Charles Harrison Mason had authority to Ordain Preachers

Mason had been a Missionary Baptist, but left them in 1895 to co-found and lead the
denomination (a somewhat baptistic Holiness church). He was thus the head of an
established church body before going to Azusa in 1907. Unlike Seymour, Parham and
the other Pentecostal founders, Bishop Mason could ordain people so that they would
be recognized as legitimate ministers by civil authorities and mainstream churches,
capable of doing weddings and such. In the earliest years, Mason was the main source
of ordinations for both white and black Pentecostal churches, thus leaving his mark on
the entire Pentecostal movement.

Mason's visit to Azusa was a moving moment for him : "Then I gave up for the Lord to have
His way within me. So there came a wave of Glory into me and all of my being was filled with the
Glory of the Lord. .... When I opened my mouth to say 'Glory', a flame touched my tongue which
ran down to me. My language changed and no word could I speak in my own tongue. Oh! I was
filled with the Glory of the Lord. My soul was then satisfied." (testimony found in *Bishop C.H.
Mason and the Roots Of the Church of God In Christ*, by Ithiel Clemmons, Pneuma Life,
1996, p.146). Having gone through that, he knew he could not continue as he was
doing. He had to bring it wherever he would go.

Mason brought the new Pentecostal experience back to his churches, and many of
them dived in with both feet. Yet many others didn't like it at all, including co-founder
C.P. Jones, and the church split into a holiness church with a baptist touch, and
Mason's Pentecostal group. Mason, as a well-established leader, had a lot to lose by
taking part in this new Pentecostalism. It is a tribute to the man and a mark of his
following the Spirit that he made the change and took his losses in stride. His church
quickly grew into a major African-American church and the largest Black Pentecostal
body in the nation. Mason continued to lead his church until his death in 1961 at age
95; he lived to see it become 400,000 strong. It has since grown to around 5 million,
with no slowdown in sight.