A. J. Tomlinson (1865—1943)

Country of Origin

United States

Countries/Regions of Ministry

United States
the Bahamas; Caribbean
Global

Traditions

Pentecostal

Ministries

Denominational leader
Pastor
Educational founder

Ambrose Jessup Tomlinson was born on September 22, 1865 near Westfield, Indiana, to Milton and Delilah Tomlinson. Grandparents Robert and Lydia Tomlinson joined the Antislavery Friends and participated in the Underground Railroad. Studying at the prestigious Westfield Academy and being reared in a moderately well-to-do entrepreneurial family provided the young A. J. Tomlinson with forays into business and political arenas.

Eventually, a circle associated with the Holiness Church at Camp Creek, North Carolina included Tomlinson, who was destined to transform this group. A diary entry dated June 13, 1903, said simply, “I was ordained as minister of the gospel of the Holiness church at Camp Creek, N.C.” Tomlinson’s intense search through the scriptures, as proclaimed by leading revivalists, brought him ever closer to this small Wesleyan group meeting in the home of W. F. Bryant. The previous evening, June 12, he spent time with them before praying on the mountain in the morning and continuing their discussions. An expanded version of this event can be found in The Last Great Conflict, published by Tomlinson while General Overseer of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN).

We are told a “more careful study of the New Testament order” resulted in the work being “revived and taking on a new impetus.”^[1] This 1903 turning point for Tomlinson manifested itself in a diary recording meticulous details of organization in motion. Tomlinson was immediately chosen pastor of the Camp Creek congregation, and within a year, he was pastor of three of the four related local groups.

Tomlinson’s rescue and expansion of this loose association helped explain, in part, his 1904 move from Appalachia to Cleveland, Tennessee, and its well-connected train station. Tomlinson’s first account of the January 26-27 conference—which is counted as the first general assembly of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN)—may be found in a diary entry dated January 30, 1906: “I arrived home about midnight last night from Camp Creek, N.C. We held a Church assembly there; I acted as the ruling Elder and made the minutes of the proceedings.”

It was not until January 11, 1907 that the group took on the name Church of God. Despite his restorationist impulse, Tomlinson would have known that the name "Church of God" was first used by John Winebrenner’s Church of God, as far back as 1830. D.S. Warner had also identified with this “Bible name” in Indiana by 1880, and Frank Sandford by 1897. In 1914, the group finalized their selection of Tomlinson as general overseer, or as he put it in his entry dated November 15, 1914, “until Jesus comes or calls.”

Looking back, Tomlinson would say he became “more fully awakened” in January 1907 about the fledgling Pentecostal movement. The Last Great Conflict praised “Dr. Seamore”—actually W. J. Seymour, pastor of the legendary 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles—whose message of Pentecost washed away the “color line” spread around the world.^[2] The priority of Azusa Street was obvious when Tomlinson started The Evening Light and Church of God Evangel, and later ran a series on Pentecostal history in The Faithful Standard. Tomlinson would subsequently go on to serve as the first superintendent of Lee University (1918-1922).

Tomlinson carried the Pentecostal flame to many locations, but none more important than the Pleasant Grove camp meeting in Florida. His diary dated May 22, 1909, announces the first of several visits by Tomlinson to this venue. Among those who received the Pentecostal faith here were Edmund and Rebecca Barr. On May 31, 1909, Tomlinson granted evangelist licenses to both. In November 1910, the Barrs took the Pentecostal message to Edmund’s native Bahamas, making Rebecca, an African American, the first Church of God missionary. It was February 1911 when Tomlinson held his first international campaign in Nassau.

Later in 1911, New Mexico added a Church of God congregation of Mexican Americans in Raton. In his diary dated February 27, 1912, Tomlinson reports on a convention he attended in Raton that required a Spanish-speaking interpreter. The assembly of 1913 counted three Spanish-speaking congregations in New Mexico. Juan B. Padilla, who first assisted T. F. Chávez while pastor of the original congregation in Raton, was ordained a Bishop in 1913 and became pastor of Corrumpa, New Mexico. On July 3, 1936, Tomlinson granted Church of God of Prophecy (CGP) ministerial licenses to Padilla. An evangelist in Colorado, J.O. Sandoval, wrote Tomlinson late in 1923 pledging his support. Sandoval’s printed stationery read: “Iglesia de Dios, Oficina Principal en Cleveland, Tenn. A.J. Tomlinson, Sobreveedor.”

Tomlinson’s diary is silent from September 2, 1921, until February 28, 1924, when he writes: “Much has happened since my last writing, and my time has been so taken that I have not had time.” This is a considerable understatement about a tumultuous era that would see Tomlinson emerge as general overseer of the newly formed CGP. The turmoil was a battlefield over theocratic government, in Tomlinson's view. To his heirs, however, the discussion was more about calling and gifting.

Tomlinson advocated for universal humanity and racial integration throughout his ministry. The 1923 CGP records reveal black constituencies in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, New York, and Tennessee. From this point on, black Americans were present on all general assembly programs, not only as singers, but also as preachers, leaders, and members of important committees. In 1924, the general assembly passed a resolution against the Ku Klux Klan. When Stanley Ferguson died in 1934, Tomlinson ordered flags lowered to half-mast, and the church observed three days of mourning.

Writing to state overseers in advance of the 1932 general assembly, Tomlinson said of the state marches that no one other than the overseer speaks “… except in states where there are colored representatives or Indians or other races.” During this assembly, Tomlinson reaffirmed that “The middle wall of partition is broken down between the races…” He appropriated Jeremiah 12:9, the "speckled bird,’' to exhort the union of “… the whites, the colored, the browns, the Indians, called the red men, the yellow race—and all under one government, one rule, one faith or doctrine—all one.” This language may sound obtuse to twenty-first-century ears, but it espoused a ministry of reconciliation quite ahead of its time and in line with the Pentecostal trajectory uniquely inspired at Azusa.

Harold D. Hunter
Pentecostal-Catholic Dialogue USA

NOTES

[i] A.J. Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict (Cleveland: Walter E. Rogers, 1913), 192.
[ii] Tomlinson, The Last Great Conflict, 137.

For Further Reading:

Robins, Roger G. A. J. Tomlinson: Plainfolk Modernist. University of Oxford, 2004.
Hunter, Harold D. "Tomlinson, Ambrose Jessup." In The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. Van Der Maas. Zondervan, 2002. 1143-45.
Hunter, Harold D. “Portraits of a Spiritual Journey: Church of God of Prophecy, Part 2," White Wing Messenger (August 2026). Available at https://cogop.org/snapshots-of-a-spiritual-journey-part-2/.
Roebuck, David. “A Transformational Leader,” in Pillars of Pentecost: Church of God History, Our First Fifty Years. Cleveland, TN: Church of God Historical Commission, 2024. Available at https://www.cogheritage.org/transformational-leader.html