4
Mergers
and acquisitions
1919-1929
was a time of change for
By
1919 Kulp had “herded the cats” into something that
looked like a denomination. He had produced enough structure in the Manual
to provide for a series of “mergers and acquisitions” with holiness
denominations and mission agencies, eight to be exact. Here they are—the
“mergers and acquisitions.”
1.
The Holiness Christian Church (1919)
The
Holiness Christian church brought 2167 members into the 8000-member Union,
mostly from Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. The resulting
denomination was renamed the International Holiness Church. This
mini-denomination was actually founded before the
2.
Pentecostal Rescue Mission of New York (1922)
Canadian
John Scobie had started this work and by 1903
the mini-denomination was mostly focused in upstate New York—Binghamton, Troy,
Albany and Schenectady along with the Mooers (N.Y.)
Camp Meeting near the Canadian border. They joined the former Union (now
renamed the International Holiness Church) in 1922. This
merger/acquisition contributed 15 churches and 400 members, plus mission fields
in the Caribbean, South Africa, and at Skagway, Alaska. More important, they
contributed a family of leaders that would influence the Pilgrims (and the
later, The Wesleyan Church) for generations. Powerful preacher,
A. H. (Allie) Wilson later became an Assistant General Superintendent
serving on a per diem basis while he continued to pastor the
--The
Pilgrim Church of California (1922)
(Occurred
at this point but will be addressed last in this list)
3.
The World Wide Missionary Society (1922)
Probably
the shortest-lived foreign entity to join the collection of people to be called
Pilgrims was H. J Olsen’s missionary society. The reason related to a
disagreement with the missionary board in Cincinnati (connected with God’s
Bible school). When the missionary family who led the field in Swaziland came
home from the field, the work was left in the hands of single missionary, Miss.
Lena Roy. The British officials in Africa refused to accept a woman as the
leader, insisting on a proper leader—that is, a male leader. The
Cincinnati board in Cincinnati[2]
seemed to casual about sending a male missionary to “rescue the work” so Olsen
took it on himself to found a missionary Society and borrow the money to
immediately send the W. E. Reed family.
In the following 18 months the newly founded society wound up supporting
18 missionaries from Panama to Africa and in 1922, just a year and a half after
founding, the new society was merged into the foreign missionary work of the
Pilgrims.[3]
4.
The Immanuel Mission on Barbados (1923)
Samuel
Bagley, a Methodist from the British Isles had founded The Immanuel Mission
in 1890 after being influenced by A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian
and Missionary Alliance. By 1923 it was led by indigenous ministers and in 1923
it joined and brought ten mission stations on Barbados into the Pilgrim
Church.
5.
Bible Home and Foreign Missionary Society (1924)
In
1890 holiness people from Attleboro, Massachusetts founded a work on St.
Thomas, St. Croix, St. Kitts and Montserrat but the urgency for “holiness
missions” had waned in New England and when the Pilgrims agreed to assume the
work the administrators at God’s Bible Schools arranged for the Pilgrims to
absorb this four-island work.
6.
The Pentecostal Brethren in Christ (1924)
This
mini-denomination of holiness brethren folk in Ohio, along with their Camp
grounds in Springfield, Ohio was absorbed into the Ohio district of the Pilgrims
bring a new group who practiced the rite of foot-washing into the increasingly
mixed group of people now called the Pilgrim Holiness Church. It also
brought a new leader, Joel Harmon.
7.
People’s Mission Church of Colorado (1926)
In
1834 Daniel H. Lee went west to carry the gospel to the Flathead
Indians, traveling the entire distance to what is now Oregon from St. Louis on
horseback. Linking up with Lee later was Moriah
T. Ware who sailed around the Cape to become a missionary teacher. The
single missionary teacher later married the single missionary and one of their
eight children was William H Lee who later moved to Oklahoma, then
Kansas where we was converted in a Salvation Army meeting under the preaching
of a sixteen year old woman. He entered evangelism and while preaching a
revival in Colorado Spring was asked to take over the leadership of the
People’s Mission in Colorado Springs which included several storefront
missions in Colorado, a large “Workingman’s home” in Denver, a home for
unmarried mothers in Pueblo, the Pike’s Peak Holiness Camp Meeting and
the Western Holiness College and Bible Training School. Lee supervised this work and also erected the
large “tabernacle” at Junction City, Kansas to reach the soldiers training there
in connection with World War I. In 1926 this work was merged into the Pilgrim
denomination and the school, (which had been closed due to lack of funding) was
reopened as the Pilgrim “Colorado Springs Bible Training School.” The
Pilgrims needed a Bible school in the west and the People’s
8.
The Pilgrim Church of California (1922)
Though
occurring third in this list we are listing of the merger of the California
Pilgrims last since it leads into the next chapter of Pilgrim history—how
founder Seth Cook Rees became a Nazarene, got excommunicated from that
denomination and returned to the church he founded, bringing in the Pilgrim
Church of California and giving the group its new name. Since this story
will be the focus of the next chapter, for now we will simply record the fact
that in 1922 Seth Rees led a merger with the International Holiness Church
bringing 457 California (many-former-Nazarene) members[6] along with 22 missionaries who were members
of his church (including prominent Mexico missionaries Francisco and Nellie Soltero) The Pilgrim magazine, and the Pilgrim
Bible College[7]
in Pasadena. It was a tiny group that merged in 1922 with the International
Holiness Church but it may be a testimony to the power and influence of
Seth Rees that the tiny group gave the larger denomination its new name (The
Pilgrim Holiness Church) along with returning the founder into the fold
again. Four years later Rees would be General Superintendent again. But before
we tell that story we need to next tell the very messy (and very interesting)
story of how and why Seth Rees got booted out of the Church of the Nazarene.
---------------------
Pilgrims
seemed to care little about their denomination’s name—they exchanged names as
easily as a pair of shoes. And (at this stage at least) they were an open door
for other groups. They welcomed
missionary fields planted by British Methodists, independent regional
mini-denominations, strings of rescue missions, orphanages, ministries to
soldiers, along with River Brethren churches who still practiced foot-washing.
They weren’t just welcoming to the churches but also welcomed their leaders at
an astonishing rate, often making them denominational leaders within a few
years, sometimes right away. It was the roaring twenties for the new
denomination. In 1919 the Pilgrims had 8000 members. Five years later in 1924
they had grown to 15,000 members. Sure, they got 3,000 of those by merger, but
the other 4000 came by evangelism and church growth. By today’s standards
15,000 members seems like a small number. However in that that day the attendance
generally ran 2-3 times the membership—which may imply that by 1924 every
week in Pilgrim churches as many as 40,000 people gathered for services which
is quite a testimony to an evangelistic church. The “open door” approach of the
Pilgrims during this brought an influx of new blood into the church and that
was a good thing—that’s what I think.
So what do you think?
During the first few
weeks, click here to comment or read comments
Keith Drury
To think about….
[1] Jerry is the present (2009) editor of Wesleyan Life
[2] I have run out of research time to check who served on this board, but we have already observed that the board was initially three women: Mrs. M. W. Knapp, Bessie Queen and Mary Storey. A court later forced the expansion of this board, but it was these three women only at first. I am not sure if the board had yet been expanded. However, I can imagine three strong female leaders not freaking out over leaving the missionary work in the hands of a single woman.
[3] Is this an early tremor of
the later (and gradual) drifting away between God’s
[4] It should be pointed out (in
light of the coming story of the Rees-Pasadena incident) that the seven congregations of
the People's Mission Church had
before this (1911) united with the Church of the Nazarene but nine months later
they withdrew as they had found the "distinctively congregational form of
government" in the Church of the Nazarene was not suitable for a work so "pioneer
and aggressive" in as theirs. Apparently they found among the Pilgrims what
they wanted, though later in the story there would come
another secessionist movement from the Pilgrims in
[5] The history is titled The Days of Our Pilgrimage, published 1976 by The Wesley Press, Marion Indiana. I am following the general outline of this book in recalling these stories, though augmented by other works and personal conversations. I also have a copy of this book where my father, Leonard Drury made annotations throughout with his personal connections with the story.
[6] Of these members 325 were in one church—Rees’ own church.
[7] This institution later
merged with the Bible school in