J. Delano Ellis

J. Delano Ellis, II, an African American prelate, is a leader in African-American Pentecostalism in the United States and is the founding President/Chairman and Archbishop Metropolitan of the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops.

He is the senior pastor of the Pentecostal Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio, a ministry to which he was called on May 14, 1989. His wife, Dr Sabrina Ellis, currently serves as co-pastor with him.

Bishop Ellis is also the founder and former presiding prelate of the United Pentecostal Churches of Christ and presiding prelate of Pentecostal Churches of Christ.

Bishop Ellis is widely known as a progenitor of unity among African-American Pentecostals. He has worked to introduce order, identity, and an appreciation of Christian history among Pentecostal churches. As a promoter of ecumenism, Bishop Ellis has put the Pentecostal movement, as it is manifested among African Americans, in conversation with the broader Christian community around the world.

J. Delano Ellis began as a clergyman in the Church of God in Christ before being asked to lead a local congregation outside of that denomination.

In the introduction to his landmark treatise, The Bishopric: A Handbook on Creating Episcopacy in the African-American Pentecostal Church, Bishop J. Delano Ellis writes:

When this College was ordered by the Lord and it was made clear that Episcopal-styled training was to become the curriculum by which we would be governed, the Co-Founders trusted the Lord to give us a person who would mentor us and bring honor to the Name of Jesus Christ and particular Glory to His Church in our times. It became needful for us to adopt a Code of Dress and habit that would set us apart from congregationalism. We found the need to re-think the theology of the Pentecostal fathers and forge a witness that included the entire Baptized Body of Jesus Christ everywhere.

Our message had to be clear and unadulterated by the modernists. Our theology had to be cleansed of the separatist preaching which, for more than a century, kept Christians estranged from each other.

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