Sitting With The Sages: Twenty Outstanding Men of God Among the Most Iconic Preachers of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

By Clifford E. Mclain

Sitting with the Sages is a brief summary of preachers who influenced and intersected the life and ministry of Clifford E. McLain. They were introduced to him by his longtime preaching father, C. C. McLain. It recalls pivotal local and national events and ministers during the civil rights era, who shaped most of his values and approach to preaching and pastoring.

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Clifford E. McLain has given us an invaluable treasure chest of information and inspiration in his work Sitting with the Sages. Here, we get a glimpse of the life and legacy of some of the greatest sermon crafters of our time and all times. Readers of Sitting with the Sages should be encouraged to enhance their efforts as the “mine” the rich fields of the Word of God. I recommend an engagement with this work for personal betterment in kingdom work.

—Dr. G.V. Clark, Pastor

Mount Zion Baptist Church Moderator, St. John Regular Baptist District Association President, Missionary Baptist General Convention of Texas

Sitting with the Sages, a collection of back stories of twenty preachers by Clifford E. McLain is riveting. These spellbinding stories are metaphors that tell how much these ministers cared about people. It is also telling how much they influenced McLain’s life and ministry. I’m honored to see this work and it has my endorsement.

—Leonard I. Sweet, PhD

Senior Professor of Doctoral Studies at Evangelical Seminary E. Stanley Jones Professor Emeritus at Drew University Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox University and Tabor College

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646542468

Book preview

Claude Clifford McLain

No single preacher/pastor influenced me as much as my father, Claude Clifford McLain. C. C., as he is fondly called posthumously today, was born December 28, 1912, into wealth and privilege to John and Almeta McLain. His father was an entrepreneur and the son of a white farmer, who gave him eighty acres of land. Within a short time, John McLain owned a six-hundred-acre farm, two sawmills, three taxicabs, and the only commissary (grocery store) in his hometown, Choudrant, Louisiana. He also owned racehorses and was the largest stockholder in the local bank.

John was the apple of Claude’s eye, his idol and hero. At age six, in September, 1919, everything changed. Three months before C. C.’s seventh birthday, his father John was shot in the back by a white employee. John McLain died the next day on his forty-second birthday. A transcript of the court record laid on the dining room table of our home for years. All of the money, stock, mills, and most of the land were taken from Claude’s mother by the manufacture of You owe me.

Growing up, Claude walked to Grambling to get a high school education. He endured humiliation and demeaning acts by whites, who rode the buses, and often, they threw their excrement from the bus window on him as he made the ten- to twelve-mile walk one way in pursuit of his high school diploma. After Grambling Negro Normal School, C. C. worked and studied under George Washington Carver at Tuskegee Institute during the Great Depression. While reading books about Dr. Carver’s life, particularly the one entitled In His Own Words, the writer of the foreword suggested that Dr. Carver’s voice was pitched higher than the average woman because he was probably castrated to be sure there would be no children fathered by Carver being that he lived in the big house with whites.

My father told us that, upon meeting Dr. Carver, he first heard his greeting from behind some rosebushes. May I help you? Carver asked in a very high voice. C. C. had just arrived by freight train and walked to the campus. He worked a while for Dr. Carver and Dr. Moreland, learning farming and how to administer medication to livestock. This was extremely helpful during his years of cattle farming, planting, growing and harvesting southern plantation pine trees. After Tuskegee, C. C. attended and graduated from Bishop College located in Marshall, Texas, at the time.

Our mother, Mildred Oliver McLain, told us that Dad’s first marriage ended when his wife Grace died in Tuskegee while he was a student. There were no children born to that union. After studying at Bishop, Claude was a teacher and the principal at the Saint Rest Elementary School. C. C. would laugh upon reflecting on his many responsibilities as principal/teacher at St. Rest. This was a time of growth and learning for both him and his students.

During the late 1930s and early forties (1940), C. C. would come home from teaching school and work at the sawmill, which was less than a half mile from the lot he and mother had purchased. He received no monetary pay. Instead, he was paid in lumber. By 1942, he had completed the nine-room framed house that still stands at 1419 Oakdale Street in Ruston, Louisiana. He hammered and nailed even after dark while mother held a flashlight.

In the mid-1940s, C. C. pastored two churches, New Hope in Ruston, Louisiana, and Galilee in Hodge, Louisiana. While pastoring the New Hope Baptist Church in Ruston, in the early 1950s, C. C. was told by a member of the church, Pastor, you know what happens before our night service is over?

No, what happens?

A lot of the members go across the street to the Red Onion.

What is the Red Onion?

You know, it’s a joint, where they dance and stuff. It’s a shame.

C. C. said, I’ll go over there if you all go with me and show me how to get in.

Yeah, we’ll go. Everybody’s talking about it. It’s a lowdown shame.

The next Sunday night worship, after the offering, C. C. asked the members who did not leave after the offering to remain for a few minutes.

After the offering, the members who frequented the Red Onion left as before. C. C. spoke to the members that remained.

I’m going over to the place across the street where some of you say our members are. All of you who will, follow me. We are going just to see, not talk.

The Red Onion was just across the street from the church. C. C. walked out, followed by deacons and other church leaders and members. As the pastor and church members walked in single file toward the Red Onion, they began to hear the music. They heard blues and swing growing louder. When they entered, the dancing church members were getting down. They had no idea that their space had been invaded by their fellow church members. Suddenly, someone yelled, O Lord. It’s the pastor and deacons. They are in here.

The dancing churchgoers still had their choir robes on or across their shoulders. Dancing ushers wore their church usher badges. All were adults who knew the latest dance craze. Immediately, panic struck. The dancing churchgoers ran in every direction. But the only way out was the front door. They were trapped. When the dancing and music stopped, C. C. said, Shame on you. All of you church members should be ashamed. And before you sing in the choir or usher again, you will have to talk to the church congregation.

Later, when I grew older and talked to C. C. and reminisced with some of those who had been involved in the dancing, I was told, Boy, I wished Jesus Himself had come into that place, rather than your father. I was so embarrassed.

The next Sunday worship was very sobering. More than twenty-five persons came before the church at the time of the invitation to discipleship. All of them apologized and were restored. This was a time before television and very few people had radios. But this action spread throughout the city by word of mouth and established C. C. as a stern pastor.

In September 1956, when coming home from Lincoln High School, I noticed my dad’s big dog wrestling with another dog. Being a lover of animals, I walked between them and was bitten on the knee. My mother saw it from the kitchen window. She was frantic. My dad came from his study into the kitchen. He was quite agitated. I had no idea how serious it was.

There was an immediate search for the strange dog. Our dog had been vaccinated. The police looked throughout the city without any success in finding the dog. I began taking the regimen of fourteen shots at Green’s Clinic to prevent rabies.

After the painful round of fourteen injections for fourteen consecutive days, I became very ill. I had no appetite and began losing weight. When my condition did not improve, I was admitted to Ruston General Hospital. I spent the next eight months in and out of the hospital. I missed the remainder of that school year. One evening, I heard C. C. and my doctor in a serious