The Pentecostal message came to South Georgia through the ministry of Evangelist Sam C. Perry. A former Methodist minister, Perry came into the Pentecostal experience in 1907. Over the next several years, he preached throughout the South. His revival at the Statenville Court House in 1908 was the first known Pentecostal meeting in South Georgia and laid the foundation for Bethel Church of God, the oldest Church of God congregation in South Georgia.
Isaac Franklin Culpepper and his wife, Nancy, were among those who received the baptism in the Holy Spirit during Perry’s meeting in Statenville. Frank lived in rural Echols County, just south of Statenville and Lake Park. He wanted to bring the Pentecostal experience to his family and friends, so he opened his home for prayer meetings. The son of a Baptist minister and farmer, Benjamin Culpepper, Frank and five of his brothers would in time become ministers in the Church of God.
In early 1910, Frank Culpepper invited two evangelists to conduct a tent meeting in Echols County. Although details are unknown, the evangelists may have been part of the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church. When their meeting concluded, they established a local church that took the Biblical name of Bethel, meaning “House of God.” The Bethel congregation worshiped in a brush arbor and then a borrowed log house until Frank’s brother Jim (James Wallace Culpepper) invited them to build a place of worship on his nearby property.
Within a few months, Sam C. Perry returned to Echols County. Since his 1908 visit, he had joined the Church of God under the ministry of A. J. Tomlinson at the Pleasant Grove Camp Meeting in Durant, Florida. On this return, Perry organized the Bethel Church into a Church of God congregation and appointed Jim Culpepper as pastor.
Many neighbors persecuted the Bethel congregation because of its holiness and Pentecostal message. Acts of violence included 11 shots being fired into the church house at the close of one evening service, with a ricocheting bullet striking the sleeping daughter of Frank Culpepper. When someone burned the church building around 1914, the congregation worshiped in homes and brush arbors until Frank Peterson donated three acres of land. John Padgett mortgaged his property to purchase lumber, and members joined together to build a new house of worship on the property that continues to be the home of the Bethel Church today.
After a successful Christmas revival in 1917, State Overseer M. S. Lemons encouraged the development of a campground at Bethel. Alongside their church building, the congregation constructed a 40-by-70-foot tabernacle shed to host camp meetings. Numerous reports in the Church of God Evangel documented the Spirit’s move at Bethel, and visitors came from all around to attend the three daily services of these 10-day camp meetings. Among the “signs following,” historical reports testify of worshipers handling fire and embracing hot stove pipes.
Persecution of the Pentecostal message continued. Attempting to quench the fire of the Holy Spirit, vandals burned both the church house and the tabernacle. Thankfully, congregational leaders had purchased insurance just days before the arson, and they were able to rebuild.
Persecution did not stop with the spread of Pentecostalism, and the Bethel Church of God remains a testimony to the faithfulness of God and His people in South Georgia.
David G. Roebuck, Ph.D., is the Church of God historian and director of the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center on the Lee University campus.