[Granville-Hough] 28 Aug 2009 - The Itinerant Baptist Minister, Cousin Ira L. Sullivan

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

The Itinerant Baptist Minister, Cousin Ira L. Sullivan.

Some people are called to preach, and they are very good. Others are 
called to preach, and they are very sincere. Then there are others. One 
story I once heard circulating in Sullivan’s Hollow was of a young man 
who was plowing in a field and came to a fence where he had to turn and 
go back and plow the other way. As he was turning, he saw in the furrow 
the initials: G-P-C, which he interpreted as “Go Preach Christ.” Those 
who heard his first efforts, then his later efforts, said he definitely 
misunderstood the message. G-P-C meant “Go Pick Cotton,” and that is 
what he seemed best fitted for.
Be that as it may, there were many who heard the call and answered it. 
Some mastered their difficulties and did much good. Billy Graham once 
said on TV in an interview that the first thing he was going to ask God 
when he met him in heaven was why he was chosen to be a minister. Billy 
said he was not well educated, he did not know how to preach, and his 
first efforts on the streets of a city in Florida were miserably 
ineffective. Why God allowed him to continue was incomprehensible. Yet 
Billy Graham inspired more to believe and change their lives than any 
other man in recent history.
Some ministers farmed on the side so they could feed their families and 
survive. Those who depended entirely on their congregation’s support 
frequently had to serve four or even eight churches. In most Baptist 
churches of Smith County, and through most of the rural South, you had 
church once each month with a regular preacher. The other Sundays, you 
had Sunday School, singing, and other church activities. When the 
Preacher came, everyone got on his or her best behavior. Other Sundays, 
they were more relaxed.
Of course, Cousin Ira L. Sullivan was son of Loughton Sullivan and 
grandson of Reverend Wilson West. He truly had a heritage to maintain. I 
found him as a minister on a Louisiana census record, but I never had 
contact with a descendant. How well he did his ministry, we do not know; 
however, I hope his descendants follow in his footsteps.