Chapter 6
--Mother Robinson was instrumental in starting the home and foreign mission component of COGIC,
along with Elder Searcy, but he withdrew from the denomination, delaying the implementation.
--It was organized finally in 1926, with the purpose of winnings others to Christ, encouraging
people to lead holy lives and received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
--This work was supported by Home and Foreign Mission Bands organized in local churches by
Mother Robinson.
--Most of the early foreign missionaries were female, the first being Mrs. Mattie McCaulley. She
went to Trinidad to begin work. She later went to the Panama Canal Zone and Costa Rica. Others went
to Africa, Haiti, and the British West Indies.
--Elizabeth White, a veteran of the African mission field, was the first COGIC missionary to
achieve success on the continent. She started her work for the denomination in 1930. Mrs. Willis
Ragland joined her in the mid-1930s and Beatrice Lott in the late ‘30s. They served there until the
outbreak of WWII.
--COGIC today has more than 1 million members in greater than 50 nations around the world.
--Mary McLeod Bethune, turned down as a foreign missionary by the Moody organization, found a home
in our denomination leading the All Saints school at Lexington, MS. She succeeded Prof. James Courts in
1926. She was the first African-American woman to lead such a school.
--Dr. Arenia Mallory, who also initially had a desire to teach in Africa, went down to Lexington to
head administer the school.
--Mallory and Bethune helped charter The National Council of Negro Women in New York.
Mallory became its regional director for the Southeast.
--Mallory became Bethune’s international spokeswoman, speaking at the Convention of Women
in Helsinki and the Swedish Council of Women in Europe. She was honored by many groups, including
the Bethune Cookman College and United Nations. She was a federal appointee during the Kennedy
administration.
--Both women traveled with students throughout the USA conducting musicals to raise money.
--The upbeat, instrumentated, Black Gospel style of worship helped make COGIC stand out, along with
its doctrines, from other denominations. Barker Temple, under Mother Robinson’s own bishop,
organized the first touring church band in 1930. It included such instruments as the tambourine, bass
fiddle, trombone, drums, and piano, among others.
--National HQ burned in 1936, and the national church met at Bishop Mason’s fellowship until Mason
Temple was built in 1945.
--Mother Robinson’s husband died in 1937, when she was 77. He had pastured for more than 20 years,
and they had been married for 25. Bishop Mason himself preached at Pastor Robinson’s funeral.
--Mother Robinson did not stop her work for COGIC, however. There was a full roster of state
mothers on the books before Mother Robinson died.
--Mother Robinson started the Lifted Banner Magazine in 1944, just a year before her death. It
was the official publication of the denomination’s Women’s Department. It lasted more than 30 years.
--She raised approximately one-third of the money for the new Mason Temple, which had 8,000
seats, the largest Black-built structure at the time. The assembly hall bore her name. She contributed
the money for the neon sign outside the temple, one of her last acts before going to be with the Lord.
Chapter 7
--Review the various clippings and documents