to hear a condensed audio verion of a portion of the transcript, 6 minutes and 17 seconds. The portion on the audio clip is in bold. The audio clips are
in RealPlayer. A
free version of the RealPlayer software necessary to listen to the clips can be
downloaded by clicking on this button:
)
In the transcript Dr. Coleman talks about the time when he was a student pastor going on a circuit between three tiny churches in rural Indiana ca. 1949. One of the churches was Perserverance Chapel and he planned a series of revival meetings there, little dreaming they would eventually involve the sheriff.
COLEMAN: But in visiting around the community I discovered the big problem in getting some of the men to attend was the...the [name omitted] family. They were members, had been for years. The mom and dad never came to church, but they were the pillars, and it was understood that they pretty well ran the church. In fact, the first dinner I had was at there home, and they gave me some strong advice, "This is what you've got to do and not do," and it was really to the effect "don't worry too much about all these other people around here". You know, that they were...they were really not very friendly people
SHUSTER: The [name omitted].
COLEMAN: The [name omitted]. And through the years they had offended so many people. Maybe it was a horse trade, maybe it was a fence row, maybe it was just some word they had spoken....
SHUSTER: And these people were mostly farmers.
COLEMAN: They were farmers. They were practically all farmers. The [name omitted]akes I'm sure were good people, but they ah had no sense of reaching out to the community with real love. And I...I remember I was...after visiting and I couldn't get these people to attend because they would tell me all their problems. And the problems they brought up were...were almost ludicrous. Like they bought some seats from a theater that had gone broke and they took some of those seats into the church. They were kind of fold back seats, stuffing was coming out of them. But that offended three or four families that wouldn't come to church now because they would sit in seats that had once been in a theater. You know, just one thing and another. And here I was preaching to just a handful of women and children. And then I remembered, I had read something years before: it was customary in some churches to toll the bell when someone died in the community. I don't even remember where I'd read it but we had announced there would be a revival in this church. We didn't even have a closing date. I knew we needed something to put some life into it, so we just painted a sign, "'Til Victory!" We were going to go until we had a revival or [pauses] I don't know what. And of course we couldn't afford to bring an evangelist in so I was preaching every night. But after the first few nights I had run out of my sermons, so I'd have to get something fresh every...every morning. I'd go out in Ralph Wiseman's pasture and sit under and oak tree and I'd get my Bible and look in the concordance and I'd pick a theme like judgement and put a piece of bark in there and go through the Bible. And that night when I'd preach the bark would fly but it was something fresh, it was the word of God. [Shuster chuckles]
SHUSTER: Would this have been after the Asbury Revival?
COLEMAN: This was... this was before it.
SHUSTER: Before it.
COLEMAN: And it was...it was.... Yes, it was...it was before it. And you can see how by sheer determination I was working. I was just literally pushing myself, my time, my energy, to see something happen.
SHUSTER: Do you think you were trying to force God's hand?
COLEMAN: Well, I wouldn't have put it like that, but I think that I was putting more emphasis upon work than I was the power of the Spirit of God. Though I did believe in prayer and the first week I said we would have a prayer meeting every night. After the first night or two, though, this...this man who taught class and his two maiden sisters, they said, "Preacher, we'd better not come any more because we're already tired, and if you don't stop the prayer meeting you'll kill this revival before you ever start." And I said, "Well, how are we going to have a revival if we don't pray?" And so we continued on that week, but just three or four old ladies, or women and that was....
SHUSTER: At the prayer meeting
COLEMAN: The prayer meeting. Well, at least we prayed for a week and then we started a revival and I preached for a week and there wasn't any response. And you know, with just a handful or two people coming, maybe a few stragglers. But then you know I remembered reading about the bell, and I took... one of the boys from the college [Asbury College in Kentucky] had come up, he and his wife, to lead the singing and I told Chuck that, "I feel like tonight I need to ring the bell." He was a little surprised and I said, "Yes, if no one responds to the invitation tonight, I...I think that I'll toll the church bell." And he said "Well," he says, "that's strange, but if that is the way you feel about it I"ll help you." So he actually took his sleeping back with him. And when I preached that night, no one responded, and I walked around in front of the pulpit (it's a one room church) and I...I told them what I'd read, how that used to be the custom. But I said, "Tonight, tonight when you hear this church ringing you won't have to come and inquire who it is that is dead. I'm ringing that bell for you." Now, I know that this sounds strange, and I normally don't share this because I wouldn't want any student to ever get the idea.... But you've got to realize I'm physically exhausted. I've been sleeping around different homes, trying to get people to come, visiting practically every house in the neighborhood, and I can't get anybody to come. And I face the opposition continually of people in my own church now saying that this is...this is wasted energy. And when I started to walk down the aisle and when I started to ring the bell, this man... this man and his two sisters, the [name omitted] children, they said, "Preacher, this is the most ridiculous thing we've ever heard of." He said, "We're just not going to stand for it." He said, "You're going to keep up our mom and dad, and it's not good for their health." And I said, "Well, I'm sorry you feel this way. I'm not doing it to hurt anybody, but I just feel like I need to wake up the community." And they said, " Well, you're just keeping our mom and dad awake, and we're just not going to stand for it." And I said, "But I feel like this is what I was supposed to do tonight." And they said, "Well, if you don't stop ringing the bell, we're going...we're going to report you to the police." And I said, "Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, but I felt like this is what I was supposed to do." So they got mad and got in their car and drove away. In about an hour they came back and said, "Pastor, this is your last chance. If you don't stop ringing that bell."
SHUSTER: Had you been ringing it for it for the whole hour?
COLEMAN: We'd been ringing it for an hour. And Chuck had helped me, and hardly anybody had left. There were probably forty or fifty people that had been in the church service that night [coughs] and they hadn't left, they were standing around, hadn't gone home.
SHUSTER: Praying, or...
COLEMAN: No they were just... no one was praying.
SHUSTER: What were they doing?
COLEMAN: They were just standing there watching, wondering what was going to happen, standing outside, kind of standing around the shadows. A couple boys came up and said they'd help me ring the bell, I said, "That's all right, but first you have to go to the alter." So two boys had already gone to the alter and prayed through [laughs], so we had plenty of help, ring the bell. But when they came back....[garble]
SHUSTER: You were talking about the bell ringing you were having at your church...
COLEMAN: Yes. Well, the [name omitted]' children came by in their old Hudson car and told me that they were going after the sheriff if I didn't stop. And I told them that I really felt they shouldn't do this, but that I had been led.
SHUSTER: Poor sheriff, I'm sure that where he wanted, to be put right in the middle of something like that [laughs]
COLEMAN: [laughs] And we were about six miles from Colydon, Indiana, and they went in. In the meantime we...we stayed there and continued to ring the bell. But about midnight, maybe a little after midnight, I heard a car coming down the...this gravel road. We were about a mile off the main highway and it was the sheriff. And he pulled up in front. We had just one little light up in front of the church and it was probably a 25 watt bulb. It was just hardly enough to see by. And the deputy got out on his side (he was a big fellow) and swinging his handcuffs on his finger like that. The sheriff was a younger man, had just been elected that summer. And he got out on his side and he came up and...
SHUSTER: I assume the [name omitted] were a political power in this community or...
COLEMAN: I'm... I'm not sure. Apparently they knew the sheriff. But anyway, the sheriff asked who was in charge, who was the pastor, and I said, "Well, I'm the pastor, sir." And he look at me strangely and said, "Well, do you know that you can hear this bell clear out on the highway?" And I said, "Yes, well, I expect so." And he says, "You know this is keeping people up around here; they can't sleep." I said, "Well, sir, many of these people need to be kept up, need to be waken, because they are lost and they're going to hell." And he kind of looked at me strangely and he said, "Well, I have to tell you, pastor, some of your own good church members have been in to see me and they preferred charges against you for disturbing the peace." And I said, "Yes, I'm sorry. They told me they were going to do this. And it grieves me." He just looked at me, and I just looked him in the eye. And I think, you know, here was just a young preacher boy, he was the older sheriff, I think he had compassion on me. He said, "Preacher, I'll tell ya, this is the first time I've head a call like this. [Shuster chuckles] But if you will just quit ringing that blankety-blank bell [Shuster laughs], I'll forget the whole thing." Well, I think that was a reasonable proposal. And do you know, Bob, until we started, I hadn't really thought about how it would end; hadn't gone that far ahead. I guess we would eventually have stopped. But I was more than happy to stop ringing. When you've rung a bell for three hours like we had (it was probably three hours now that had passed since we closed the service) it pulls your muscles up here in the shoulders
SHUSTER: Sure.
COLEMAN: ...and I was... I was glad to have a....a way of discharge with dignity [Shuster chuckles] and so I said, "Certainly." And so we stopped and quickly everybody left and I got in my car and drove to the first friendly home. The only house within sight of the church incidentally was the [name omitted]' home. And I drove out on the highway about a mile and stopped at the first home where I had been many times before and opened the back door and went in through the kitchen and lay down on the sofa. They didn't even know I was there till the next morning. But in that part of the country you didn't lock your doors- this was a long way back, Bob. The next morning we were sitting at the table. She had too teenage boys and one of them said, "Mom, when I came in last night, I thought I heard a church bell ringing." And she didn't say anything. And he looked over at me and said, "Preacher, did you hear a church bell ringing last night?" Then I told him the story. And he said, "well if I'd known that was you over there ringing that bell, I'd 've come and helped you!" And you know that was the attitude of most of the people there. I was decidedly the underdog, but they rallied. I even heard that one of the old bums down on the court house had heard about it and kind of laughed said, "But you know I want to stand with that preacher." And the next night the church was full. And some of these old sinners that I'd been trying to get to come to church- they were there. And..ah..the next...within that week there were twenty-five people converted, and I baptized them a week later. And the attendance jumped from about twenty-five to seventy-five on Sunday morning. And every Sunday morning we had the same service after that. We would sing a...a song out of the old battered songbook, then we'd have testimony meeting and I'd ask all these men (most of these were men) that came forward (had them sit in the choir lock- didn't have a choir but I had a few seats over there) and they would sit up there, and I expected every one of them to give a testimony.
SHUSTER: These men had come forward....
COLEMAN: These men had come forward. They were working people. These weren't sophisticated...these were poor people, but they were hard working people. But they came through the old-fashioned way. And every one of them had a story. And some of them...some of them had been out in sin for years. One of them had been in the penitentiary. Today his son is preaching the Gospel in southern Indiana. You know I could tell you story after story of those men and they testified and then I preached and I'd run and jump in the car and go to the next church. And then in the evening I'd preach at the last church and in the afternoon I'd visit around in the community.
SHUSTER: Did the [name omitted] come to the church?
COLEMAN: The [name omitted] never did but.... They thought I was the devil incarnate I suppose. I did go by and try to visit them, but they had completely shut me out and I...I really felt sorry for them. There was no personal enmity at all in my heart against them, and I even tried to explain that there was nothing personal in it. But they interpreted it that way when, in fact, there was not an...an ounce of personality directed toward them. Later on, after a year or two, they came back. And one of the things that came out of that: some of these men that were converted...uh...were carpenters and they thought it was a disgrace. And they had lived in that community and the church was literally about to fall down. It hadn't been painted in I guess in twenty-five years. You could have got a dozen men on one side, pushed hard...you could have pushed the church over. And they says, "You know, this is an embarrassment to us. Our children have grown up and seen what we've...what happened to our church. The least we could do is build a new church and let them know that we love it." And they started collecting lumber and things from where they worked and got some people to donate materials and started a building fund. And a couple...a couple years after I left they completed the new church building. And if you go there today it is one of the most beautiful little country churches you'll find in southern Indiana. Bedford stone, stained glass windows. Beautiful...I was back for the homecoming.
SHUSTER: What town is it in? Or where...
COLEMAN: Well, it is way out in the country. It's six miles from Colydon, Indiana. Colydon, Indiana is down in southern Indiana, down in the hill area. It's really a beautiful part of Indiana. It's good for beauty, but it's not really good for farming.