The Loyal Congregation

At 11:15 Thanksgiving morning, the band swung into His Name Is Jesus, and the first service of the Gospel Chapel in Phoenix, Ariz, was under way. A congregation of 164 sat on wooden benches, and on the raised stage facing them were eight preachers from Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Diego and Yuma. They were assembled not merely to give thanks but to welcome Brother Bennie Morris, 41, a man they knew to be exceptionally strong in the power of the Word. For how many preachers have seen the members of their congregation sell their houses, quit their jobs and follow their pastor from one city to another?

That is what happened to Brother Bennie. Sixteen years ago handsome John Benjamin Morris had a church in Kankakee, Ill. when the Lord told him to move north. He stopped in Milwaukee and started the Gospel Tabernacle with a congregation of one family.

Last February Preacher Morris had a congregation of 100 when the Lord told him to move again. This time he heard that in Phoenix there was need for another Gospel Church (affiliated with a Fundamentalist group called the Gospel Assembly Churches), and after some prayer and fasting, Morris was sure that Phoenix was the spot God had in mind for him. The Gospel preacher told him he would be glad to share his church until Morris could swing one of his own.

It only took his faithful flock of Milwaukeeans a few weeks to decide unanimously that where Bennie Morris went, they would go. "You can entrust your soul to him," explained 60-year-old Widow Florence Cornish last week. "I feel he is capable of taking us on in God." They sold the church, put the parsonage on the market and packed the church pews, the electric organ, piano and folding chairs into a moving van. Some 30 of them made it to Phoenix for last week's first service; the rest are taking a bit longer to sell their houses and businesses, quit their jobs and wind up their Milwaukee affairs. Everybody (except one woman who is still working on her reluctant, unchurched husband) expects to be in Phoenix by the middle of January.

To reporters Pastor Morris professed to see nothing surprising in his flock's migration. Said he: "I guess I have a loyal congregation."

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