“The Fire is Falling”: Evangelist Sallie O. Lee
When they refused to let us preach we invited the congregation to come out in the big road in front of the tabernacle where we preached with much liberty. We came out singing “While the Years Roll On.” The power fell, the saints began to shout, dance and talk in tongues. –Evangelist Sallie O. Lee
This description of Pentecostal experience and worship was not unusual for Evangelist Sallie O. Lee (ca. 1874-1949), a veteran preacher who often contributed to the Church of God Evangel about her service “in the battle for the Lord.” Lee held an evangelist’s license for thirty-seven years, retiring from active ministry in 1934. Evangel subscribers read her prayer requests, reports of evangelistic activities, and at least one article on church doctrine.
The Church of God owned few houses of worship in 1915, and evangelists preached wherever they could find a place, including brush arbors, tents, or under the open sky. Occasionally they were able to obtain a borrowed church, a union tabernacle, or some other community building, as Lee had expected to do in Calhoun, Georgia. The trustees of the tabernacle refused to allow her to preach there, however, “saying that we disturbed the neighborhood wherever we went.” Undaunted, Lee and her evangelistic team relocated to the road and later to a mill shed, where she reported that worshipers saw “supernatural fire.”
Evangelist Sallie O. Lee (ca. 1874-1949) preached at the eighth General Assembly in 1913 and frequently contributed to the Church of God Evangel.
On another occasion Lee wrote from Marietta, Georgia, that preaching under a brush arbor was “like the ‘up and down life’; when the sun and stars shine it is alright, but when it rains and storms it is all wrong.” Her account noted that recent services had been hindered some by the rain, but the congregation was able to meet in rooms that Brother Mulls provided.
Moving on to the next preaching location characterized the lives of evangelists such as Lee. While in Marietta, Georgia, she journeyed twice to nearby Alpharetta, where she reportedly preached outdoors to five hundred people. She anticipated conducting a series of services in Alpharetta after finishing her meetings in Marietta. The next month she wrote from Calhoun, Georgia, where she was assisting a ministry couple. She assured readers that the “fire [was] still falling at Marietta” and that the people were meeting in various places. She expected that they would soon be ready to organize a church there.
Lee served as an evangelist and as a pastor during her ministry. She also had the opportunity to preach at the eighth General Assembly in January 1913. According to the Minutes of that Assembly, she preached in the Wednesday evening evangelistic service and several received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
One of her Evangel reports is a fitting testimony of Sallie O. Lee’s ministry: “I have had plenty to do; I have preached nearly every night since the first of March. God has stood by me and kept me in health. Homes have been opened to me everywhere I went…. The fire is falling.”
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This article was written by Church of God Historian David G. Roebuck, Ph.D., who is director of the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center and assistant professor of the history of Christianity at Lee University. This “Church of God Chronicles” was first published in the July 2009 Church of God Evangel.
