ASHLAND – Sunday is the most segregated day of the week, said Raymond Cochran Jr., senior pastor of Oasis of Love Church in Mansfield.
“Black people want to worship with Black people,” Cochran said. “White people want to worship with white people.”
Cochran and Ashland resident James Deaton want to change that, and they want this change to start outside the walls of their church — on local television screens. Cochran and Deaton will begin co-hosting a television show called the “Good News Freedom Show” May 1.
The show has been around for a few years, initially in the form of a radio program in Alabama and most recently a television program on the Central Ohio Association of Christian Broadcasters, with Deaton as host.
The shift in May to a co-host format is the result of Cochran and Deaton getting to know one another through Oasis of Love Church and realizing their shared goal: to bring people together.
Cochran, who is Black, and Deaton, who is white, said regardless of the subject matter they discuss on the show, they hope the format alone will encourage fellowship across race, economic status, denominations, and more.
“We’re going to touch on a number of different topics — race is a big one,” Cochran said. “But also, I think it’s important that people just see a Black guy and a white guy talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“It doesn’t always have to be a race thing, per say.”
Cochran and Deaton were both quick to admit there will be times when they will have to agree to disagree on subjects.
“I even know myself, as a pastor, not everybody will always agree with my sermons,” Cochran said. “My former pastor, I didn’t always agree with what he said.
“That is the beauty of humans. We all have our different mindsets. We all have different things we like, different things we don’t like.”
Cochran and Deaton hope to exemplify through their relationship how others can move past differences.
The backstory
Deaton was born and raised in Ashland. Now in his late 50s, he said he found God at 15 years old.
Cochran was born and raised in Mansfield, across the street from Oasis of Love Church. He said he never had the intention of becoming a pastor and described himself as the child who always sat in the back. But, Cochran began volunteering at the church in his youth and said the senior pastor before him encouraged him to continuously take on more leadership roles.
Cochran became assistant pastor, before assuming the senior pastor role in 2019.
Deaton walked into Oasis of Love Church in 2017.
“This is a predominantly Black church — I didn’t care,” Cochran said. “I wanted to go somewhere where nobody knew me. I wanted to go somewhere where I could get my batteries recharged.”
Cochran said he attended services at Oasis of Love Church sporadically thereafter, but began going every Sunday this past year, specifically after he was invited to join the band.
“Now, a white man in a Black band at a Black church got people’s attention,” Deaton said, Cochran adding, “oh, yeah.”
Deaton said the attention was both positive and negative, but he was lucky to have a band leader who took initiative to include him.
“He would just say, ‘that’s my brother,’ ” Deaton said.
Amid Deaton’s progression to consistent attendance at Oasis of Love Church, he started the “Good News Freedom Show,” which first aired on WDJL, a gospel radio station he had pitched the show to in Alabama.
“The reason I started the program was I was so tired of turning on the news and seeing how much people hate each other,” Deaton said.
Deaton had been trying to get Cochran on the show for a while, Cochran said with a laugh. Once the pair went on air together, their ideas kept progressing.
In addition to the pair co-hosting the “Good News Freedom Show” starting in May, Deaton also began his own show on April 12 — “The Way of Faith,” which features his sermons.
When it comes to the “Good News Freedom Show,” the format is conversational. Guests are invited onto the program to share their stories, and the show often begins with musical performances.
Deaton said a particular program that has most impacted him so far was when he invited Jody Cole of Mansfield to talk about addiction. Cole, a recovering addict who had also previously sold drugs in Ohio, spoke about his personal path to God.
Leaving denominations at the door
When people are invited to speak on the “Good News Freedom Show,” they are asked to leave their denominations at the door.
Deaton, Cochran, and Tyler Amburgey, the content producer for the show through COACB, view their programming as outreach.
Amburgey thinks a fault of many churches, and Christian programming, is that they focus too much on appealing to and helping those within the confines of an established church-going community.
The way to move beyond church walls, in Deaton’s view as a pastor, is to move away from a religious mindset.
“You have to change the religious mindset,” Cochran said, “and focus more on relationship.”
By this, Cochran says he means placing focus not on rules and regulations for humankind but on God. That shift of focus invites everyone in, Cochran said, regardless of the boxes society puts people in — religious denomination, race, political view, etc.
“We are spirit, we have a soul, and we encompass a body,” Cochran said. “My spirit is the real me, but people don’t look at it that way. They look at it through color and they say that’s the real me.
“There’s a lot to unpack with that.”
Cochran and Deaton will be unpacking these topics through their show the “Good news Freedom Show,” which airs Saturdays at 6 p.m. and 3 a.m.
