"THE CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST" THE CHURCH OF GOD IN CHRIST is a Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in which the word of God is preached, ordinances are administered and the doctrine of sanctification or holiness is emphasized, as being essential to the salvation of mankind. Our Church is commonly known as being Holiness or Pentecostal in nature because of the importance ascribed to the events which occurred on the Day of Pentecost, the 50th day after the Passover, or Easter as being necessary for all believers in Christ Jesus to experience. On the Day of Pentecost, the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, Supernatural Manifestations descended in marvelous copiousness and power. The gift of the spirit in the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus to clothe those who would wait in Jerusalem with power from on high, was accompanied by three supernatural extraordinary manifestations. The sudden appearance of the Holy Ghost appealed first to the ear. The disciples heard a "sound" from heaven which rushed with a mighty force into the house and filled it--even as a storm rushes--but there was no wind. It was the sound that filled the house and not a wind, an invisible cause producing audible effects. Next, the eye was arrested by the appearance of tongues of fire which rested on each of the gathered COMPANY. Finally, there was the impartation of a new strange power to speak in languages they had never learned "as the Spirit gave them Utterance." Our Church is also considered to be a member of the great Protestant body though it did not directly evolve from the European or English Reformation but had its origin within the General Association to the Baptist Church. Elder Charles Harrison Mason, who later became the founder and organizer of the Church of God in Christ, was born on the Prior Farm near Memphis, Tennessee. His father and mother, Jerry and Eliza Mason, were members of a Missionary Baptist Church, having been converted during the dark crises of American Slavery.

Mason, while walking along a street in Little Rock, Arkansas, received the revelation of the name, Church Of God In Christ (COGIC) (1 Thess 2:14; 2 Thess 1:1).  Thus in 1897, a major new black denomination was born.  From the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century, most blacks had encountered Christianity under the aegis of Baptist or Methodist churches.  Mason and Jones, however, emphatically changed the religious landscape in the black community as well as broadened the black religious experience.  Through the dynamic preaching of Mason and the prolific writings and hymnology of Jones, Sanctified or Holiness churches sprang up throughout the South and Southwest.

He received reports of the Pentecostal revival in Los Angeles in the latter part of 1906.  He traveled to California, and under the ministry of W.J. Seymour, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues.  After some five weeks in Los Angeles, Mason returned to municipalities of Memphis and Jackson, eager to share his additional experience of the Lord with his brethren.  However, when he presented his Pentecostal message to the local churches, he and his message were rejected.  After days and nights of intensive debating over the Baptism of the Holy Ghost with initial evidence of speaking in tongues, Mason and Jones separated, and the church split.  Those who agreed with Mason met in September 1907 to legally organize the COGIC.  They elected C.H. Mason as general overseer and appointed D.J. Young, Mason’s constant companion, as editor of the new periodical, The Whole Truth.

By ordaining ministers of all races, Mason performed an unusually important service to the early twentieth-century Pentecostal movement.  He appears to have been the only early convert who came from a legally incorporated church body and who could thus ordain persons whose status as clergymen was recognized by civil authorities.  This recognition allowed clergy to perform marriages, to carry out other ministerial functions having legal consequences, and thus entitling them to certain economic advantages such as the right to obtain reduced clergy rates on railroads.  As a result, scores of white ministers’ south ordination at the hand of Mason.  Large numbers obtained credentials carrying the name COGIC. 

There were as many white Church Of God In Christ ministers as there were black ministers in the years of 1909-1914, all carrying Mason’s credentials and incorporation.  Ironically, Mason, who viewed his lifelong task as one of the simple preserving the “spiritual essence” and the “prayer tradition” of the black religious experience, found himself in a unique and pivotal historical position.

By 1913 it had become increasingly clear that as Pentecostals moved toward denominationalism, they would follow the segregating practices of American culture.  The color lien that had been washed away in the blood of Jesus at the Azusa Street revival reappeared.

On December 20, 1913, elders E.N. Bell and H.A. Goss issued a call to convene a general council of “all Pentecostal saints and Church Of God In Christ followers,” to meet the following April at Hot Springs, Arkansas.  This invitation went only to the white saints. 

On the first week of April 1914, Mason traveled to the Hot Springs convention to invoke God’s blessings on the newly formed General Council of the Assemblies of God.  He preached to more than four hundred white Pentecostal preachers.

By 1917 Church Of God In Christ congregations were organized in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn.  Evangelists were also at work in Harlem.  In 1935 a storefront church was opened at 137^th and Lenox Avenue, placing Bishop Mason’s message before the largest urban black population in America.

Despite this new racial separation, Mason maintained a warm fellowship with the white Pentecostals.  He preached in their conventions and maintained a strong fellowship with two prominent white Pentecostal leaders:  A.J. Thomlinson of the Church of God (CG, Cleveland, Tennessee) and J.H. King of the Pentecostal Holiness Church (PHC, Franklin Springs, Georgia).  In 1952, Mason was the elder statesman attending the Pentecostal world Conference at London, England.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) developed a file on C.H. Mason because of his pacifism and interracialism.  In 1918 some white followers of Mason in Los Angeles were identified as being of German extraction.  Mason was jailed at Lexington, Mississippi, for allegedly preaching against the war, although he sold bonds to help the war efforts.  William B. Holt, one of the white brethren targeted by the FBI for suspicion, was a lawyer and former Nazarene preacher.  He traveled to Lexington to post a two-thousand dollar cash bond for Mason’s release.

A reference from the 1918 FBI report reveals Mason’s historical perspectives.  After quoting from one of Masons’ tracts, it comments:  “It is clear that Mason and his followers felt it to be of far reaching significance that one of the great religious movements of the twentieth century was founded by a member of the African race.”

Later scholars have echoed the same conclusion as the FBI report.  Dr. Gayraud Wilmore, a most careful and respected scholar, says, “This movement, begun by C.H. Mason and W.J. Seymour at the turn of the century, has been one of the most powerful expressions of Black religion in the world”. 

Wilmore’s assessment is supported by Yale historian supported by Yale historian Sidney Ahlstrom, who observed that the lives of W.J. Seymour and C.H. Mason personified a process by which black piety exerted its greatest direct influence on American religious history.

Mason led the Church Of God In Christ until his death in 1961.  Under his leadership the church experienced phenomenal growth.  Thousands of Mason’s followers, migrating from south to north and southwest to far west, carried his teachings and evangelistic spirit to virtually every major city in America.  Upon his death in 1961, the Church Of God In Christ, which had begun in a gin house in Lexington, Mississippi, claimed some 5,500 congregations and 482,679 members.  At least ten other church bodies owed their origins to Mason’s church. 

The Greek translation for the word “doctrine” is didaskaleia.  It means “teaching.”  Probably, this word indicates Christian doctrine, which is binding on the Christian community as faith’s divinely communicated content.

The Pentecostal-holiness doctrine is based on the Bible.  What is the purpose of the Bible? Of course, salvation is the first purpose (2 Timothy 3:15).  The doctrine also includes holy living.  The word is profitable for teaching (doctrine), conviction (reproof), setting right (correction), and discipline (instruction).  It enables a child of God to become a man or woman of God, matured in the things of the Lord.

True preaching or teaching is the explanation and application of Bible doctrine.  Anything else is just religious speechmaking.  The following pages contain doctrinal guidelines concerning the Church Of God In Christ.  All the information may not be covered during new member orientation.  The information may also be used as a self-study guide.