Marker Dedication Celebrates Edmond and Rebecca Barr
Cleveland, TN–Church leaders gathered in the Prayer Plaza of the Church of God International Offices today to dedicate a historic marker which commemorates the life and ministry of Edmond and Rebecca Barr, the first Church of God ministers to take the gospel outside the United States.
The 2:30 p.m. ceremony took place as the highlight of a two-day conference celebrating Black Ministries in the Church of God. The conference is sponsored by Church of God Black Ministries, led by Dr. Kenneth Hill, and the Pentecostal Theological Seminary.
Edmond Barr was a black Bahamian, born about 1868. Like many young Bahamian men, he immigrated to the United States for work and met a young American woman, Rebecca Clayton. They married in 1894, at an African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Arcadia, Florida.
Assistant General Overseer Wallace Sibley leads the dedicatory address for the marker, right of photo, honoring Edmond and Rebecca Barr (click on photo to enlarge)
In May of 1909, the Barrs attended the Pleasant Grove Camp Meeting near Durant, Florida. Many of the holiness people who regularly attended Pleasant Grove meetings had come into the Pentecostal Movement during the previous two years. There they heard Church of God General Overseer A. J. Tomlinson preach on the importance of restoring God’s church. Tomlinson credentialed both Edmond and Rebecca as evangelists on May 31, making them the first people of African descent in the Church of God.
Tomlinson retuned to Pleasant Grove in October, and the Barrs experienced a call to preach the gospel in Edmond’s homeland. The couple sailed for Nassau where they landed in November 1909, becoming not only the first Church of God ministers, but the first people of color to take the gospel outside the U.S. for the Church of God, just two years after the fledgling movement adopted the name Church of God.
Robert and Ida Evans were leaders of the Pleasant Grove Camp Meeting, and they joined the Barrs the following January. Robert Evans wrote of the Barrs to the Church of God Evangel, “I found that they were making full proof of their ministry… faithfully preaching all phases of the full gospel of Christ, including the baptism of the Holy Ghost…. And the Spirit was already moving upon the hearts of the people.”
Coordinator of Black Ministries Ken Hill, left, is joined by members of the Executive Committee at the marker for the Barrs. L-R, Hill, J. David Stephens, M. Thomas Propes, Mark L. Williams and Wallace J. Sibley (click on photo to enlarge).
“We remember today that many Church of God women are called to preach the gospel, and Rebecca was a full member of their evangelistic team,” stated Dr. Wallace Sibley, assistant general overseer for the Church of God. “Edmond Barr said, ‘God is sending my wife to people who are rebellious against His words, and as she lays her hand of power upon them they go to the floor and stay until the Comforter comes in.’”
The Barrs returned to Florida in 1911 and planted a church in Miami among Bahamian immigrants. On June 4, 1912, Tomlinson wrote in his journal: “Held a conference meeting yesterday to consider the question of ordaining Edmond Barr (colored) and setting the colored people off to work among themselves on account of the race prejudice in the South.” Ordination as a bishop permitted Edmond to establish churches and credential ministers. Then in 1915 Tomlinson appointed Edmond as overseer of Church of God black congregations.
Because of hardships against blacks prevalent in American culture at the time, black ministers in the Church of God requested a separate overseer and structure. From 1922 until 1966 the “Church of God Colored Work” existed until it was dissolved following adoption of a resolution on Human Rights adopted by the Church of God. Today, Dr. Kenneth L. Hill coordinates the Office of Black Ministries.
“The progress of black ministries in the Church of God continues in the twenty-first century,” Sibley concluded. “Church of God Black Ministries are reaching the harvest with the gospel. So today we say ‘thank you’ to Edmond and Rebecca Barr and to the countless men and women who have preached the gospel in black communities around the world. Thank you for this day to remember, commemorate and celebrate.”
(NOTE: History of Edmond and Rebecca Barr was provided here through research conducted by Dr. David Roebuck, director of the Pentecostal Research Center, Cleveland, Tennessee)
