Preserving and Sharing Our Heritage: Fulfilling Our Mission
The Church of God is celebrating 125 years of Pentecostal witness on August 19, 2011. This is the fourth article in a series relating our commitment to preserve and pass on our heritage to our children and grandchildren.
Preserving and sharing our heritage requires intentional and focused effort. Among the tasks are collecting and maintaining historical records, photographs, documents and artifacts; making these resources available to congregations, students, and scholars; and also identifying ways to communicate the wonderful works of God to those who are coming after us.
The Dixon Pentecostal Research Center is the primary Church of God agency designated to preserve the heritage of the Church of God. According to our mission statement the center “collects, preserves and makes available for research Church of God, Pentecostal and Charismatic documents, records and other media. As the official archives of the Church of God we advance the knowledge and use of the movement’s history and heritage through research, teaching, publications, and exhibitions.”
The Dixon Pentecostal Research Center acquires the materials we preserve in countless different ways. We continually look for important publications about the Church of God and the Pentecostal Movement. In this way we function like a special collection in a library. We have over ten thousand cataloged items including books, periodicals, information files and other types of media. Often we have been involved in providing important information for the publications we receive, such as the recently published history of the Church of God in the Delmarva-DC region, Our Living Legacy.
As an archives we collect the records of Church of God departments, agencies, and some local churches. We also seek out the personal papers of many persons of significance in the Church of God. Archival documents require much more staff attention than books and periodicals. Donations of letters, diaries, photographs and other materials often come to us in cardboard boxes, manila envelopes and other containers. We then “process” these valuable resources by arranging them in a useable order, placing them in archival quality folders and boxes, and preparing a guide that will help the researcher to know what is in the collection. Currently we are processing the papers of former General Overseer Ray H. Hughes. Other collections that have been donated to us include the W.F. Ford Collection, the Max Morris Music Collection, and the papers of missionaries such as Dora Myers, Vergil Wolf and T.R. Morse.
Although we have thousands of pages of paper documents and photographs, many of our holdings are on other types of media such as phonograph records, video tapes, audio tapes, microfilm, CDs and DVDs. These different types of media present special challenges for preserving and making them available. For example, our holdings include thousands of audio sermons on reel-to-reel and cassette tapes. These are nearing the end of their lives and will not be accessible much longer without special care and attention. As part of our “Preserving Pentecostal Preaching” initiative, we are inventorying these sermons, placing them in archival quality storage containers, and transferring select sermons to audio CDs. We continue to actively collect recorded and printed sermons as well as their contextual materials so that future preachers and scholars will be able to better understand the rich tradition of Pentecostal preaching.
In addition to collecting the sermons of Church of God ministers, we are actively involved in recording oral histories about people and ministries. Dr. Charles W. Conn piloted our first oral history project and conducted over one hundred interviews as part of a collection he called “Conversations on Camera with Charles W. Conn.” In 2006 we initiated the “Voice of A Legacy Oral History Project.” The purpose of this continuing project is to interview a wide range of Church of God and Pentecostal leaders and laity in order to capture the “voices” of our past. Among those interviewed to date are former members of the International Executive Committee including Ray H. Hughes, Cecil B. Knight, Robert White, W.C. Byrd, John D. Nichols, Raymond Crowley, R. Lamar Vest, Gene D. Rice, and Bill F.Sheeks.
Although the research center is not a museum, we are anticipating the day when we will be able to establish a museum to more effectively communicate what God has done through Church of God ministries. In anticipation of the future we are collecting some objects. Three of our treasured artifacts are a water turbine carved by Church of God founder R.G. Spurling, a gavel used by General Overseer F.J. Lee, and a pump organ that traveled to the Bahamas in 1910.
Serving students, scholars and Church of God congregations and agencies are daily activities of our staff. Students use the center to complete course requirements, scholars come to do original research for dissertations and books, congregations seek to know more about their histories, and denominational departments and agencies routinely request information to assist them in their ministries. Exemplary Pentecostal historians such as Vinson Synan and Cecil M. Robeck have used our collections. Not surprisingly, increasingly people are seeking our help through e-mail and Facebook rather that travel to the center.
We fulfill our educational mission in a variety of ways. Center Director Dr. David Roebuck teaches courses at both Lee University and the Pentecostal Theological Seminary including “History and Theology of the Pentecostal Movement” and “Church of God History and Polity.” As historian of the Church of God, Dr. Roebuck also regularly contributes articles to the Church of God Evangel and other publications.
Exhibitions are a major means of sharing our heritage. Since 1996 the center has partnered with the Church of God Historical Commission to create a heritage exhibit at each General Assembly. The 2010 Assembly featured the exhibit “Until All Have Heard” on the occasion of the centennial of Church of God World Missions. Following each Assembly a portion of the exhibit is displayed at the research center in Cleveland.
In an effort to inform visitors to the Church of God International Offices, the center is responsible for six display cases in those buildings that convey the story of our heritage. Each building contains one per meant exhibit and one changing exhibit. One case currently includes an exhibit on F.J. Lee, the second general overseer of the Church of God. From time to time the center also creates exhibits for special occasions. Last summer we partnered with a traveling Smithsonian exhibit to present the history of the Church of God in the local public library.
God has given the Church of God a wonderful heritage. Our grandfathers and grandmothers served sacrificially to reach the harvest in the last days. Their ministries are worthy of remembering in our generation and in generations to come. We are blessed to honor their work and to pass the heritage they have given us to our children and grandchildren. Like the Psalmist, our mission is to “tell the next generation about the glorious deeds of the Lord.
We will tell of his power and the mighty miracles he did” (Psalm 78:4 NLT).
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Dr. David G. Roebuck is director of the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center and an assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Lee University. He also serves as church historian for the Church of God.
