The founding of the Pentecostal City Mission Church

IN 1865, William Booth, a former Methodist, established The Christian Mission to take care of the physical and spiritual needs of the poor and dejected in London. Thirteen years after, in 1878, the name was changed to The Salvation Army.

In 1887, The Salvation Army began its work in Jamaica,on the initiative of William Raglan Phillips, a native of Bristol, England, who came to Jamaica in 1871. He worked as a surveyor, printer and publisher of the Westmoreland Telegraph. Upon Phillips’ request, Booth sent officers to Jamaica, where, in Bluefields, Westmoreland, the first activities of the soldiers/Salvationists were established.

“While serving in Jamaica, Reverend Phillips felt the call of God and the urge of the Holy Spirit for a deeper surrendered life. After consultation with General Booth, he started to conduct open-air meetings in Bluefields, Westmoreland, just over 100 miles from Kingston. These meetings were conducted in the same format as the ones in the Salvation Army,” The Pentecostal City Mission website says.

Phillips subsequently left Bluefields to assist with the establishment of The Salvation Army in Kingston. In 1890, General Booth called him to London. There, he was promoted, before he returned to Jamaica with Major James J. Cooke, an Irish officer.

“Over time, Reverend Phillips, became involved in the Jamaica Baptist Union and pastored the Acadia Baptist Church in St Thomas. He was known as a man with a mission for ministry and helping people. Seemingly, in his pursuit to fulfil God’s will in evangelism, he began to study about the Holy Spirit and ultimately practised and introduced the Pentecostal experience to the Caribbean,” The Pentecostal City Mission website also says.

Reverend Phillips went all over the land trying to get people into the folds of Christianity through his evangelistic meetings. In Brown’s Town, St Ann, he met a young woman named Mary Louise Coore, the daughter of Frederick Coore and Mrs Coore. Formerly a member of the Baptist Church in Brown’s Town St Ann, it is said that she was converted to Christianity at age 10, and “was blessed with the gift of healing and teaching. In fact, she was often referred to as the girl with the healing hands,” one source says.

“The evangelistic partnership between Raglan Phillips and Mary Coore began gaining momentum as they moved through the four corners of Jamaica with their message of salvation, healing, holiness and the second coming of Christ. Many people were healed, saved and delivered,” Pentecostal City Mission at https://www.geocities.ws/ says.

The Pentecostal City Mission website also states, “Huge crowds followed them from village to village and from town to town. Everywhere Reverend Phillips and Sister Mary Louise Coore went people were saved and completely healed from all manner of sicknesses and diseases.”

Reverend Phillips’s ministry, the Healing Mission, founded in 1897, became well known in Jamaica. In 1924, he declared that God had directed him to establish a mission in every city and he re-named the Healing Mission, City Mission Church, co-established with Mary Louise Coore, who travelled everywhere and prayed constantly for the sick and helpless.

In 1930 Reverend William Raglan Phillips died. Prior to his death, he had transferred the leadership of the City Mission Church to Bishop Mary Coore, who subsequently established branches of the ministry of City Mission all over Jamaica. In 1939 she pioneered the first international branch of the City Mission Church in British Honduras (now Belize). When, in June 1964, Bishop Coore died, she was succeeded by Bishop Delrose Lucille Walters.

The name of the church evolved into the Pentecostal City Mission, whose headquarters are at 15 Blount Street, Hannah Town, Jamaica. At present, there are 64 City Mission branches in Jamaica, five branches in New York, 12 branches in England, two branches in Canada, two branches in California, five in Florida, and one branch in Belize, Central America.

The property on which the The Salvation Army was first established in Jamaica is still at Bluefields, once called Oristan, the second Spanish settlement in Jamaica, and the longest continuous settlement on the island, since the first settlement, Seville in St Ann, was abandoned because of the unhealthy conditions that existed there.

The story of William Ragland Phillips, the man who inspired the establishment of The Salvation Army in Jamaica and the City Mission Church, is told in a book, The Richest Man in Jamaican – Stoned by the Poor … Cursed by the Rich, written by Richard Phillips, a grandson residing in Canada. The book is available on Amazon.