John L Welch: Pioneering the Way Forward
by Mary Wisehart and Robert Picirilli
Free Will Baptist Bible College was renamed Welch College in 2012. The persons thereby honored were John L and Mary Ann Weaver Welch [1]. This article is primarily devoted to the Reverend Mr. Welch, to enable others to understand why the flagship college of the Free Will Baptist denomination was named for this important couple.
The “Boy Preacher”
The parents of John L Welch, Jr. were John L Welch, Sr., a minister in the Stone Association of Christian Baptists, from DeKalb County, Tennessee, and the former Frances Blankenship. They had moved westward to the Oaklawn community in Robertson County, Tennessee, where John, Jr. was born April 7, 1889, the eighth of eleven children, the fourth of seven sons.
The senior Welch became active as a minister among Cumberland Association Free Will Baptists. Through his influence the Stone Association of Christian Baptists and the Cumberland Association recognized their identity and, in 1886, each association adopted the name “Free Will Christian Baptists” [2]. The senior Welch died when the younger Welch was 14 years old.
When John Welch, Jr. was sixteen, he attended a revival meeting at Hopewell Free Will Baptist Church, near Fredonia, Tennessee, conducted by the Reverend Sylvester Crow. He responded to the invitation and was converted. Three years later, at nineteen, the Reverend John Chandler asked him, “Did you ever feel like God wanted you to preach?” Welch acknowledged that he had, and Chandler arranged for him to preach his first sermon. The “boy preacher” was ordained October 15, 1909.
The Student and Pastor
There were no Free Will Baptist educational institutions nearby [3]. The Reverend Dell Upton, pastor at Cofer’s Chapel in Nashville, had chartered a “Free Will Baptist University” there in 1908. In December, after several weeks preaching revivals among the Stone Association churches, learning of Upton’s efforts, young Welch went there to enroll but was the only student. He lived in the Uptons’ home and received individual instruction until March 1909, when Upton returned to West Virginia. Welch subsequently enrolled in Bowen Preparatory School and then in Tabernacle School (later called Trevecca Nazarene College). He also took a summer course at Vanderbilt University designed for rural pastors.
More important, Cofer’s Chapel called the young man as its pastor on February 28, 1909. Thus, from March 14, 1909 until his retirement in 1962, the names of John L Welch and Cofer’s Chapel were almost always intertwined [4]. As pastor there for 46 years, he was known as a leader of Free Will Baptists.
In 1912, Welch married Mary Ann Weaver, who had been active in Cofer’s since before his tenure there. A Ladies Aid Society has been organized in the church in 1907, and Miss Weaver had become editor of the society’s paper, The Free Will Baptist Record, in 1908. From the time of their marriage, John L and “Miss Mary” Welch ministered together. To their union were born three children: a son who died in infancy, another son Weaver, and a daughter Jean. Both were active Christians and Jean, married to an evangelical Methodist minister, followed in her mother’s footsteps.
John L Welch was a man of vision, always working tirelessly toward the progress of the denomination. Especially important was his leadership toward organizational unity and education within the denomination. There were other things, too, which deserve brief mention. Under the Welches’ leadership, in 1920, the Cumberland District Ladies’ Aid Society was organized. That same year, Cofer’s Chapel launched a young people’s organization which Welch suggested be called “The Free Will Baptist League.” During the years 1920-22 he edited and published a paper, Words of Life, for Cofer’s Chapel and the other churches in the Cumberland area. Both Welches worked with the Ladies’ Aid Societies toward the establishment of a home for children, and he led in forming the Tennessee State Association of Free Will Baptists, which at its first session (1938) purchased property for an orphanage.
Denominational Unity and Organization
John L Welch played a leading role in bringing Free Will Baptists together. Perhaps his vision for this work stemmed from his father’s efforts in bringing the Stone and Cumberland Associations into fellowship. Or perhaps he was influenced by Thomas E. Peden of Ohio, who had led in the formation of a General Conference of Free Will Baptists that met every three years from 1895 to 1910.
Whatever the influences, Welch provided leadership toward a national organization of Free Will Baptists in three stages. First, he worked in behalf of the Cooperative General Association, which had been formed in 1916. On learning that the 1918 meeting would be in Paintsville, Kentucky, Welch recommended to the Cumberland Association that someone should attend; he was chosen. Once at the meeting, he invited the Association to meet at Cofer’s in 1919. But when that meeting took place, ministers from the Southeast were not satisfied with the association’s stance on feetwashing. They wanted it confessed as an ordinance, but those from the Cooperative were satisfied to leave it optional [5]. As a result, the Southeastern delegates withdrew.
Next, Welch, in contact with representatives of Free Will Baptists across the Southeast, hosted a meeting on May 26, 1921, at Cofer’s Chapel, which formed the General Conference of Free Will Baptists, representing Free Will Baptists from the Carolinas to the Mississippi. He was chosen the first moderator and held the position until 1927; then he filled the role of field secretary until its last meeting in 1938.
Dissatisfied with the continuing separation between the Cooperative General Association and the newer General Conference, Welch continued working to bring them together. From 1932 to 1935 he headed a committee of the General Conference that met with representatives of the Cooperative General Association. They met in 1933 and again (in Dennison, Texas) in 1934, when they agreed on the structure of a national body. They announced plans for an organizational meeting in Nashville in November of 1935.
On November 5, 1935, at Cofer’s Chapel, then, the National Association of Free Will Baptists was organized. Appropriately, Welch, who had worked tirelessly toward this end, was chosen as the first president or moderator.
Free Will Baptist Bible College
Welch’s influence toward the establishment of a Free Will Baptist school was manifested early. As moderator and field secretary for the General Conference (above), he encouraged the support of Eureka College in Ayden, North Carolina [6]. In 1931, the General Conference established a Board of Education, with Welch as chairman. When that Conference met next in 1932, Eureka had been destroyed and Welch was elected as secretary of education to work toward the establishment of a school. His report to the General Conference in 1933 referenced “a strong and growing sentiment among our people for a centralized educational institution.” But he cautioned that the success of such an institution would depend on the unity of all Free Will Baptists. Since the Conference was meeting at Cofer’s Chapel that year, he invited the delegates to look over the city of Nashville and see whether it might, indeed, provide an appropriate location.
When the new National Association was formed in 1935, Welch was not only elected president but also placed on the “joint committee on education.” At the association’s second meeting in 1938, he reported as “chairman of the Board of Education.”
Free Will Baptist Bible College (now Welch College) was established in 1942 and was incorporated in 1945. That year, Welch was named to the first Board of Trustees and served from then until 1957, ten of those years as chairman. He led his church in strong support of the college, financially and otherwise. His church offered a home away from home to the college students, welcoming them and providing places of service.
Welch also taught Free Will Baptist doctrine in evening classes on campus. Mrs. Welch was even more active on campus, serving as general receptionist and secretary to the president for about 16 years, beginning in 1945. She never ceased to be a friend to students, faculty, and staff alike.
Mary Ann Welch died July 2, 1969. John L Welch died July 24, 1983. Their influence for God among us will never die and the name Welch College will continue to serve as a reminder of God’s grace in giving them to us.
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[1] The initial “L” was not an abbreviation and is represented here without a period.
[2] The Cumberland dropped the “Christian” in 1920, the eastern division of the Stone in 1968; the western division of the Stone still uses “Free Will Christian Baptist.”
[3] There was a Free Will Baptist Seminary in Ayden, NC, at the time.
[4] He was away as pastor in four rural FWB churches (Olivet, Rock Springs, Bethlehem, and Greenwood) from 1917 to 1919, and as pastor at East Nashville FWB Church, which he organized, from 1929 to 1934.
[5] They were influenced by John Wolfe, of Nebraska, and others who had been part of the Randall movement, where feetwashing was not regarded as an ordinance. Benjamin Randall himself had regarded the rite as an ordinance.
[6] This had replaced the Free Will Baptist Seminary there.
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About the Authors: Robert Picirilli has the Ph.D. in New Testament text from Bob Jones University, Mary Wisehart the Ph.D. in English from George Peabody College for Teachers. Both graduated from Free Will Baptist Bible College, taught there for many years and are now retired, and were long-time friends of the Welches. Both have published numerous other writings.
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