Page 236 - LD215 History of the Church in Africa A4 final

A History of the Church in Africa

We have no head but Christ.… Unity by organization can never be
realized’” (11). However, Bell and others persevered in their call for
order according to scriptural principles because they feared that the lack
of organization would produce negative results for the movement. Bell
assured those who were opposed that he and others were not looking
for a church political organization that wielded central authority; rather,
they wanted to “seek a closer bond of Christian unity and a scriptural
basis for fellowship” (as quoted in Booze, 11).

The meeting was convened April 2–12, 1914, in Hot Springs,
Arkansas. More than 300 persons attended from across the United
States of America and foreign countries of which 128 were ministers
and missionaries. Delegates chose E. N. Bell as chairman and J. Roswell
Flower as the first secretary. They also appointed a committee to begin
work on agenda items for business. The convention chose the name
Assemblies of God for the new fellowship.

It is not my purpose here to write a detailed history of the Assemblies
of God, for several have already been written. However, I intend to focus
on how the Assemblies of God became involved in Africa.

From Hot Springs to Africa

In keeping with the theme at Azusa, missions was a primary focus of
the Hot Springs convention, as Booze observes:

They chose a missionary presbytery consisting of 12 elders to
“serve our foreign missionaries, to aid in sending funds, to advise
outgoing missionaries, to arrange for the distribution of funds, to
legally hold property bought on the foreign field with missionary
money and see that it is not alienated from the Pentecostal cause
of God as has been done already in some cases.” (11)

Donald Corbin, in an excellent paper presented to the Assemblies
of God World Missions Board entitled “Africa: Then, Now,
Tomorrow?” states:

The Assemblies of God was born with missions in its bloodstream.
Hopefully, that foundational component of our raison d’etre (reason
for being) will never be lost from our DNA! For many in Northern

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