Portland Avenue Church
About the year 1877 a few members of the old Floyd and Chestnut Street congregation, with J. L. Weller and P. Galt Miller as leaders, organized a Mission Sunday-school on High Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street in this city. Out of this grew the church now worshipping at Twenty-fifth and Portland Avenue, although there is not one of the charter members there now.
Bro. Frank G. Allen, long since gone to his reward, was one of its first preachers, Bro. Saunders Miller and others being elders.
From its organization to 1894, about seventeen years, the church seemed to fluctuate as it were, one year seeming to enjoy large spiritual success, being upon the mountain-top of zeal for old and love for humanity, and probably the next down in the valley of discouragement, if not despair. In other words, like all other congregations, it had its ups and downs, its ins, and outs, but managed by the grace of God, in spite of difficulties, trials, and oppositions, to come out “more than conquerors through him who loved us and gave himself for us.”
In the autumn of 1894, when the writer became identified with this congregation, the number of regular attendants upon the worship averaged about fifteen to twenty. We moved along at this rate, with J. M. Luck as elder, for about two years, doing nothing to reach out and try to save those all about us. Finally, we decided the best thing to do in order to become actively engaged in the service of our Master was to call a preacher. There were objections to this, of course, which were overcome in due time, and Bro. Geo. A. Klingman was the man selected to do this much-needed work of reviving the church. He labored with us in a three weeks meeting, which resulted in bringing back a great many who had gone to other parts of the city to worship. The church, in fact, was given such a spiritual uplift that Brother Klingman was urged to remain with us. He stayed from autumn of 1896 to the autumn of 1903, when he went to Columbia, Tenn. During the seven years of his ministry the church grew and increased in spirituality and in numbers also, until the membership has reached 300 and upward, and it is in fine working order at present, one or more being added in almost every meeting— “going on” and on, we trust “unto perfection.”
We are currently in need of a new house of worship, and for this purpose we are “laying in store as the Lord prospers us.” We have about $1,000 on hand, and when the amount reaches $2,500 or $3,000, we will begin to build. We are a some-what “peculiar people” at Portland—we believe in getting the spiritual house in proper condition first, then there will be no trouble about the material or temporal.
The special mission work the church is now doing is helping Bro. J. M. McCaleb in Japan, and also the work in the mountains of our State. We are also helping the poor and needy of the congregation, and, in fact, trying to help in every good word and work, little though it may be.
This church is lacking in one particular to constitute it a genuine New Testament church; it has no elders nor deacons, and the reason for this is, that no one in the congregation seems sufficiently desirous of such office or offices to prepare himself for it, and to put men over the church would be as unscriptural as having none; therefore, “of the two evils” we think “we have chosen the least.”
For the past two months Bro. H. H. Hawley, of Potter Bible college, Bowling Green, Ky., has been laboring with us in the absence of our regular preacher, Bro. Robt. H. Boll, a most courageous and consecrated servant of the Lord, under whose ministry the church is expecting to grow more and more in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord.
“The Christian Leader, and The Way,” Volume XVII, Number 39, September 27, 1904
