. Early Church of God ministers wanted to spread their message of the unity of God's people as fast and as far as possible. Because of their desire they were called the "Flying Messengers." They often traveled, either by train or wagon, in "evangelistic companies" made up of four or five men and women.

A company would travel into a town, sing a few songs, and announce that they would be holding a series of religious services (often called a "meeting"). At these services they would preach the message of the Church of God movement and they would sing songs written by men and women of the movement who put the message into poetry and music. Then the company would invite people in the audience to "take a stand" for the Church of God movement. At the end of the meeting, which might last as long as two weeks or a month, the evangelistic company would leave town and travel on to the next place they felt God wanted them to have a meeting. These were great days in the Church of God, because the flying messengers and the Gospel Trumpet enabled the young movement to spread the word very fast. Before long little groups were meeting from coast to coast.

Picture of D. S. Warner

Black People and the Church of God

The Civil War was fought from 1860-1865 to end the slavery of black people in the southern states. During the war President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves were free. In spite of these events black people continued to be treated unjustly by white people, especially after 1875, just about the time when the Church of God movement came into being.

Flying messengers like Lena Shoffner preached the message of Christian unity in the southern states just as they had everywhere else. Black people were especially interested in this message, because they believed that if Christians really followed that teaching, then blacks and whites would be able to worship together in the same church.

In 1897 at the Alabama Camp Meeting, Miss Shoffner preached on the Bible verse that says "Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility." As she preached someone let loose a rope that separated the black and white sides of the congregation. Then all the worshipers, blacks and whites together, gathered at the altar to pray as brothers and sisters in the Lord. Some of the neighbors in the surrounding area became angry when they learned that blacks and whites worshiped together at the Church of God Camp Meeting. They threw rocks and tried to disrupt the meetings. They even dynamited some of the Camp Meeting buildings. But the saints held fast their stand on Christian unity.

More than ten years before these exciting events a black woman named Jane Williams led a small gathering of black men and women in the Church of God way in Charleston, South Carolina. There were also congregations of black people in Augusta, Georgia in the 1890s.

After 1900 black Americans began moving to the great cities of the north--places like Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. Church of God black people were part of this move to the north and began worshiping with white people in the north. But congregations made up of only black people were begun in Chicago in 1915 and Detroit in 1916. By 1926 there were 62 black congregations and 2,276 members. At about the same time the National Association of the Church of God came into being. Since 1917 it has sponsored a Camp Meeting at West Middlesex, Pennsylvania. Large numbers of black Christians attend this meeting every year.
 

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Updated:  May 23, 2007