Danville sisters keep father’s memory, mission alive

By Bernard Baker

Published: June 14, 2008

There was no contract drawn up or a public announcement that Janet Pruitt and Joan Reynolds would continue the ministry their father started.

But they did after Harold Reynolds died Jan. 11. Reynolds had involved them in various aspects of the ministry that it only seemed natural to honor his legacy, Pruitt said.

H.T. Reynolds felt the call to go into ministry. He held many jobs before he accepted that call. He was an electrician, plumber, builder and held more occupations than you can keep up with.

The ministry started in a rented schoolhouse on Walton Avenue in June 1962. He felt God wanted him to open the church’s doors to anyone who wanted to worship, his daughters said.

It was an informal worship atmosphere at Full Gospel Revival Church. There was a mix of more traditional hymns and new songs that people were learning.

“Anyone who wanted to worship was welcome to attend,” Pruitt said.

Reynolds was able to get a tract of land off Mount Cross Road and built the church just a few miles outside of Danville. He built most of the church by himself, but family members insisted someone else do the taxing masonry work.

In a short time after that, Reynolds felt God calling him to build on his ministry by publishing tracts. Reynolds bought a hand-operated stencil machine that produced the literature and operated it out of the church’s basement.

The tracts went to 200 people in the Danville-Pittsylvania County area. Today, that list has grown to nearly 7,000 people around the world. The daughters say their father made an investment in high-tech equipment to help them out and produce more material.

A benefactor gave Reynolds an offering to start a radio program in the mid-1960s, Pruitt said. “The Christian Life” was broadcast on WDVA and continues today. Reynolds would preach and his daughters would sing and play the piano. Stations in Blackstone and Reidsville, N.C., were added that reached prisoners in various jails.

The prison ministry Reynolds started was something they had planned on doing.

This part of the ministry started innocently enough when a local lady contacted him asking if Reynolds would send some Christian literature and a Bible to her nephew.

Reynolds did. The incarcerated man shared the letter and literature with fellow inmates and they wrote back requesting more.

In September 1977, the sermons that Reynolds delivered appeared in a magazine called “The Christian Life.” All of this material was produced on Mount Cross Road in Danville. Reynolds would dictate a message to his daughter when he felt God had put the words on his heart.

“Millions have gone out all over the world,” Pruitt said.

The Reynolds family was happy to get a literature request about once a month. Those requests grew over time where the mail for the ministry was coming in each day. Today, they go by the post office branch on Teal Court because they don’t think the mail carrier should haul that much at one time.

Pruitt recalled a trip a Danville minister took to Tanzania. The minister was visiting with a family when he saw a display of religious literature on a table. He picked it up and saw that it was made in his hometown.

“Basically, it’s an international ministry operated out of the basement of a small country church,” Pruitt said.

Their father believed that God wanted him to stay in the rural lands of Pittsylvania County to get the gospel out. He had no visions of anything larger to be a success. He felt he was doing what God wanted him to do.

Reynolds wasn’t the kind of minister who worried what people thought about him. There were people who discounted the visions he believed God gave him, but they paid attention when they game true.

He talked about how people would fill stadiums to learn more about God. People scoffed at him and thought he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“He had such a Christ-like spirit. It was real. It was 24/7,” Reynolds said.

The compassion they described was reserved not only for family or church members. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Reynolds to fix a stranger’s flat tire or help a neighbor repair a roof.