Local Church

Special services First Baptist Church of Danville - 8:15 a.m., 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, First Baptist Church will celebrate its 165th anniversary with three separate services. Pastor Darrick Allen Briscoe will conduct the morning services, and guest preacher Dr. Joseph L. Owens, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church of Lexington, will conduct the afternoon service. Everyone is welcome. St. Peter AME Church - 4 p.m. Sunday, the church will have an old-fashioned, come-as-you-are, camp meeting.

It was the first Sunday in August 1846 when First Baptist Church of Danville, (then called Green Street Baptist), held its first organized and independent service. “And that was no easy feat,” said Bobby Trumbo, former Danville school teacher of 35 years and unofficial historian of First Baptist. “As a 'colored' church, as they said back then, there were some folks that were apprehensive about a large group of free black people gathering on our own. " Kentucky, after all, was a slave state until the end of the Civil War, with more than 10,000 free blacks walking amongst a population of  more than 200,000 enslaved persons.

The members of one local church gave their new pastor and his wife a good pounding this week. A “pounding” is an old-fashioned tradition celebrated in some churches to welcome a new pastoral family into the community. Traditionally, a pounding would provide a pastor and his family with staple items to stock the parsonage. On Sunday afternoon, Trinity United Methodist Church, 306 N. Main St., gave the Rev. Matt Seel and his wife Abby a pounding following a potluck lunch Sunday afternoon.

For the congregation at Trinity Church of God, collecting money for Relay for Life has been a hair-razing experience. Several months ago, church elder Mike Wilson, who had a thick white thatch, got up in church and offered to have himself sheared if the members raised $2,000 for the walk tonight to benefit the American Cancer Society. The congregation raised the money by having things “like cornhole tosses, bake sales and yard sales,” said Michelle Holloman, a member of the church.

June 15, 1986 Pat Wengert and Gail Kohnle from the Grace Lutheran Church will attend The Lutheran Women’s Missionary League Indiana District of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod 11th biennial convention Wednesday at the Executive Inn, Evansville, Ind. Also attending will be Pam Charos and Karen Downing, Mount Sterling, members of the local church. Miss Camille Yvette Caudill and Chris Lynn Thomas will exchange marriage vows at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Southland Christian Church, Lexington.