Developing Horizons Magazine (2).pdf Spring 2015 | Page 25

got the fire put out, came back in and sat down. When
everybody got settled, Adams finished his sermon.
Brown’s sermons never lasted more than twenty
minutes. He said that if a minister preached more than
twenty minutes he was preaching to himself. “He was
a great teacher. His sermons were teachings,” Dennis
Plott said. “People loved him and it seemed like people
were always getting saved. Sometimes he’d just start
singing in a resonant tenor that made everyone’s eyes
puddle, a song like
There’ll be no sorrow there,
There’ll be no sorrow there,
In Heav’n above, where all is love,
There’ll be no sorrow there.
True to their callings as servants, Brown and Adams
performed thousands of weddings and funerals, often
together as people from miles around would want
them both to attend to their functions. Speaking of
Brown, one man said, “I don’t know if we’re married or
not. We went to his house to get married, but he was
at the barn milking the cows. We went down there and
he married us. I redkon. I’m not sure though. I don’t
think I heard a word he said.”
In a 1956 Atlanta Journal article, Celestine Sibley
quotes Adams as saying, “We (Brown and Adams) go
all the way from Brasstown Valley to up above
Andrews, N.C. and sometimes we have five or six
funerals in one week.”

Like many early
preachers, they each
pastored several
churches, often
more than one at a
time. In the early
days, they rode
horses or walked,
but in later years
Adams bought a car
and hired someone
to drive him. Brown
never drove, but he
Rev. Professor Lovick Adams
would ri