The Mountaintop Burden
It is on the mountaintop where Christ dies for you, but in the valley, where Christ lives in You.
4202 A Beloved Black Pastor
Charles A. Tindley was born into slavery. Although his slave mother taught him to love Christ, his master forbade him to attend church under threat of the whip.
After the Civil War when he became free, he took correspondence courses and entered the ministry. He began with a church of only 12 members where he had once served as a janitor. In time, his compassionate preaching attracted over a thousand people each Sunday, both black and white. For years he maintained a breadline which fed 500 to 600 people nightly. Derelicts received warm clothing and hot baths in the basement of his church. The mayor of Philadelphia visited his church and was so impressed that he gave the pastor a personal check for $2,000.
Charles Tindley died on July 31, 1933, when people were still receiving bread from his church. There were so many tributes at his funeral that the service lasted five hours. Downtown streets had to be roped off to hold back the crowds from the hearse that carried his body.
And today, more than thirty years later, parents in Philadelphia are telling their children about the black preacher who was a brother to everyone.