Madison Pentecostal Assembly celebrates 25 years
A spiritual silver rights struggle

By Jonathan Gramling

Part 1 of 3

It certainly must have been by faith alone that led Bishop Eugene Johnson and his wife Carolyn to come to Madison in the fall of 1983. It was like some
Old Testament tale of obeying the call of God in spite of the logic that must have caused them some concern and then have God throw a veil on their
minds to shield them from the worst that God was demanding of them.
Who would have thought that this couple of meager resources and without jobs or a home would come to Madison to found Madison Pentecostal
Assembly that would eventually own a church complex on E. Buckeye Road worth $1 million and own 57 acres in the country for future church growth?
No one could have predicted, but God surely knew.
Back in 1976, the Johnsons moved back to Memphis from Washington, D.C. where Eugene had made his mark on housing public policy. For the last two
years that Eugene was in Memphis, he worked for a church. “I just did religious service there,” Eugene said as he, Carolyn and I sat in a conference room
in Madison Pentecostal Assembly. “The pay was very low, but the work was quite fulfilling and enabling.”
The Johnson’s were invited to start a church in Madison. Eugene stated that he did hear the call of God when he decided to come to Madison. The
Johnsons came to Madison in October 1983 to visit Madison. The Madison weather deceived them. The sun was shining and there was but a little cold in
the air.
While they were here, they looked for a job for Eugene. “We went to the South Madison Neighborhood Center,” Eugene recalled. “My wife spotted a
newspaper that had an advertisement for Norrell Temporary Services and Marlene Cummings photo. So we said ‘Hey, let’s check it out.’ As it was, Marlene
wanted to hire Carolyn on the spot.”
The Johnsons went back to Memphis and then Eugene got a call from Cummings that the Madison Urban League was looking for an interim administrator
and she felt Eugene fit the bill of what they were looking for. Eugene came back to Madison on November 10 with $200 in his pocket and stayed with a
student in Sun Prairie.
While Johnson got the job, the board of the Urban League realized two months later that it couldn’t keep Eugene and another key employee. The Urban
League would have to let one of them go and it was almost as if God was testing Eugene. He was asked by the board treasurer whom they should keep.
Still staying with the student and having just a toehold in Madison, Eugene could have readily chosen to recommend that he be retained. But he didn’t.
“I really believe that it was God’s design because what happened was I really felt that the other person was the better person, but somehow they had
recruited me in as an outsider to serve as a bridge until they found a permanent director. But I couldn’t stay as long as they needed me because of
funding. It was my suggestion to Bill that he take the other person. And that’s what happened. He took him. And the next day, Bill said ‘I have a job here at
the state. So whichever of you stayed at the Urban League, I was going to offer the other person a job working for the state.’”
Eugene began working at the Wis. Dept. of Development (now called Commerce) in their Minority Business Development Bureau as an LTE. Carolyn and
their three children were now able to join him. The weather had deceived them all.
“I would never live in Nashville or Knoxville because it was too cold,” Eugene said. “I certainly wouldn’t live in St. Louis or Chicago. Absolutely not! We
had done our research on Madison for a lot of things such as the church community and all of the demographics. But one thing we didn’t check was the
weather. All we knew was that 40 percent of the days were gray skies. Cool, we could hang with that. But we were not prepared for the weather.”
Eugene worked at Development for a year before gaining regular employment at the Wis. Department of Transportation where he is now employed as the
bureau director of the Bureau of Equity and Environmental Services.
After he was joined by his family, the Johnsons began the work of building their church. Eugene was introduced to Bill Wineke by Marlene Cummings, the
owner of Norrell. In addition to writing on religious affairs for the Wisconsin State Journal, Wineke was also a minister at the Wisconsin Rescue Mission on
E. Mifflin and North Streets, which had a church and a residence. Wineke offered to let them use the mission for free.
“Bill had a service that probably concluded at noon,” Eugene recalled about the hectic Sunday schedule at the little mission. “Then the CME Church
took it over at noon and we took it over at 4 p.m. Our first service consisted of about 47 persons who were curious to see who we were. One of the most
prominent persons was Dr. Richard Harris from Mt. Zion Baptist Church. He was just checking us out to see what the deal was. And our first offering was
about $45 as well.”
On succeeding Sundays, the number of people dwindled to about 15 people before it started rising again. Most of the congregants were children from
the Truax housing complex. “We would pack children in my car,” Eugene fondly recalled. “I could pack 16 children in my car. Hello DOT Safety Belt
laws. They were preschoolers and middle schoolers sitting in laps and so on. The parents didn’t come, but we took their children. We took an interest in
African American mothers, single moms who I thought were the most disadvantaged in the community and the moist neglected and the highest need of
ministry and attention. We decided to reach out to those youth and they were willing to come. That’s how we really started church.”
Pentecostal services can be rather rousing affairs and it wasn’t before too long that Wineke was forced to ask Madison Pentecostal Assembly to leave
because the services generated too much noise. They were forced to pack up and leave. “We then moved to the M&I Bank on Northport Drive community
room,” Johnson recalled. “Then we moved to the South Madison Neighborhood Center, but it was pretty costly for us. It wasn’t working for our financial
goals and the accumulation of money. Then we moved into the home of a medical student who was a member of the church. When he graduated, we
moved into the home of another person.”
While the Johnsons are deeply spiritual people, they also believe in the social gospel as well. Their mission was as much to feed the hungry as it was to
bring their souls to God. It was probably no accident that Madison Pentecostal Assembly set their sights on a piece of land on Nygaard Street in the
Capitol View neighborhood. It was in South Madison, which had the reputation — many times unfounded — of being Madison’s troubled neighborhood.
The Sommerset housing complex was just gaining notoriety as a problem subsidized housing complex. If one were in the business of saving souls and
doing something about the economic plight of African Americans, South Madison was the place to be.
Since Madison has many residential neighborhoods with churches in their midst, the Johnsons felt there would be no problem building their church on
the property on Nygaard Street. It was 1986 and the Johnsons didn’t know they needed a conditional use permit to build the church, since it was in the
town of Madison. The neighborhood got whipped into a frenzy about the prospects of having an African American church that ministered to the poor next
door.
Bishop Eugene Johnson (l) and his wife
Carolyn moved to Madison 25 years ago to
found MadisonPentecostal Assembly.