I spent the summer of 1967 working in Marshall County, Mississippi as a Head Start teacher at Gatewood Baptist Church--a ragged, tumbling wood frame structure with a tilted steeple, sinking foundations, and loose planks bowing from the ceiling. Gatewood had a congregation of about forth members, the aggregate of seven or eight families. Its pastor was the Reverend Louis Cole. He was a true circuit preacher; he visited his four churches on a rotating basis, thus preaching at a different church each Sunday of the month. In addition he participated at many other churches as a guest, substitute, or assistant during revivals, weddings, funerals, baptisms, fund-raising programs, deacons' meetings, ordinations, meetings of all kinds.
Reverend Cole's combined salary from his four churches was never enough to provide adequately for his family, but he had never intended to make his living from the church. He considered doing so, in fact, a dangerous practice. The gospel, he reasoned, is not intended to be popular or easy to follow, and a preacher whose livelihood depends on the favor of his congregation faces a constant temptation to temper the Word to suit his worldly benefactors.
Although not a politically oriented man, Reverend Cole was active in areas he considered important: visiting the sick, aiding the needy, counseling the troubled, trying to live an exemplary life. He was one of the founders, for example, of the Fayette County Poor People's Health Clinic, originally a trailer with irregular hours and occasional personnel, now a brick building with a full-time staff of physicians, nurses, aides, and secretaries. Several times he was offered pastorates with higher salaries, yet he chose to remain with the churches that elected him. "I don't feel it's right to leave a church unless they ask you to," he said. "They elected me, and I accepted the charge, and as long as they are satisfied, I feel that's where I'm supposed to be."
