Bishop G.E. Patterson...The Mother Who Knew what to do Concerning her Child

Gilbert Earl Patterson was an American Pentecostal-Holiness leader and minister who served as the international Presiding Bishop and Chief Apostle of the Church of God in Christ, Inc. 

ishop Patterson spread the Pentecostal word through regular Sunday services broadcast on the Word Network, the Trinity Broadcasting Network and Black Entertainment Television. His own congregation, Temple of Deliverance, which he founded in 1975, had more than 6,000 active members in 2000. At a 2005 church convention in Memphis, the bishop called on his membership to spread the faith beyond racial and cultural differences. “I don’t know why we ever got stuck on that thing that we’re only supposed to give witness to black folks,” he said. Pentecostalism, one of the fastest-growing evangelical movements, teaches that people can be filled with the Holy Ghost in a second baptism. Most Pentecostals also believe that speaking in tongues — in inspired unintelligible utterances — links believers to God and brings the word of God to other people. The Church of God in Christ has about six million members. The second-largest denomination in the black American Pentecostal movement, the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, has about three million members.