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Crenshaw Christian Center
Los Angeles, California
Dr. Frederick K. C. Price was born January 3,
1932, in Santa Monica, California, the eldest of
two sons of Winifred and Fred Price. He has one
sister, Delores W. Jones.
A product of the Los
Angeles public school system, Price attended
McKinley Elementary School in Santa
Monica, Foshay Junior High, Manual Arts and Dorsey
High Schools in Los Angeles, and received his
AA Degree from Los Angeles City College.
Dr. Price
received an honorary diploma from the Rhema Bible
Training Center in 1976 and an honorary
Doctorate of Divinity Degree from Oral Roberts
University in 1982; both institutions are based
in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
On September 6, 2000 ,
Dr. Price was the first Black pastor to speak
at "Town
Hall Los Angeles ".
In 1998, he received the prestigious "The
Horatio Alger Award", presented by an
Alexandria, Virginia-based association honoring
those who exemplify
inspirational success. Dr. Price also received
that year, "The Kelly Miller Smith Interfaith
Award", presented by the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, honoring clergy who
have made the most significant contribution
through
religious expression affecting the nation
and world.
Dr. Price met the former Betty
Ruth Scott
while attending Dorsey High School . They
were married
in March 1953 and have four children - Angela
Marie Evans,
Cheryl Ann Price, Stephanie Pauline Buchanan, and Pastor Frederick Kenneth
Price, Jr.
All of the Price children and
their spouses (A. Michael Evans, Jr. and Danon
Buchanan,
Angel
Price) work in the Ministry along with
Dr. Price. Drs. Fred
and Betty Price have five grandchildren: Alan Michael and Adrian Marie
Evans; Nicole
Denise and Allen L. Crabbe, III; and Tyler Stephen Buchanan.
The marriage
of Fred and Betty Price has spans more than 50
years. The fact that all but one of those years
was spent in the ministry is a story
within
itself.
Dr. Price was not always a religious man. He was
not reared in the church. In fact, his parents
were Jehovah's
Witnesses who discontinued
practicing
their faith when Dr. Price was very young. On the other hand, Dr.
Betty was a devout
Baptist, whose only desire was to please God. In order to win her
hand in marriage and to impress her family, Dr.
Price became a regular churchgoer
during their
courtship. Once they were married, however, he spent Sundays at the
baseball diamond. Betty, "knew better," as she puts it,
and remained steadfast in her faith, attending church every Sunday.
Within
months after they married, a group of Los Angeles area churches
sponsored a week of old-fashioned tent revivals.
Dr. Price became
jealous when he noticed
that Betty went to each service. To find out why she went, he decided
to go himself.
At that service, Frederick K. C. Price was born-again.
Soon thereafter, he and Betty joined a local
Baptist congregation. In that church,
Dr. Price says he
received the "call" to minister. He explains, "I
heard an audible voice saying, 'You are going to preach my Gospel.'
It was like a bomb going
off. I believe it was the voice of Jesus Christ, but at that
time, I did not know
what it was."
During the next 17 years, Dr. Price became
increasingly dissatisfied with his progress, both personally
as a Christian and in learning
about the
things of
God in general. He joined four different denominations, but
he only pastored in three of them. He was an assistant
pastor in
the Baptist
church from
1955 to 1957, then pastored an AME (African Methodist Episcopal)
church in Val
Verde, CA from 1957 to 1959. He went from there to the Presbyterian
Church, then to
the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1965.
During these
years of dissatisfaction, Dr. Price searched
the Scriptures for the answer. In his earnest desire
to be all
that God's Word
said he should be, he discovered that the power of the Holy
Spirit was
missing from his
life.
In
his book, "The Holy Spirit -- The Missing Ingredient",
Dr. Price writes of this time. Dr. Price says, "Every
time I read the words of Jesus in John 14:12, '. . .the works
that I do will he do also; and greater works than
these
will he do, because I go to My Father,' it left me longing
to experience these works. I was not witnessing these 'greater
works' in my own ministry, nor in
the ministry of others that I knew, with two exceptions --
Kathryn Kuhlman and Oral Roberts."
To add to his mounting
frustration, in 1962, Dr. Price's eight-year-old son, Frederick
III, was struck and killed
by a car while he
was coming home from
school. This was the most disastrous of many crises in
the Price family.
In her book, "Standing By
God's Man," Dr. Betty Price remembers, "Fred
and I tried to console each other as best we could, and
leaned a lot on one another during this time
of hurt. My husband particularly found it hard
to
get over this
tragedy, but he knew -- and continued to say -- that
it was not God Who had taken our son from us.
Looking
back now, we can see how the devil was trying
to destroy
us as a family."
While Dr. Price was pastoring for
the Christian and Missionary Alliance at West Washington
Community Church, he read
Kathryn Kuhlman's book, "God Can Do
It Again." "It stirred my soul," he
says. "This
was the missing dimension -- the demonstration of the
power of the Spirit of God," or what
the Bible terms "the gifts of the Spirit."
On
February 28, 1970 , he received the gift of the Holy
Spirit with the evidence of "speaking with other
tongues" -- also known as "glossolalia." That
is the event that Dr. Price considers the jumping-off
point in his ministry.
Dr. Price was also influenced
by several books and tapes by Rev. Kenneth E. Hagin
of Tulsa, Oklahoma
. Dr. Price
adds, "It was during this time that
Betty and I began to take the first steps to walk
by faith, which has brought us to
where we are today."
In 1973 Dr. Price and
300 parishioners moved from West Washington to
establish Crenshaw Christian
Center (CCC)
in Inglewood
, CA . In 1984
CCC outgrew
its Inglewood facility and purchased the former
Pepperdine University Los Angeles
campus. CCC
is now the home of the FaithDome, with over 10,000
seats, it's one of the largest church sanctuaries
in the United
States
. Construction on
the FaithDome
began
in 1986, finished in 1989, and the Dome was dedicated
on January 21, 1990 . Currently, the church membership
totals
over 22,000.
In addition, in 1990, Dr. Price
founded the Fellowship of Inner City Word of
Faith Ministries (FICWFM).
Members of
FICWFM include
churches
from all
over
the United States and various countries. The
Fellowship, which meets regionally throughout
the year and hosts an annual convention, is
not a denomination. Their mission is to provide
fellowship,
leadership,
guidance and a spiritual
covering
for those desiring a standard of excellence
in ministry.
They share methods and
experiences
commonly faced by ministries in the inner cities.
Their focus is how to apply the 'Word of Faith'
to solve
their challenges.
Dr. Price's most recent endeavors
are the establishment of an East Coast church
in Manhattan, New York
and a Spanish church on the
Ministry grounds
in Los
Angeles . The New York church - Crenshaw
Christian Center East - opened May 21, 2001
and, as of 2003, a CCC Pastor on staff for
15 years in Los
Angeles
relocated to New York to become the Pastor,
teaching on Thursday nights and Sunday
mornings. The current membership is almost
1,000. Now, Dr. Price only travels to New
York approximately every (2) two month to
teach the weekly Bible Study and Sunday
service. The Spanish church holds Sunday
morning services concurrently with the English
service.
The Spanish
church is 2 years old
and attendance averages
approximately
150 each Sunday.
Crenshaw Christian Center
has an established preschool, elementary, middle,
and high school
and correspondence
school. People
all over the world
know of Dr.
Price through the "Ever Increasing
Faith" TV,
radio and tape ministry. The Ever Increasing
Faith Ministries program reaches more than
15 million households
each week and airs in 15 of the 20 largest
markets throughout the United States ,
according to recent Nielson ratings.
Dr.
Price is the author of some 50 books
on faith, healing, prosperity, and the
Holy Spirit. "How Faith Works" is
a classic book on the operation of faith
and its life-changing principles. He has
sold over 2.1 million books
since
1976.
His most recent book projects include, "Race,
Religion & Racism, Volume
1 : A Bold Encounter with Racism in The
Church," "Race, Religion & Racism,
Volume 2 : Perverting the Gospel to Subjugate
a People" and "Race,
Religion & Racism: Volume 3 : Jesus,
Christianity and Islam." < back to
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