A Look Back: Young Recruits

Elder Robert C. Lawson was a highly effective evangelist. Early on in his ministry, he was a field superintendent in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. He traveled throughout the country preaching wherever doors were opened  to him. Sometimes he preached in the open air, but often he evangelized churches. This history gives a succinct description of this aspect of Lawson's ministry:

Elder Robert C. Lawson, a great pioneer of Pentecost, traveled throughout the country preaching the Apostolic message and establishing churches. He had a special anointing on his ministry that enabled him to go into cities where there had been no previous Pentecostal activity and find a place to preach. Many souls would come to be saved.

During these evangelistic trips, Lawson would organize those who embraced his doctrine and found a new Pentecostal church in the area. Clearly, he could not pastor all the churches he started, so there was a demand for capable young ministers to take charge of (and grow) these new churches.

In his early ministry, Lawson recruited young PAW ministers, like Elder Herbert Spencer, who began his ministry as a traveling evangelist with Lawson. After the dissension at the Church of Christ, Spencer was installed as pastor of the minority group of about 200 that left the church in support of Lawson's teaching. Spencer led the reorganized group under the name of Rehoboth Church of Christ.

Spencer, who later succeeded Lawson as presider of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, was just one of quite a few ecclesiastical heavyweights whose ministries began with or were catalyzed by Lawson's influence. Another is Bishop Austin Layne. The above quotation comes from a history that praises Layne as "a strong organizer" and credits him with "establish[ing] the Temple Church of Christ in 1922 ... the oldest Apostolic church in the [St. Louis, Mo.] area." However, in a 1959 article entitled "Honor to Whom Honor is Due," Bishop Lawson recalls Layne's beginnings in St. Louis as

another classic example of an Elder who was brought to a church by me. I personally told him of a church that I had founded there, and offered to give it to him if he came out West. At that time I was pastoring in Columbus, Ohio. Later on, he said he would pray over it, which he claimed he did, and God spoke to him and said St. Louis. He came to see me in Columbus, Ohio, where I pastored. He preached for me.

We took up an offering for him and escorted him and his family to the church in St. Louis. We appointed him the pastor, the saints accepted him; he was put in charge of the church: I took up an offering for him and his family. He has prospered greatly and has been promoted to the bishoprick of his organization. (Defense, 409)

Lawson then shares his disappointment that "[n]ever once has he made mention as I can remember that it was I, Bishop R.C. Lawson, who preached on the streets, founded the church, and turned it over to him" (Defense, 409).

Layne was perhaps a convenient example for Lawson to help drive home a point concerning another appointee of his. In the article, Lawson refers to this minister anonymously as

A certain Elder who was appointed to a church with a membership that was able to support him without working. 

The Lord straightway blessed him and prospered his work. 

He bought a lot, built a fine church, but when he laid the cornertstone after the church was completed he was so dishonest and selfish, he engraved his name as co-founder, but in the place where the real founder's name should have been placed, he left that vacant.... 

He stated that he founded the church by preaching on the streets, a water plug was his pulpit, he gave no credit to anyone in bringing him there and assigning him to the church. He developed the church as true, but did not start or found it. He changed the name of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ to a certain name. Later he split off from the parent body and named his church National Organization after the name of his local church.

He should have been honest enough to name the other man who founded his church and appointed him to the pastorage. (Defense, 409)

Of course, the person Lawson speaks of is Smallwood Williams. Everything he says is true. However, the truth about these appointments belies the reality of the work of pastoring and expanding a church. History bears out, for instance, that, even if Williams didn't found the church, he had preached on the street corners of Washington, D.C., and even though he didn't found the church, he certainly established it, built it, made it viable.

While Lawson rightly takes credit for the initial breakthroughs that came through his ministry, it was rarely the case that these churches were beyond the initial stages of development. For instance, when Lawson brought Elder Layne to the church at St. Louis, what Layne encountered (according to this article) was "a storefront that seated 25, but had only 'a half-dozen attending.'" A church, indeed, had been conceived through Lawson's preaching, but the work of building the church was Layne's. (Incidentally, the article in entitled "Our Founder, Bishop Austin A. Layne, Sr.")

A very clear picture of the naure of a Lawsonite assignment comes to us from an ostensibly unlikely source. Rhythm-and-blues singer Darlene Love mentions Bishop Lawson as "a Pentecostal legend" in her autobiography, All You Need Is Love. Raised in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, she was the daughter of a preacher who left his California assistant pastorship in 1951 on the heels of "a mild scandal." Love's father, Joe Wright, accepted an appointment to a church in Texas after Bishop Lawson visited them and offered him the pastorate. Love's bubbly, humorous tone becomes blatantly ironic as she recalls her famly's arrival in Texas:

Our excitement about the train ride east -- our first ever -- was tempered by the fact that we had to leave almost everything behind because we couldn't afford to ship it. The parsonage we were promised was furnished, and everything else we'd have to save for all over again. This meant leaving behind the few toys we had, including my roller skates and the beloved Schwinn bicycle I'd won by selling newspaper subscriptions. Only Edna got to bring her dolls -- she just cried so loud that my parents gave in. ... 

The excitement of the trip wore off quickly when we got to the house and saw just how shabby it was. It was a brown wood frame with linoleum throughout and flowered wallpaper that was yellowed and ugly. Some of our coloring books -- the ones we left behind -- had more intricate designs. ... Everything in the house was in various states of disrepair: the faucets, the toilets, the bunk beds. In some places on the floor, you could see clear through to the foundation. The furniture was borderline Goodwill -- in other words, a few sticks pasted together here and there. Welcome to the Promised Land, Pastor Wright. (All You Need, ch. 2)

Love goes on to mention other privations. There was a small congregation, but they could barely afford to to support Wright and his family financially; the new pastor had to take part-time work. The dry heat of Texas affected the whole family's allergies, but exacerbated little Edna's eczema in the worst way. They were even without hot water, until a visit from Bishop Lawson prompted parishioners to raise money for a water heater to be installed. Not long after his installation, Pastor Wright had a brief confrontation with one of the older women of the church. Eventually, they returned to California.

Was Lawson a bit of a salesman? Perhaps. Parsonage life was (and is) difficult. While Lawson speaks of escorting preachers to financially supportive churches, it is clear that these churches were in no sense thriving, numerically or financially. Surely, all of Bishop Lawson's appointments were not like these. Yearly, during the National Convention, Lawson appointed ministers to various pulpits, or moved standing ministers to new pulpits. Were these appointments different from the church plant assignments described here? Let's examine the experience of another successful minister that was appointed to a church that was past infancy.