Pentecostal Pioneers

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Sender: feavery@prysm.net
Subject: Pentecostal Pioneers

On Thu, 8 Feb 96 Tyler G. Nally wrote:

Does anyone have info on African-American Pentecostal Pioneers such
as William Seymour?

Bro Nally
Please allow me to share the following with you.

I took this from page 19 of The Holy Spirit in Christian Education.
Sylvia Lee, Editor
Published by Gospel Publishing House

Neeley Terry, a member of a black Nazarene mission on Santa Fe Street 
in Los Angles, California, was visiting Houston when she met William 
Seymour. Miss Terry was so impressed with him that on her return she 
pressed the interim pastor, Mrs Julia Hutchinson, to invite Seymour to 
hold meetings with a view to his becoming the pastor. According to the 
earliest accounts of Seymour's ministry, he traveled to Los Angeles in 
early February 1906 and ministered in the Nazarene mission with some 
acceptability before his insistence on tongues as the evidence of the 
baptism in the Holy Spirit led to the church being locked against him. 

Rejected by the holiness believers, Seymour continued regular meetings 
in the home of Richard and Ruth Asberry, Baptist relatives of Neeley 
Terry. Early in April, Lucy Farrow and J.A. Warren from Houston joined 
him, and on the evening of April 9, 1906, Pentecost came to the small 
group of praying believers. Seymour himself did not receive the Holy 
Spirit baptism until April 12.

To accommodate the growing crowds, Seymour moved the services to a 
former Methodist church at 312 Azusa Street that had more recently 
served as a livery stable and tenement house. It would be the center 
of revival for the next 3 years.

In His love
Floyd E. Avery
feavery@prysm.net