The Spiritual Roots of Christ Temple Mission

Before Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven, He assured his followers that the Father was sending a Comforter—a Spirit of truth that would dwell within them (John 14:16-17). Sometimes, believers deny the "still small voice" and follow the traditions of man rather than the heart of God. But for those with listening hearts, the Holy Spirit is able to shine a spotlight into areas of great darkness. Obedience on the part of God's children often leads to blessings and deliverance not just for themselves, but for others as well.

Clearly when Frederick Douglass was converted to Christianity as a young 13 year-old slave in 1831, the Lord was about to use him for a mighty service that would impact the world. Obviously through the power of the Holy Spirit, the young Frederick was able to see that a natural extension of his new life in Christ was to advocate for the liberty of those (including himself) shackled by the chains of slavery.

As a young man the future abolitionist helped establish secret Sunday Schools whereby slaves learned to read by reading the Bible. In 1838, he became a preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts. From early on, Frederick couldn't separate his Christian faith from the need for social reform.

The Holy Spirit doesn't work in a vacuum, and at the same time that the Lord was mightily using Frederick Douglass in Maryland and beyond to advocate for the freedom of all men, spiritual seeds were being planted for a church to spring forth on the Nebraska plains some 100 years before its visible inception.

The story of Christ Temple Mission doesn't begin in 1940 in Lincoln, Nebraska with Trago O. McWilliams. It begins in the heart of God—moving in the hearts of people who had been subjected to the harshest of circumstances. In order to understand the founding pastor's vision, one must know something of the events and people that helped shape his perspective, his paradigm.

It's obvious that the plight and fortitude of the people from whence Trago McWilliams came had a monumental impact in forming his convictions and life's work. One set of his paternal great-great grandparents, Samuel and Phanie True, had 18 living children born into slavery. Samuel was industrious enough to buy himself, his wife, and all of his sons. However, daughters could not be bought since they were deemed as valuable to their masters. One of those daughters was Eliza True, Trago's great grandmother.

According to Eliza, her daughter, Sarah (Trago's grandmother), entered the world around "May-apple time" in 1854 at Iowa Point, Kansas. Eliza, who was deprived of any educational advantages, didn't know exact dates so she connected happenings with the seasons of the year. Mother and daughter were sold, like a cow and a calf, three times; finally to a man in Savannah, Missouri. Here they lived until freedom came, when the mother was turned from the master's door with three children and no place to live.

With dauntless courage, unfailing will power, and an unlimited faith in God, the little mother cared for her children without separating them. When Eliza married a man named Moses Stepney, ten-year-old Sarah was placed with a Baptist deacon and his family in Christian Ridge, Missouri. Here she received the munificent sum of $1.50 per month, and was responsible for the household's laundry, cleaning, cooking, and baking, plus she had to milk twice a day. At night, she was relegated to sleep on a pallet on the third floor, even during the heat of summer and cold of winter.

Sarah had witnessed firsthand the horrors of forced sex on her mother, and she let out a piercing scream when the master of the house tried to fondle her. Convulsed with fear, she ran nearly four miles to seek her mother's advice. Eliza, however, had been trained to obey those in authority and counseled her daughter to return to the deacon's home. Sarah went back with a knife, which she fully intended to use if necessary to prevent being raped.

When the two old main sisters in the house fell sick with a fever, Sarah's workload in the three-story house intensified and the servitude was unbearable. A conversation she overhead where the sisters refused an offer to sit up with them during the night became the catalyst for her departure. "We'll just have Sarah make her pallet here in the hall—she can wait on us." This was the last straw for the exhausted little girl and she hurriedly gathered her few belongings, and ran away to her step-grandmother's home. She secured a job at $1.50 a week working in the same hotel as her grandmother. Sometime later, the deacon was hanged in the Dakotas for selling government lands.

After reaching the exceedingly mature age of 14, she married John Jefferson McWilliams, also a former slave in Missouri. John, a native of West Africa, was sold away from his mother at the tender age of two. He naturally cried from the trauma, only to be permanently scared when his new mistress slammed a bunch of keys on the toddler's forehead.

John was the son of George McWilliams whose master, a Kentuckian had said, "It is as impossible to free the slaves as it is to go up and pull Jesus Christ off His throne." When he saw the inevitable signs of freedom, however, he asked George how in the world he figured to take care of his family, if freed. With a twinkle in his eye, George replied, "I'm taking care of my family and yours too now, so what's to hinder me from keeping up my own alone?"

Seeking to do his part in the war against slavery, the young John McWilliams sought to enlist in the army. The enlistment officer told him he looked too young. Not knowing his real age, McWilliams craftily asked, "How old do I have to be to enlist?"

"You ought to be 17 or 18 anyhow," was the answer.

"Well that's just what I am," came the quick reply.

He then served for two-and-a-half years in Company A, 83rd Regiment, U. S. Colored infantry. Rising to the rank of corporal he was honorably discharged and returned to Missouri.

John and Sarah were married on Christmas Day and began housekeeping in a two-room shack. He sharecropped land and she worked for a boarding house – ironing and cooking large quantities of food to be carried in tubs to the field hands. After 15 years of the most arduous labors by the entire household, and moves to Falls City and then Lincoln, Nebraska, the...