 Even before he graduated, Taylor became the pastor of Bethany Baptist Church, in Elyria, Ohio, serving there from 1938 to 1941.He then became pastor of the Beulah Baptist Church in New Orleans until 1943, and of his father's former congregation, Mount Zion Baptist Church, in Baton Rouge, until 1947.He then became head of the Concord Baptist Church of Christ, the second largest Baptist congregation in America, with 8,000 members, located in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.