Interactive Website Tour Script
A Legacy of Faith, Formation & Leadership

⏱ Estimated read time: 55 seconds · Tone: Warm, authoritative, invitational

Welcome. You are standing at the threshold of something that has been here longer than most institutions dare to imagine. What you see behind you — that building, those walls, that light — is Old Main, constructed in 1893 on the campus of Arkansas Baptist College. It has stood through reconstruction and resistance, through the Great Depression and the civil rights struggle, through every season that has tested this nation's conscience.

Arkansas Baptist College was founded in 1884 — just one generation removed from slavery — by Black Baptist leaders who believed that education was not a luxury but a sacred necessity. They called it, at first, the Ministers' Institute. They met at Mount Zion Baptist Church. And from that small beginning, something extraordinary grew.

The James and Rosa McKissic School of Christian Studies carries that vision forward. We invite you now to walk with us through this story — because if you are here, it may be that your story is already part of it.

⏱ Estimated read time: 75 seconds · Tone: Historically grounded, measured reverence

What you are looking at is not merely a timeline. It is a record of sacred urgency — the conviction of men and women who refused to let the conditions of their moment define the limits of their vision.

In November of 1884, the Ministers' Institute opened its doors in Little Rock. Among its founding visionaries was Reverend Elias Camp Morris — a man who rose from slavery to become the first president of the National Baptist Convention, one of the largest Protestant bodies in American history. He understood what so many did not: that the spiritual life of a community rises no higher than the formation of its leadership.

By 1895, a young man named Charles Harrison Mason was graduating from this very institution. He would go on to found the Church of God in Christ — a movement that today numbers more than six million members worldwide. According to the historical record, it was here in Little Rock, in the orbit of Arkansas Baptist College, that Mason received the divine inspiration for the name Church of God in Christ.

And then there was Lizzie Robinson — who served on the college's staff. Her time at Arkansas Baptist College ended with loss. But that loss became a doorway. She went on to found the Women's Department of the Church of God in Christ and extend its missionary footprint across the globe. What appears to be an ending can become the beginning of worldwide influence.

Each name on this timeline is an argument. An argument that Arkansas Baptist College does not just educate students — it incubates movements.

⏱ Estimated read time: 90 seconds · Tone: Reverent awe, historic weight, worship-adjacent

There are places in history that can only be called holy ground. And if you know the story, you know that the campus of Arkansas Baptist College is one of them.

In a single decade — the 1890s — three individuals who would shape the global course of Black Christianity were being formed within the orbit of this institution. Let that settle for a moment. Three global movements. One campus. One decade.

Bishop Charles Harrison Mason. He graduated from the Ministers' Institute here in 1895. According to the historical record, it was in this city, near this college, that God gave him the name: Church of God in Christ. That church today numbers more than six million members across the world. It began here.

Bishop Charles Price Jones. Shaped by the same institutional environment, Jones would co-found the Church of God in Christ alongside Mason before later leading the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA — a movement that continues to bear his theological imprint to this day.

And then — Mother Lizzie Robinson. She came to Arkansas Baptist College as matron. She left without a position. But she did not leave without a purpose. She would go on to organize the Women's Department of the Church of God in Christ — planting the seeds of a global missionary enterprise that has touched every inhabited continent.

This is not coincidence. This is the fruit of formation. When you invest in a school with this kind of mission, you are not funding an institution — you are funding the next movement.

⏱ Estimated read time: 80 seconds · Tone: Proud, expansive, inclusive

Arkansas Baptist College was founded to prepare ministers. But what it actually produced was far wider than any pulpit could contain.

Look at Joseph Robert Booker — Class of 1914, son of the college's long-serving president Joseph Albert Booker. Joseph Robert became one of the most consequential civil rights attorneys in Arkansas history, working alongside Thurgood Marshall on NAACP litigation. His formation at Arkansas Baptist College produced not only a preacher's son but a justice-seeker's advocate.

Consider E. Alice Taylor — an early graduate who became an educator, entrepreneur, and long-serving NAACP leader in Boston. Her journey across state lines and institutional boundaries reflects the reach of the Arkansas Baptist College mission: to form people capable of serving both church and community.

And in our own generation — Bishop Donnie Lee Lindsey, Sr., Reverend Jerry D. Black, Sr., and many others who lead congregations, shape denominations, and anchor communities — all bear the imprint of what was begun here in 1884.

When you walk through these portraits, remember: Arkansas Baptist College did not merely grant degrees. It helped shape a moral imagination. And that imagination is still at work in the world today.

⏱ Estimated read time: 85 seconds · Tone: Intimate, pastoral, deeply personal

Every institution has a name. But not every institution's name tells a story this rich.

The James and Rosa McKissic School of Christian Studies is named for Reverend James E. McKissic — a legendary Pine Bluff pastor who understood something that too few leaders do: that his highest calling was not only to preach, but to develop preachers. He was known for looking at a young person and seeing not only who they were, but who they were becoming. He nurtured a pastoral guild — a generation of ministers who carried his investment into their own communities.

Alongside him was Rosa Daniels McKissic — a Christian educator whose formation work happened not only in classrooms but in homes. It was Rosa who first noticed the musical gift in her son, James Henry — who the family called Jimmy. She taught him piano. She invested in his gift. And that investment took him to Carnegie Hall — twenty-eight times.

Twenty-eight times. Let that be a word to every parent, every mentor, every teacher who has ever wondered whether the investment they are making in someone's gift is worth it.

In this family story we find the living metaphor for everything the McKissic School exists to do: identify a gift, invest in it, and trust God with the way that gift may lead.

⏱ Estimated read time: 70 seconds · Tone: Practical, encouraging, invitational

You have heard the history. Now let us talk about you.

The McKissic School offers two pathways into formation. If you are ready to pursue a full degree, our Bachelor of Arts in Christian Studies gives you four concentrations: Pastoral Leadership, Christian Education, Church Administration, and Worship Arts. Our Bachelor of Arts in Human Services includes a Christian Counseling concentration that equips you to meet people in their deepest places of need.

But we also know that many who come to us are already serving. You are already in a pulpit, already leading a ministry, already doing the work. For you, we offer five Certificate Programs — in Christian Education, Church Administration, Worship Arts, Homiletics and Pastoral Leadership, and Christian Counseling. Each certificate is eight modules at one hundred and twenty-five dollars per module — three college credit hours when complete.

The McKissic School exists to give clarity to your calling — and credentials to your competence. Whatever God has placed in you, we want to help you develop it with rigor, roots, and reach.

⏱ Estimated read time: 60 seconds · Tone: Warm, collegial, confidence-building

Formation does not happen through curriculum alone. It happens through relationship — through the encounter with a teacher who sees something in you that you have not yet fully seen in yourself.

The faculty of the McKissic School bring to you what has always distinguished Arkansas Baptist College: the marriage of intellectual rigor and lived ministry. These are not scholars who have only studied the church from the outside. They are pastors who have led congregations, chaplains who have sat with the dying, musicians who have led worship, counselors who have walked with people through the valley.

Under the leadership of Dean Dr. Phillip L. Pointer, Sr. and Associate Dean Dr. Nathanael A. Palmer I, the McKissic School is led by servant-scholars whose commitment is not only to what you know when you leave — but to who you are becoming while you are here.

In the tradition of Reverend James E. McKissic — who was known as a developer of preachers — every faculty member here is in the business of developing you.

⏱ Estimated read time: 75 seconds · Tone: Prophetic, urgent, deeply dignified

You have now walked through one hundred and forty years of faith, formation, and leadership. You have heard the names. You have seen the faces. You know now what this institution has produced — and what it still intends to produce.

So we ask you a direct question: What is your part in this story?

When Reverend Elias Camp Morris helped found this school, he did not know that within a decade, the campus would incubate three global Christian movements. He only knew that the moment required him to act. When Rosa Daniels McKissic sat down at a piano with her young son Jimmy, she did not know he would perform at Carnegie Hall twenty-eight times. She only knew that the gift in her child required investment.

Every gift given to the McKissic School today is an act of that same faith. You are not funding a line item. You are sustaining a covenant. A covenant made in 1884, renewed by every generation that has followed, and now extended — by you — into the future.

Arkansas Baptist College is the only Baptist-affiliated Historically Black College or University west of the Mississippi River. Its survival and renewal are not administrative concerns — they are spiritual imperatives.

⏱ Estimated read time: 55 seconds · Tone: Sending, commissioning, hopeful

The story of Arkansas Baptist College is not finished. It has never been finished. It has always been in the middle of becoming — because every generation that has passed through its doors has carried something forward that the founders could not have fully imagined.

And now we come to you.

You came to this website for a reason. Perhaps you are discerning a call. Perhaps you have known your call for years and are finally ready to give it an academic home. Perhaps you are a pastor who wants to sharpen your tools. Perhaps you are a donor who has been waiting for an institution whose mission matches the size of your conviction.

Whatever brought you here — you are welcome here. The same Sacred Urgency that opened this school's doors in 1884 is still alive in this place. The same conviction that what God places in a person demands formation, discipline, and release — that conviction has not faded.

Apply. Connect. Begin. The next chapter of this 140-year story has a place in it — with your name.

Grace and peace to you — from the James and Rosa McKissic School of Christian Studies at Arkansas Baptist College.