Origin of the Church of the Saviour

Gordon’s first call to preach came when he was fifteen. He and his brother, P.G., had been wandering through the backwoods of Lynchburg when they came upon an abandoned two-room church. They inquired of an elderly, distinguished-appearing, gray-haired black man, who was passing by, if the church were ever used.

"I’m the chief deacon," the man said, "but we have no minister." After giving a convincing account of their activities in two churches, they asked,

"How would you like us to be your ministers?"

The chief deacon made no commitment.

"You can come and preach this Sunday," he said.

There were a dozen people—men, women, and children—in that first congregation. Gordon Cosby’s text was Rev. 3:15-16: "I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold not hot, I will spew you out of my mouth."

The sermon was one that he was to preach again and again in a hundred different ways. Appreciative "Amens" punctuated its first delivery.

…A conference with seminary authorities convinced them that it was right for him to begin seminary training. Gordon soon entered Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. After several months at seminary he decided to pursue college work at the same time. In 1942 he was graduated magna cum laude from Hampden Sydney College, and in the same year he completed his seminary training and was ordained a Baptist minister. His college and seminary studies had been compressed into four and one-half years. During that time he had also courted Mary Campbell. One week after he was graduated from seminary they were married.

…Their first church was the Ballston Baptist Church, situated in a tiny village in Arlington County, Virginia. This church became the focal point of their dreams. It was the church that Gordon Cosby was serving when he enlisted in the army, and it was the church that he planned to return to when the war was over.

In the Second World War he was to hammer out a concept of leadership that would change the direction of his ministry. As chaplain of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, he saw the church from a new vantage point—outside it. It would never have happened if the circumstances of war had not forcibly placed him there. For the first time he was an observer of the church in the world; he was in the position of receiving people who presumably had been trained by the church for a ministry to the world—to be light in the midst of darkness. Yet these men, who had been in all the training units of the church, were no more ready for a deadly mission than the unchurched. What he observed was "Christian" men who could not stand up under pressure, not even moral pressure. "If they just didn’t go to pieces morally, you could feel grateful for that kind of survival." What he had thought was character, he began to know was the structure of family, society, law enforcement agencies. When this was taken away life did not hold together because internally it was not held together.

…The demands of wartime were shaping the ministry of Gordon Cosby because they were letting him see himself against the back-drop of eternity. A few days after the Normandy invasion they were to make the first serious assault into enemy lines. It was to take place at two o’clock in the morning. They were to cross a little river and take a hill. The assignment was dangerous enough for them to realize that half their number would die. Gordon decided that the best thing for him to do was to visit with as many of the men as he could in the moments before the assault. It was a cold, drizzly night, though it was June, and he could not see the faces of the men with whom he talked. Crawling into one of the foxholes, he started,

"I’m the Chaplain. Just wanted to talk to you a bit."

"I’m glad you’re here," returned the soldier. "I wanted to talk to you. I have a premonition that I am going to die tonight—that I will meet God before the night is over, and I don’t know Him. I want you to talk to me about Him." And then he added, "Don’t give me any stuff about philosophy or theology. I just want you to talk to me about God."

In that moment the young chaplain discovered that he did not know nearly so much about God as he had five minutes before. He did not know what to say. Uneasiness filled him, but within a few seconds he found himself saying,

"I would like to talk to you about a verse of Scripture which means a lot to me: ‘For God so loved the world . . . ‘"

He talked to the soldier as simply as he knew about those words of Scripture.

The next morning he checked the casualty list. The man was dead. "I wondered about him," Gordon recalls. "He had been so close to me, and I wondered how those last words had hindered or helped him now that he was in the presence of God. Then it occurred to me that this man was every person. What difference does it make whether it is two hours, or two years, or twenty years. Everyone is going to be in the presence of God one day, and everyone is crying out, ‘Speak to me of things which are eternal. Speak to me of God.’"

In moments like these he knew that he would be the minister of a congregation at home with the great words of the faith—God, Christ, Holy Spirit, grace, forgiveness.

…The church he dreamed of would be ecumenical: It would work and pray for the healing of the divisions between all churches. …The church Gordon envisioned would know that its mission was to take a world for Christ. In this alone there would be unity.

… Between battles of the Second World War, he wrote, with the encouragement and inspiration of new friends, the first prospectus of the Church of the Saviour and mailed it home to Mary and Elizabeth-Anne. His covering letter explained that he was not sure that this was their calling, but that he was leaning in the direction of a church which would welcome into its membership persons of any denomination. Its mission, however, would be the quarter of a million unchurched in the capital city of the United States.

Mary and Elizabeth-Anne felt called to the same adventure and when Gordon came home they began to plan for it. They asked their friends who knew God to pray in a disciplined fashion concerning the wisdom and rightness of bringing into existence such a church in Washington, D.C. Their friends did—people in England, France, and Holland as well as in twenty-five states. As they prayed, most of them felt a oneness in the thrill of certainty that this was God’s will. Throughout that first year over one hundred friends were kept in touch with the progress made. These persons continually prayed for members and for the power and spirit the pioneers would have to have.

The first summer after Gordon’s return, he and Mary spent much time talking to Christian leaders, asking for their reactions to the spirit, plans, and direction of the Church of the Saviour.

…The first official meeting of the Church of the Saviour took place on a Saturday afternoon, October 5, 1946, at the First Baptist Church, Alexandria. …On October 19, 1947, nine people stood and repeated the commitment of membership:

I come today to join a local expression of the Church, which is the body of those on whom the call of God rests to witness to the grace and truth of God.

I recognize that the function of the Church is to glorify God in adoration and sacrificial service, and to be God’s missionary to the world, bearing witness to God’s redeeming grace in Jesus Christ.

I believe as did Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

I unreservedly and with abandon commit my life and destiny to Christ, promising to give Him a practical priority in all the affairs of life. I will seek first the kingdom of God and His Righteousness.

I commit myself, regardless of the expenditures of time, energy, and money to becoming an informed, mature Christian.

I believe that God is the total owner of my life and resources. I give God the throne in relation to the material aspect of my life. God is the owner. I am the ower. Because God is a lavish giver I too shall be lavish and cheerful in my regular gifts.

I will seek to be Christian in all my relations with other persons, with other nations, groups, classes, and races.

I will seek to bring every phase of my life under the Lordship of Christ.

When I move from this place I will join some other expression of the Christian Church.

The nine who were received into membership were Gordon and Mary Cosby, Robert and Martha Knapp, Frank and Dorothy Cresswell, Elizabeth-Anne Campbell, Rosalie Grenier, and Esther Zeller.

Excerpts from Call to Commitment; An Attempt to Embody the Essence of Church, by Elizbeth O'Conner, 1994. Published by Servant Leadership Press, Washington, D.C.