A Life of Order & Ardor

Bishop J. Delano Ellis II was a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, educated in the Philadelphia Public School System. He held a Bachelor of Arts degree from Howard University, a Master’s in Religious Education from Nazarene Theological Seminary, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Ecclesiology and Episcopacy from Stafford University in London, England. He was also the recipient of four honorary degrees from universities in the United States and the United Kingdom.

He received his ordination at the hands of the late Bishop Ozro Thurston Jones, Sr. in 1963, and was elevated to the Episcopacy in 1970 at the hands of the late Bishop Brumfield Johnson in Boston, Massachusetts.

Having founded the Joint College of Pentecostal Bishops, Bishop Ellis was elected unanimously by the Joint College in session in 2006 in Cleveland, Ohio, with two hundred bishops casting a ballot to endorse the Patent for the Bishop’s Archiepiscopacy.

Bishop Ellis served the Christian faith in ministry for more than sixty-one years — as a student, seminarian, teacher, pastor, professor, and, ultimately, as Patriarch to more than twenty million Pentecostals throughout the world. He served the military community as National Chief of Chaplains for the United States Air Force Auxiliary in the grade of Colonel, until his retirement in 2014.

A gifted writer, he authored several books and pamphlets on Worship, Church Order, Constitutions, and Sermons from the Pentecostal Pulpit — works that continue to instruct pastors and adjutants today.

He served as pastor of the Pentecostal Church of Christ in University Circle, Cleveland, alongside his wife, the Reverend Dr. Sabrina Joyce Ellis, who shared the pastorate with him. He was a devoted father to six, grandfather to twenty-seven, and great-grandfather to three.

Bishop J. Delano Ellis II entered his eternal rest in 2020. His voice, his order, and his love for the Church remain woven into the ministry he built — and into all who continue to serve because of him.