Church History
EXCERPTS FROM THE HISTORY OF
ST.
JOHN BAPTIST CHURCH
In the year 1889, a family by the name of Willis Cay started
the first African American mission in the city of Painesville,
Ohio. They started with prayer service and later
turned it into a mission with five or six African American members of different
faiths and called it the Union Chapel, which was located at 294 West Washington Street. This continued until 1895, when the Reverend
G.W. Randolph, along with Mr. and Mrs. Jonas Green, Mr. and Mrs. William
Thompson and Mr. and Mrs. Hancock started the Free Will Baptist Church.
They were assisted by the Free Will Baptist Association and
purchased a school building in Madison,
Ohio. This building was moved to 225 West Washington Street.
On October
8, 1916, a meeting was held by the small congregation to change the
name from the Free Will Baptist Church
to the St. John Missionary Baptist
Church. During this transaction, the congregation
paid off its indebtedness to the Free Will Association and the church became
known as the St. John
Missionary Baptist
Church.
During the late nineteen forties the Painesville City School
system acquired our property (the church site) for school expansion. In this process, we were forced to vacate the
West Washington Street
building and rented the old Lutheran
Church building located
on East Erie Street. We worshipped in the East
Erie building from 1950 to spring of 1952.
We purchased the land for our present site and began the excavation in July of 1951. By December the basement of the building was
completed. With this portion of our
church completed and all bills paid, we had our first worship service in our
new basement the last Sunday in December 1951.
On July
31, 1957, actual work was begun on the auditorium by the contractor
By March 15, 1958 our building was
complete and ready for worship service. In August of 1964 the final payment was
made on monies borrowed to complete the second phase.
April 10. 1967 the church purchased the property at 393 West Jackson Street.
In 1995 the church purchased the property at 353 West Jackson Street.
In 2002 the Duplex next door to the church at 355 West Jackson Street
was purchased by the church.
St. John
Baptist Church
has had a number of pastors. On May 22, 2006 Reverend
Jeffrey J. Jemison was called to pastor the church. Under his leadership and vision he has worked
to improve our Sunday School and weekly Bible Study as well as our outreach
Ministry.
In the past two years
we have had some progress in reaching out to our members and the community. We
have had two successful Health Fairs, two 3 on 3 basketball tournaments
for the community youth, sponsored a community service to
celebrate Martin Luther King Day and a community Memorial Day service.
Our latest venue is the establishment of a Family Life
Education Center. The mission being to measurably improve the
life of families in our community.
During the past years that St. John Baptist
Church has been in
existence many individuals have been led
to Christ and many people have been touched and their lives forever changed by
its teachings.
We praise God from whom all blessings flow for 119
years and for the many saints who passed
this way and were instrumental in helping to bring us to this place in
history. TO GOD BE THE GLORY!!!!!!