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History of First Assembly of God Church
Nicholasville, Kentucky
In the summer of 1936, Reverend M. M. Johnson of Lexington, Kentucky began to hold gospel meetings on the Court House lawn every Saturday Night. During the fall of that year Reverend Johnson held a two-week revival in the Court House Building.
There was great interest shown for starting a church, but lack of financing and no available building delayed the project. A group of individuals continued to meet in the home of Carrie Whitaker on Loraine Avenue in Nicholasville.
In the summer of 1941, Reverend C. W. Modder came to Nicholasville from High Bridge to begin a church. A Revival was again held in the Court House Building. Services were held in a house on Chestnut Street while the congregation sought a building they could financially afford. Weekly offerings amounted to barely eight dollars a week. However, they were able to locate a building on Stratton Avenue, which rented for $7.50 per month.
In 1944 the building was purchased for ten dollars per month at five percent interest. The congregation grew through work and sacrifice, and in 1954 they voted to construct a block building to the adjoining lot, where they would have more room to serve the community.
In 1984 the present building was erected on a ten acre tract on Highway 29 with seating capacity for 350 people.
The Assemblies of God grew out of the Pentecostal revival, which began in the early 1900s in places such as Topeka, Kansas, and the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles. During times of prayer and Bible study, believers received spiritual experiences like those described in the book of Acts. Accompanied by “speaking in tongues,” their religious experiences were associated with the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Jewish feast of Pentecost (Acts 2), and participants in the movement were dubbed “Pentecostals.” The Pentecostal movement has grown from a handful of Bible school students in Topeka, Kansas, to an estimated 600 million in the world today.
Many participants who were baptized in the Holy Spirit during revivals and camp meetings in the early 1900s were not welcomed back to their former churches. These believers started many small churches throughout the country and communicated through publications that reported on the revivals. In 1913, a Pentecostal publication, the Word and Witness, called for the independent churches to band together for the purpose of fellowship and doctrinal unity. Other concerns for facilitating missionaries, chartering churches and forming a Bible training school were also on the agenda.
Some 300 Pentecostals met at an opera house in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914, and agreed to form a new fellowship of loosely knit independent churches. These churches were left with the needed autonomy to develop and govern their own local ministries, yet they were united in their message and efforts to reach the world for Christ. So began the General Council of the Assemblies of God.
Assemblies of God churches form a cooperative fellowship. As a result, the organization operates from the grass roots, allowing the local church to choose and develop ministries and facilities best suited for its local needs.
