Today, Wednesday, August 19, 2026, the Church of God celebrates its 140th birthday. This day marks the anniversary of a small group of people responding…
Church of God News · Published 20 hours ago
· 3 min read
Today, Wednesday, August 19, 2026, the Church of God celebrates its 140th birthday. This day marks the anniversary of a small group of people responding to the call of a twenty-nine-year-old preacher by the name of R.G. Spurling. In a mill house along Barney Creek in Monroe County, Tennessee, they formed a congregation called “Christian Union,” which is considered to be the birth of the Church of God.
According to Dr. David G. Roebuck, Church of God Historian, Spurling’s action arose from years of hindrance from local Baptist churches. In his experience, they had replaced the New Testament and the Great Commandment to love God and neighbor with creeds and traditions.
With no existing photograph of the Barney Creek Meeting (Mill) House, which was destroyed about 1912, this sketch is a rendition of mills in the area as described to artist James Marshall (click photo to enlarge)Roebuck tells of the activities of that day, August 19, 1886: “Our earliest account reports that the meeting opened with singing and prayer, and then Spurling delivered ‘a strong discourse, emphasizing the need for a reformation.’ We are told, ‘The arguments were full of force and proved effective, and were endorsed by the hearers, so that when the time came for action there was free and earnest response.’”
Following his sermon, Roebuck states that R.G. Spurling, “made a plea to take the New Testament as our only rule of faith and practice and to sit together as the Church of God.” Eight responded to Spurling’s appeal. Then with assistance from his father, Richard Spurling, who was an ordained minister, they set in order a congregation, which they called Christian Union.
“Indebted to the vision of R.G. Spurling, we have expanded from the mountain congregations he planted to a global Christian movement of almost 10 million members in 194 countries and territories of the world,” Roebuck continued. “The Church of God has embraced holiness and Pentecostal experience and theology, while still affirming the New Testament is our ‘only rule of faith and practice.’”
On August 19, 2025, the Church of God dedicated a historic marker at the location of the Barney Creek Meeting House. Attending on the 139th anniversary last year was (l-r) Tony Stewart, David Roebuck, Tom Madden, Mark Williams, James Cossey and Gary Lewis.(click photo to enlarge)R.G. Spurling’s son, G.P. Spurling, later remembered, “After the organization of the church in 1886, father furnished his own lumber and built a small church house. People would fill this church every meeting and pray. And how God would bless and save!”
One hundred and forty years later, we rejoice that God is still blessing and saving through the global ministries of the Church of God.
