Cleveland, TN–The Church of God Historical Commission recently announced winners of the 2024-2026 Charles W. Conn Historical Writing Awards. The recipients are Karl-Otto Bohringer of Germany and Phyllis Thompson of the United Kingdom.

The Historical Commission selects both a book and an article each General Assembly period to receive the writing award and to encourage the writing and publication of books and articles related to the history and heritage of the Church of God.

Bohringer was recognized with the Charles W. Conn Historical Book Award. Bohringer is the author of Under God’s Guidance. An ordained bishop in the Church of God, the biography covers the years 1930 to 1960 and ends with pastorates in Emmendingen, Germany, and Colmar/Munster, France. Bohringer is a retired professor who for more than 60 years served as evangelist, pastor, church planter, radio minister, regional overseer, editor, and music professor. He is the author of several books, the most recent is Powerful Prayer. His wife, Beryl Ann (who assisted in the writing), was a schoolteacher born in Leicester, England. She passed away in 2019. Karl and his current wife, Christa, live in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany.

Rev. Phyllis Thompson is the winner of the Charles W. Conn Historical Writing Article Award. Her winning entry is entitled, "The New Testament Church of God Heritage Centre (UK): Site of Remembering: Sharing Our Stories and the Impact on Our Institutional Memory."

Thompson has a background in development education and pastoral ministry in the United Kingdom. She has served as a member of the Church of God International General Board of Education, the Historical Commission, an Executive Council member of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, and a member of the leadership of her church in Northampton. She has written on topics to do with Black majority churches and women Christian leadership. Recent publications include her contribution to Faith of Our Fathers (Pathway Press, 2009), Challenges of Black Pentecostal Leadership in the 21st Century (SPCK, 2013), and Challenges of Pentecostal Theology in the 21st Century (SPCK, 2020), the latter two of which she is editor.

The Church of God International Executive Council created the Charles W. Conn Historical Writing Award in 2002 to honor the long-time Church of God author and historian. Conn penned his history of the Church of God in 1955. When Like A Mighty Army was revised in 1972, the Executive Council designated Conn as Church Historian. Pathway Press released a tribute edition in 2008.

For 2024-2026, Dr. James E. Cossey served as chair of the Historical Commission and Assistant General Overseer Tony Stewart as the International Executive Committee liaison. The Writing Award subcommittee consisted of Dr. Douglas LeRoy, chairman; Rev. Lance Colkmire, and Dr. David G. Roebuck.
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—Faith News Network

     Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. is Senior Professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 1974. Previously, Robeck served as an instructor in religion at Southern California College (now Vanguard University) and as a trustee for Bethany Bible College in Scotts Valley, California. At Fuller, he has served in numerous administrative positions including director of the David J. du Plessis Center for Christian Spirituality and associate dean for Academic Programs in the School of Theology. Robeck is an ordained minister in the Assemblies of God.
     Robeck has written more than 300 articles, and his long-term historical research centers on the Azusa Street Mission and Revival and its African American pastor, William Seymour. He has authored The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement (recipient of the Society for Pentecostal Studies’ Pneuma Award) and Prophecy at Carthage: Perpetua, Tertullian, and Cyprian. He is editor of Witness to Pentecost: The Life of Frank Bartleman and Charismatic Experiences in History, and coeditor of The Azusa Street Revival and Its Legacy (with Harold D. Hunter) and The Suffering Body: Responding to the Persecution of Christians (with Harold D. Hunter). He also coedited the Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism (with Amos Yong). For nine years, he was editor of Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies. His recent publications have focused on the Holy Spirit, the Church, unity in the Pentecostal perspective, and potential contributions the Pentecostal Movement can make to the world Christian Movement.

     Spirit of Azusa Award Recipient Evangelist Jacqueline E. Smith has been in full-time ministry for 45 years and is ordained in the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee) having left a prominent position in the secular world to pursue the work of the Gospel. She has preached in 39 countries and 48 states and is a frequent keynote speaker in camp meetings, conferences, retreats, youth camps, revivals, and singles seminars. In 2001, the Church of God appointed Smith as the denomination’s first female National Evangelist. The Pentecostal Theological Seminary inducted her into their Hall of Prophets in 2018 and awarded her with the honorary Doctor of Divinity in 2025.
​     As an African-American woman, Smith’s ministry has afforded her opportunities to cross racial, cultural, and gender barriers. As a content single woman, she has developed a distinctive ministry conducting singles seminars in local, regional, and national settings. Most recently she has been invited to speak numerous times with students on the campus of Lee University. Though preaching is her primary focus, she is an anointed soloist as well.

     The purpose of the Azusa Lecture is to celebrate the rich heritage of the global Pentecostal Movement. The Dixon Pentecostal Research Center launched the annual lecture in 2006 in recognition of the centennial of the revival at the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles. Church of God Historian Charles W. Conn noted that the Los Angeles revival, which lasted from 1906 to 1909, “is universally regarded as the beginning of the modern Pentecostal Movement.”
     The Los Angeles revival began when African-American Pastor William Joseph Seymour preached a message of Spirit baptism following salvation and sanctification. What started as a home prayer meeting attracted crowds of seekers and was moved to an abandoned building at 312 Azusa Street. Hundreds traveled to the Azusa Street Mission, received a personal baptism of the Holy Spirit, and took that message to their homes, churches, and communities. The Pentecostal Movement quickly became a great missionary movement, and the twentieth century came to be called the “Century of the Holy Spirit.”
     Founded by Charles W. Conn on the campus of Lee University, the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center is one of the world’s significant collections of Pentecostal and Charismatic resources as well as the archives of the Church of God. The center interprets the Pentecostal Movement through teaching, publications, and historical exhibits and is a resource for Church of God ministries throughout the world. In addition to students at Lee University and Pentecostal Theological Seminary, numerous scholars utilize the center’s holdings. Dr. David G. Roebuck serves as director, and the Reverend David “Gene” Mills, Jr. as archivist.
     For more information about the Azusa Lecture contact the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center at 423-614-8576 or [email protected].

August 19, 2025—On the 139th birthday of the founding of the Church of God, General Overseer Gary Lewis, members of the Executive Committee, and representatives from the Church of God Historical Commission, dedicated a historic marker on the site of the location of the Barney Creek Meeting House, the place where in 1886 a small group of believers began what would become the Church of God.

Barney Creek is in the southeast corner of Tennessee and in the vicinity of small towns connected with the early history of the Church of God, such as Coker Creek and Camp Creek. It was on August 19, 1886, when a handful of people searching for a deeper relationship with Christ banded together in discussion and prayer for divine direction. Eight persons came forward to form the Christian Union and church historians point to the gathering at Barney Creek as the initial event that sparked what would develop into the establishment of the Church of God of today.

The Tuesday dedication was symbolically chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the event, and on the property which is now owned by the Church of God. The field trip was part of the agenda of the monthly Executive Committee meeting and of the Church of God Historical Commission, who took the day prior to their annual meeting to join in the ceremony.