3/22/12

In Memory: Dr. W.R. Corvin (Oklahoma)

[obituary] December 25, 1921 - March 14, 2012 OKLAHOMA CITY 
Dr. W.R. (Ray) Corvin was born on December 25, 1921, and went to be with his Lord on March 14, 2012. He was born and raised on a farm near Ada, Oklahoma. His parents were Will and Lou Ellen Corvin. 

His earlier life jobs include farm hand, business manager, radio announcer, debater, military service, minister in a Methodist church and Pentecostal Holiness churches. He was married to Geneva Goodman for 43 years, having 3 children (Geralon, Venita and Doug). 

He earned numerous degrees including a B.A. from the University of Oklahoma, Master's of Divinity from Garrett Theological Seminary, Doctoral work at Northwestern University and the University of Oklahoma, a Ph.D from the University of Oklahoma and an honorary Doctor of Humanities. Dr. Corvin served as a vice president and later as president for 15 years of Southwestern College. He was vice president of Will Rogers Bank for 5 years. 

Upon the death of Dr. R.O. Corvin, he assumed the presidency of the University of Biblical Studies for over 15 years. After Geneva's passing in 1984, he married Nina McDaniel until her passing in 2008. He is survived by two daughters, Geralon (& Danny) Ore and Nita Twyman, and a daughter-in-law, Nancy Corvin. He was known to his 8 grandchildren as their beloved Tonta. He is also survived by 13 great-grandchildren, and 3 great-great-grandchildren. 


Donations may be made in Dr. Corvin's memory to: Southwestern Christian University, PO Box 340, Bethany, OK 73008. 

In Memory: The Rev. Hoyle Baker (Kansas)


Rev. Hoyle D. Baker, of Wellington, Kansas, died Saturday, March 17, 2012 at Sumner Regional Medical Center in Wellington, Kansas at the age of 82. 


Hoyle was born the son of Albert H. and Jennie M. (Murray) Baker on Wednesday, October 9, 1929 in Prague, Oklahoma. When Hoyle was 6 months old, his parents moved to Mesa, Arizona. He graduated from Mesa Union High School in 1949.

In 1950, Hoyle and Louise Bowman were united in marriage in Depew, Oklahoma. Together they celebrated 61 years of marriage.

Rev. Hoyle Baker was ordained as a Minister in 1955. He served as pastor in many communities in Kansas including Kinsley, Caney, Mulvane, Wellington, and Minneapolis. In the 1960's he pastored a mission for the Pentecostal Holiness Church in Wellington.  Rev. Baker retired in 1992 after 37 years in the pulpit. He also worked at Boeing Aircraft as a modification mechanic for many years and retired in 1993.
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3/11/12

WOMEN THROUGH 1925 LENS

An article appeared in The Oklahoman of August 13, 1925 titled, "Warning is Sounded About Painted Knees: Preacher Also Takes Rap At Rolled Hose." (pg. 7).   The small piece is short on information or facts - qualifying more as a 'filler' to use up left over space on a newspapers page - but that did not prevent the prejudice from coming through.  There is the possibility it was something made up but it could also be an accurate depiction of the shaky theology which sometimes plagues evangelicalism, fundamentalism, or Pentecostalism.

Identified simply as a "Pentecostal revival", it was reported to have been at a church located on Avenue B and Oklahoma in Capitol Hill, a community just a few miles south of Oklahoma in 1925.  Based on a church advertisement of 1919 this would have been the Church of Apostolic Faith, pastored by early pioneer Pentecostal minister, Harry P. Lott. ("Churches", Oklahoman, Dec. 28,1919, pg. 9).

The interesting theological assertion, at least what the reporter claimed, was that "God's kingdom" could not come as long as women 1) have their hair cut above their ears, 2) wear such short sleeves and dresses, 3 ) form their eyebrows, use rouge on their cheeks, 4) roll their hose and powder their knees.  "God's kingdom" will begin "when we get back to old-fashioned, modest women who cook, and a bake a decent cake."  These assertions were punctuated by shouts and exclamations.  The reporter ended his story with an ironic comment that there were "many bobbed-haired, knee-painted, hose-rolled women" attending the church service.

The preacher's theology may not be representative of actual preaching and may reflect more the lingering biases against Pentecostals in the first four decades of the century.  It does highlight the social influences at work in society as women, their fashions, behaviors, and value changed in the decade known for its exuberant and uninhibited generational shift.

The idea that a woman's ability to cook and bake cake would be what would bring the Kingdom of God into being reveals several problems which plagued early evangelicalism and Pentecostalism.  The first problem was the tendency to deny the need for training, mentoring, or added skills in order to be a minister, pastor, evangelist or other church leader.  The second problem was  viewing culture as unchanging and with this came the tendency  to equate past as perfect.  The third problem was the marginalization of women, especially in Pentecostalism, from a status of full participation in the life of the church to one where they were once more socially and religiously relegated to the borderlands of Christian life.

The tide of society is constantly flowing past and that is part of the nature of life ordained by God.  Things change, we must adapt, and in that adaptation can be found growth.  It is the idea behind the inability of of new wine going into old wineskins. It underscores that change is a necessary aspect of life and development. Rather than fearing it, trying to keep things the way they were in the 'good old days', like the preacher in the news article, there is a need to realize new times often mean changes  and require recognition rather than fear.


3/5/12

'LIGHT AND HEAT" - Noel Brooks

“Light and Heat”: The Christianview Bible College in Canada (1970- )
                In 1972, Noel Brooks refers to one of his personal heroes in an article about the first year of the new college in Canada.
                “One of the best biographies of John Wesley is entitled The Burning Heart. Another biographer described Wesley as The Knight of the Burning Heart. Whenever we think of Wesley this is how we conceive him: as a man ablaze with sustained passion to evangelize the lost and spread “scriptural holiness throughout the land…He earnestly desired that his preachers be men and women of burning heart and enlightened mind. “Oh for light as well as heat!...There is a great need of this combination of heat and light in the Christian world…”[1]
                In about 1968, while still recuperating from his severe exhaustion and ulcers, Brooks was wrestling with the reoccurring suggestions of friends that he look at teaching in North American Bible colleges. Soon he was approached about the dream of a college envisioned for Canada and if he would consider being president. “From the moment I read the letter I felt intuitively that this was the reason for the Divine dealings with my soul in recent months. Here was a place of need in the Pentecostal Holiness Church, perhaps, I could fill. A pioneer field of this nature held many formidable giants, but the Divine call is never divorced from the Divine enabling.”[2]  Noel Brooks was an excellent choice as he was himself a blend of the heat and light Wesley had declared to be so vital to a minister of the Gospel.
                In 1970, the Ontario conference of the Pentecostal Holiness Church appointed a committee, under the leadership of Rev. Philip King, to investigate and make preliminary plans for a Bible college. On December 5, 1970, the plans were approved with King elected chairman and Brooks selected as the first president.
                The simple first yearbook of the institution was edited by instructor Laura Justice and included motto of the school: “Living to learn, learning to serve, and Serving to save.”  The home of the institution, Christianview Bible College, was in the Evangelistic Centre, 22 York Mills Road, Willowdale, a suburb just outside of Toronto.  Classes began on September 7, 1971 with a student body of a little over a dozen students from Nova Scotia and Ontario.  The governing board was comprised of R.L. Mosely (Chair), Gordon McDonald, Noel Brooks, Hazel Yeatman, Jack Booth, Ed Butler, and Bill Kirkwood.  The faculty was comprised of Brooks (B.D., D.D.), Laura Justice (Th.B., B.A.). That first year the ‘Christianview Bible College Student Society’ president was Marshall Caldwell, Marcia Wenzell (Secretary) and John McPhail (Treasurer).  Housing was made possible through the genoristy of local people: Irene McGillicuddy, Rev. and Mrs. R.L. Mosely, and Mr. and Mrs. Harold Woods.
Brooks writing in a memoir of that first term noted:

Every true work of God is a venture of faith. God has so planned it. Though the wisdom and power to create are His alone, He has so ordered it that man becomes God’s co-builder through faith. We are justified by faith. We are sanctified through faith. We are filled with the Holy Spirit through faith. We are healed through faith. We become effective witnesses and workers for God through faith. We play a part in God’s redemptive programme in our world through faith. Faith is not the efficient cause of these things. God, in His grace, wisdom, and power is the only efficient cause of human faith. But faith, which is itself a gift of God, becomes the appropriating and co-operating power by which a man lays hold of the will of God and thus becomes a “worker together with God” (II Corinthians 6.1).

Whatever we undertake for God must be, from first to last, a venture of faith.  If ever we arrive at a place where we imagine that we no longer have to “live by faith”, whether it be in things spiritual or things material, we are out of the Divine order. In the things of God it must be a venture of faith from start to finish. Christian history is a graveyard of causes and institutions which began as ventures of faith but lapsed into unbelieving fleshly works.

Christianview Bible College is in the very early days of faith venturing. Believing that we are moving in the will of God in establishing a Pentecostal Holiness school in Canada, we are looking to God for the faith to work with Him, and venture for Him, and pay the price that all such venturing inevitably involves.

“All who are associated with us must make this venture of faith. The whole Pentecostal Holiness Church of Canada has had to make this venture. The Governing Board has had t make it. The President and his wife have had to make it. The members of the faculty have had to make it. Every student who comes to us has to make it.  Every person who stands behind us in prayer and financial help has to make it.

By faith we are all venturing with God. May out faith not falter or fail. It will not as we exercise it. Faith only fails as it is unexercised.  As we use it, God strengthens and re-enforces it. Thus, vision through venture becomes achievement.”[3]


[1] Brooks, Noel. “First Year at Christianview Bible College.” Advocate (May 6, 1972): 7.
[2] Brooks, Noel. “Canadian Breakthrough Christianview Bible College.” Advocate (Aug 14, 1971):6-7; also typed manuscript of the same title, Noel Brooks Collection, Southwestern Christian University Library Archives.
[3] The Herald: Christianview Bible College Yearbook. 1971-1972.; 24 page stapled booklet with images.