{"id":48,"date":"2018-06-12T19:44:25","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T19:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/afrominer.com\/?page_id=48"},"modified":"2019-04-07T09:13:36","modified_gmt":"2019-04-07T14:13:36","slug":"church-history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/?page_id=48","title":{"rendered":"HISTORY OF FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH COURTLAND, ALABAMA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-422 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/History-Pic-300x187.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"558\" height=\"348\" srcset=\"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/History-Pic-300x187.png 300w, https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/History-Pic-230x144.png 230w, https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/History-Pic-350x219.png 350w, https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/History-Pic-480x300.png 480w, https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/History-Pic.png 639w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 558px) 100vw, 558px\" \/><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The church formed sometime during the Reconstruction Period when a group of concerned, born-again Christians felt the need for a place to worship and praise God.&nbsp; These Christians set up a church in a private home on a farm known as the Sykes Place.&nbsp; The privately-owned home was later given the name First Baptist.&nbsp; It is known that the church had three locations.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gabriel B. Johnson was the first pastor on record.&nbsp; Tradition has it that Baker Swoope served as pastor; however, there is no record or documentation of this on file. Therefore, the exact name of the first pastor is not clear.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The known pastors are: Gabriel B. Johnson, William Meese, F.J. Brawley, P.W. Whitfield, W.J. Wilson, T. J. James, J.T. Owens, C.A. Fred, Freeman Harris, Otis Carl Neloms, and the present pastor, Otis Christopher Neloms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The church formed sometime during the Reconstruction Period when a group of concerned, born-again Christians felt the need for a place to worship and praise God.&nbsp; These Christians set up a church in a private home on a farm known as the Sykes Place.&nbsp; The privately-owned home was later given the name First Baptist.&nbsp; It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":424,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/page_single-header-wide.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-48","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":561,"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/48\/revisions\/561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstbaptistcourtland.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}