Where We've Been
We began our journey as a small group of friends who wanted more than anything to serve Jesus Christ and share his love with others.
For a few weeks we met in living rooms for Bible studies and prayer, but it didn't take long for our group to outgrow homes and begin looking for a new place that could accommodate our growing church family. The answer came in the form of a real estate office. We continued to experience the love of the Lord and the joy of Christian fellowship.
The non-traditional location appealed to our sense of mission that we be "a church apart", and offer something different but genuine to welcome individuals who weren't going to a church and may have longed for a real experience with a living God and his people.
It became apparent that this new location wouldn't be able to contain the growing ministries of Golden Gate Assembly of God, and so we immediately began saving money to build a new facility dedicated to our purpose and mission of reaching out to a hurting world. The Lord opened the door for us to purchase our property just down the street from our storefront location, and this location has faithfully served us since.
First a chickee hut was erected where we would eat and fellowship while the chapel was being built. It was completed in 1980, and a few years later the annex building was erected. Our current sanctuary was built in 1999.
But our history is not about building structures. It is about building a family of people all on the same journey - the journey of life following Jesus Christ.
Our Assemblies of God Roots
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.
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