Once upon a time, the churches of our Northern neighbors had bright futures — Bright, Bright futures.
Edna Bright and her late husband, Cornelius, were Baptist heroes of the 1960s. During the days of black and white, the gospel shone from the Brights, connecting under-churched missions fields in the North with the Southern brand of Baptist evangelism like a thousand-mile rainbow.
According to Bright, it really was a great commission — so great she wrote a book about it in 1998, “God Uses Ordinary People.”
That book was the start of more great things and more books. Bright’s 82nd birthday in August, coincides with the release of her third book, “God Knows Best and We Can Trust Him.”
‘Let God be God’
“I’ve always been a writer at heart,” she said. “This [book] I’m doing now is telling what I think about God. It deals with the facets of life where we tend to say ‘Why, why me, why now?’ It encourages us to let God be God and to fully realize He is in control.”
Another of Bright’s books, “Growing Old Can Be Fun If You’re a Christian,” challenges common attitudes about retirement, much like the life she now leads.
Bright is still a very active member of Mount Calvary Baptist Church, Albertville — the church she was saved in at age 14 — and she continues to write for Christian publications. “As they age, even Christians get the notion that life is over, and that book is an effort to quash that notion,” Bright said.
“God Uses Ordinary People,” is subtitled “A Memoir of Church Planting” and details the life she and Cornelius Bright led. The two fell in love and married just before World War II. When he returned from a stint overseas, the young Christian man traded in his dress blues for the armor of God. After further education, the couple found themselves immersed in the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) Tentmaker program, Bright said.
“Cornelius and I were both degree-holding teachers, so we got jobs teaching to make our living (and) then were able to start churches on the side,” Bright said. Cornelius didn’t teach long because the churches were growing so rapidly.”
For two people wanting something other than the hard farming they grew up with, the Brights did a lot of planting. Church planting became their spiritual occupation, and they never doubted God’s call. “Our sense of call never wavered,” Bright said. “Had (Cornelius) not died, we’d still be out there with the message, ‘Christ is the only way.’”
When churches offered administrative positions, the Brights turned them down. They would rather pack their bags, load their car and, with two daughters in tow, follow their hearts to wherever they felt a need. For many Southern evangelists in the 1960s, the need was north.
“Our SBC leaders felt starting new churches would give more people an opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel,” Bright explained. “While Cornelius and I went out under the Tentmaker program, the convention soon created a church growth department that specialized in starting new churches.”
Rather than adding notches to the Bible Belt, God led the Brights to Ohio.
Commenting on the significant regional differences north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Bright said she and her husband were “different.”
Teaching Bible basics
But it wasn’t ignorant stereotypes of Southerners that proved difficult to surmount. It was ignorance of the Bible. “We found out early on that the terms so completely understood in the South were completely misunderstood in the general population,” Bright said.
“Questions and doubts were raised when we used biblical terms like ‘all have sinned,’ ‘repent,’ ‘you must be born again,’ ‘give your heart to Christ,’ ‘works without faith are dead,’ ‘Christ is the only way’ — even John 3:16. Some found it unacceptable that baptism was only for believers, and to present the tithe as God’s plan for supporting the church was, to them, unbelievable. Perhaps in all that ‘preparing the soil’ our work was like foreign missions in a sense. It certainly made witnessing harder and church growth slower.”
Though their accents were the butt of jokes, their mission and efforts were soon respected. They held church in laundromats, started backyard Bible clubs and hosted Vacation Bible Schools in their house year after year after year. They started churches across Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The churches are still there and people are still “responding to the gospel.” Austin Village Baptist Church, Millcreek Baptist Church and Southeast Baptist Chapel are all alive and well, and the list goes on and on.
Since Cornelius Bright passed away in 1989, Edna Bright has busied herself with her family and church. Moving back to Albertville in the 1990s, she lives just a few doors down from Mount Calvary Baptist and devotes much of her time to writing. “I think God gave me three books to write,” Bright said. “It’s been a growing desire since my husband died.”
Though her days as a church planter are over, those days are recalled with fondness, and the stories live on in her words.
“Some believed and accepted Christ and new congregations were born,” Bright said. “We gave God the credit for new believers, new members and new churches, and Cornelius and I praised Him for every victory and for every new church He used us to start.”
Share with others: