New Zion Temple Church - Worldwide Fellowship, Inc.

The plaque calls Elder Falls a Latter Rain overseer; the movement began far from Ruthven Street. In February 1948, after fasting and prayer at the Sharon Orphanage and Schools in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, students reported prophecy and the laying on of hands to pass on spiritual gifts. Led by George Hawtin, Percy Hunt and Herrick Holt, it spread to Detroit, Texas and beyond, teaching that modern apostles and prophets must lead the church. The Assemblies of God rejected it in September 1949, and by 1952, the year the Worldwide Fellowship organized, it was fading as an organized force.

What the plaque says

New Zion Temple Church - Worldwide Fellowship, Inc. New Zion Temple Church Worldwide Fellowship, Inc. was founded as The Little Church on Ruthven Street, a Church Of God In Christ congregation. Bishop Hayward W. Falls fulfilled the communitys needs by using donated supplies to erect a wood-framed storefront building in March 1933 at 1601 Ruthven, in the historic Freedmens Town district of the fourth ward. He bought the property in 1938 and sold it to church trustees for one dollar. When the storefront building was expanded and renovated in September 1941, the name was changed to New Zion Temple Church Of God In Christ. The current edifice was erected and opened in May 1946. The congregation remained under Church Of God In Christ jurisdiction until May 1951, when Elder Falls heeded the call of God and established New Zion Temple as Non-denominational. Elder Falls was an early disciple and later an overseer of the Latter Rain Movement, which interprets the bible in a symbolic and stylized manner. With the organization of the Worldwide Fellowship in 1952, New Zion Temple became headquarters and host for its national meetings and conventions. On May 26, 1983, its name officially changed to include Worldwide Fellowship, Inc. New Zion Temple has been committed to spreading the word of God. With its assistance, other churches have been established in Texas, California, Louisiana, Ohio, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and England. Today, the congregation supports a food pantry and clothes closet, annual holiday donations, a prison ministry, and Juneteenth celebrations. Known for its generosity, the church has served as a nucleus for social, economic, educational, political, and cultural life. * 175 Years of Texas Independence * 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.8 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.4 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 1.4 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• The Menil Collection — 1.5 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.

More markers nearby

• J. Vance Lewis — steps away
• The Reverend Ned P. Pullum — steps away
• Gregory School — steps away
• Twentieth-Century Development of Freedman's Town — steps away