Garywood Assembly of God

Garywood Assembly of God is a large Pentecostal church at 2730 Allison-Bonnett Memorial Drive in Hueytown.

Founding

Garywood Assembly was founded in 1947 during a tent crusade by evangelist Dorine Justice. The church began with just 14 members. Justice served as pastor for the first year. Between 1950 and 1979 there were eleven different pastors, during which time church growth was slow. In 1979, Pastor John A. Loper, then an official with the Alabama District of the Assemblies of God, accepted the pastorate. During this time the church's radio outreach, Garywood Alive, was aired. This soon evolved into a television outreach as well.

Annual events

The church is known throughout metro Birmingham for its annual Easter Drama, which began in 1977 and produced each year since, except for 2005. The church also hosted an annual Garywood Camp meeting, which for many years was billed as the largest "spiritual gathering" in Alabama, featuring well-known figures Vestal Goodman, Marvin Gorman, Jesse Duplantis and John Kilpatrick (of Brownsville Revival fame).

Attendance

Under Loper's pastorate, attendance at Garywood grew from 250 to nearly 1,500 people, making it one of the largest churches in Alabama as well as one of the fastest growing churches in the nation. In 1981, construction began on a new 1,600 seat sanctuary. It opened Easter Sunday 1982 to a capacity crowd.

Property acquisitions

In 2003 Garywood's congregation overwhelmingly voted to buy property on I-459 near McCalla for relocation. Original plans for the site included a 2,500-seat state-of-the-art auditorium, large facilities for youth, children's ministry and greatly expanded capacity for Garywood Christian School. However, the church sold the property to Colonial Properties Trust in 2006, which is now the site of the Colonial Promenade Tannehill. The church currently plans to use the proceeds of the sale to build a new facility approximately one mile away from the first site, near the interchange of I-459 and I-20/59.

References

• Garywood Assembly of God. (March 19, 2007). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed March 21, 2007.

External links

• Official Website of Garywood Assembly of God