HOW IT ALL
BEGAN....
Pleasant Hill Baptist Church was established in 1879. The building,
constructed of logs, was originally located where Lucian and Catherine
Cook's house is today, on O'Brien Road.
The church was later moved to a piece of land donated by Isaac Coffman
at the intersection of Highway 104 North and O'Brien Road. It was one
room (30 X 40) with a seating capacity of 125. Inside the church you
could find homemade wooden benches made from poplar, a cast iron stove
for heat, and coal oil lamps for light. There was an organ and a pulpit
but no choir. The nursery consisted of a quilt spread on the floor in
the back of the church for the babies to lay on. Services were announced
by the ringing of a bell by Mr. Tom Stratton.
No one knows exactly when Pleasant Hill Baptist Church became Mt. Gilead
Baptist Church.
A NEW CHURCH BUILDING....
Sometime before 1926, Mt. Gilead School burned. Classes were held in the
church while the new school was being built in front of it.
In 1926 it was decided to build a new church where the old school was
once located. Lonnie and Maggie Coffman donated the land to build the
church on for as long as it was a church; however, if the church
dissolved, the land would return to the Coffman family. A deed was
finally issued in 1956.
The new building looked much like the old one, but it was lighted by gas
lamps until it was wired for electricity in 1946.
ADDITIONS TO THE CHURCH BUILDING....
1954 - Four new Sunday School rooms were added to the back of the
church, and a new pulpit was installed.
1967 - The Young Adult Sunday School room was added.
1968 - Air conditioning was installed.
1974 - The church installed a pump, added bathrooms, enlarged the
auditorium, built new Sunday School rooms, installed new carpet, bought
new pews, built the baptistry, and bricked the church.
1975 - Parking lot blacktopped.
1977 - The Fellowship Hall was added and dedicated to Mr. Ed McCaslin
who served the church faithfully for 37 years.
A NEW BUILDING ADDED....
Mt. Gilead's old building was no longer large enough to hold its church
members. The classrooms in the basement were small and in poor
condition; two classes had met in a trailor since 1989, and the Men's
Class, since its beginning, had met on the church bus. It was time for
more space.
Paul Gaston began digging the basement for the new building on May 9,
1994.
A groundbreaking ceremony for the building was held on June 19, 1994.
The first two weeks in July the Volunteer Christian Builders came to
Cedar Grove to help construct the new church.
December 1994 - Youth presented a portion of their Christmas play in the
partially constructed new building.
March 5, 1995 - First service in the new building.
April 2, 1995 - Dedication of the building.
April 27, 2001 - Made the final payment on the church ($3,879.55).
August 5, 2001 - Note burning ceremony.
The cost of the church building was over $275,000.00.
VALUE OF CHURCH PROPERTY....
1897 - $400.00
1926 - $1,500.00 (new church)
1975 - $60,000.00 (after major remodeling)
1979 - $85,000.00 (completely debt free)
2000 - $500,000.00 (church) $125,000 (parsonage)
EARLY SERVICES....
1932 - The first recorded offering was $1.37 when the church was meeting
on Saturday night and Sunday morning, once a month.
1951 - 1952 - The church began having services twice a month.
1963 - Church services began being held every Sunday.
The minutes before 1928 were lost in a fire when Mr. Bud Pierce's home
burned. Jim Pierce, Mr. Bud's son, was the clerk. Information before
that time is the collected memories of older residents of the community
as well as material from The Beech River Associational Minutes.
Church history compiled by Brenda Coffman, Alice King, and Bobbie Pierce
as printed in A History of Mt. Gilead Baptist Church: 100th Anniversary
Celebration.
