P. F. Taylor collection

Collection

Identifier: M0032

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The P.F. Taylor collection is a series of sermons and collected notes written and preached over a sixty year period. There are 12 boxes in the collection. The sermons were arranged as chronologically as possible according to decade. After the initial order they are then arranged by subject. The majority of the materials came in one accession with some additions later. A total of 51 binders and several loose-leaf Bibles make up the collection. There are some water damaged items in the collection. Many of his sermons received extensive water damage and were not salvageable. He had thoroughly organized them into binders and after his retirement indexed them. He also had a color coded system of which we do not know the meaning. Some of the binders are numbered and many only had organizational dates. During the mid-1970s when his son Al was working at Forward in Faith, in Cleveland, Tennessee, Taylor would send copies of his own sermons to help his son with public speaking. There is some correspondence from father to son in the collection. His radio program sermons are noted. Taylor found it helpful to use loose-leaf Bibles so he could take them apart and insert his notes where necessary. The author’s original order and labeling system has been kept to the best of our ability. Folders are labeled exactly as written on the binder. If there was no writing on the binder they are listed as miscellaneous sermons.

Dates

1941–1990

Creator

Taylor, P.F. (Person)

Conditions Governing Use

This material may be protected under U. S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code) which governs the making of photocopies or reproductions of copyrighted materials. You may use any digitized or otherwise copied material from our holdings for private study, scholarship, or research. Though the Dixon Pentecostal Research Center has physical ownership of the material in its collections, in some cases we may not own the copyright to the material. It is the patron's obligation to determine and satisfy copyright restrictions when publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in our collections.

Biographical / Historical

Preston Floyd Taylor was born April 29, 1916 to Emma and Jesse Taylor in Winder, Georgia. He was the eldest of five children. Emma regularly took the children to church. Although Jesse did not discourage the children from going to church he expected them to be “manly.” Jesse was a night watchman at a cotton mill and eventually rode the rails to look for work. As a young child, Taylor moved to High Point, Draper and Eden, North Carolina, finally settling in Danville, Virginia. Here he dropped out of school in the seventh grade at the age of twelve and started working in the cotton mill. He eventually became a supervisor there. Although he had dropped out of school at a young age, he never lost his passion for learning and is reported to have read every book in the local library. This love for learning would later be reflected in his sermons and study materials. At age eighteen he married sixteen year old Helen Elizabeth Doss in 1934. Helen had received the gift of tongues at the age of thirteen and was promptly invited “out of” the Primitive Baptist Church. Together the couple attended West Danville Church of God. Taylor continued to work as a supervisor at Dan River Mills until the age of twenty-four. Helen and Preston Taylor had five children.

In 1941 Taylor answered his call to ministry by taking on a pastorate in Parrot, Virginia. In 1943 he moved to Waynesboro, Virginia, and from there planted two churches, one in Grotto and one in Staunton. He remained there until 1948 when he was asked to pastor in Bastion, Virginia. Once again he planted another church, this time in Grapefield. When he moved to pastor in St. Charles in 1950 he planted churches in Dant and Pound. Taylor pastored in Hazard, Kentucky from 1953 to 1954. He was asked to be overseer of Jamaica in 1954. During this time he studied law through LaSalle Extension University and completed his course of study but chose not to go before the bar. He never wanted his study to supersede his call to ministry, but to benefit his ministry. He wrote the legal briefs for the Church of God in Jamaica during his tenure there. From 1958 to 1961, he took a pastorate in Lemmon, South Dakota. Taylor was state overseer in Wyoming from 1961 to 1963. In 1968 he went to the Bahamas as national overseer until 1968. Once again he wrote legal briefs for the Church of God in the Bahamas. He pastored in Seaford, Delaware from 1968 to 1971. The last decade of Taylor’s ministry was spent in South Richmond, Virginia. During his tenure there he planted two more churches in Powhatan and Chesterfield and took a real estate course to help with church development. He also preached a radio program called the Good News Hour on WDYL from 1972 to 1981. After retiring in 1981 he planted his final church in a suburb of South Richmond called Midlothian. He remained pastor for almost seven years until the church had finished its building program and could support a pastor.

He had another ten years upon retiring until his death in 2001 at the age of eighty-five. He was a voracious learner and studied constantly his entire life, not just the Bible. He rarely preached a sermon twice and had written over 5,000 sermons.

SOURCES: Al Taylor (son)