South Side AG was obviously Pentecostal. Church services lasted about 2 hours with music for the first hour, and an hour long message afterward.
The Service:
The Pastor's son P.D. Zink led the worship with a 30 to 40 voice choir. The choir sang Southern Gospel music (Oak Ridge Boys, Dottie Rambo, Nancy Harmon and the Victory Voices, Andre Crouch and others). The choir rocked.
I grew up in a church where people quietly sang or didn't sing at all. Everybody sang at South Side AG. The choir belted out the songs and the congregation clapped and sang along. Worship was filled with loud Southern Gospel music.
Prayer seemed almost chaotic. When P.D. prayed, everybody prayed along, out loud. Some would pray in tongues and others would pray in regular English. The church was always noisy.
Occasionally as the prayer time began to quiet down one person (usually on lady) would pray out loud in tongues. That meant that God was going to give us a message / an interpretation of the tongues. Seconds later somebody else would give a message in English that was suppose to be a message straight from God. Typically the message had to do with how close the return of Christ was and how prepared we should be.
The Message:
Dale Zink gave the message, he was the pastor. In the 1970s we titled each other Brother or Sister - so I was Brother Ted. Pastor Zink was Brother Zink. Brother Zink preached a lot about the end times. We lived minutes away from the return of Jesus. I believed that Jesus was so close that within the year the Church would be raptured away to meet Him in the air. Although Brother Zink talked about the end times every sermon I remember, occasionally the choir was so good, and P.D. did such a good job with the choir that the church service got wrapped up in prayer. Brother Zink would step up in front of the congregation with tears in his eyes and tell us that he wouldn't preach because God was already doing such a great work, and that the congregation should continue in prayer seeking after God. He opened up the altar (the front of the church) for prayer.
Throughout the congregation people wept, people got right with God, people went forward to the front of the church for prayer and for starting their lives of faith in Christ.
The 17 months I stayed in Jacksonville the church doubled in size becoming well over 500 attenders.
Today Bishop Paul Zink is the pastor of New Life Church in Jacksonville.
