Arnold Farmers Market

ADecrease font size.AReset font size.AIncrease font size. Arnold History News & Photos Reflect Our City’s Past! Family & Community Distinguish First Baptist Church of Arnold One of the City’s Newer Churches is the Biggest Exterior view First Baptist Church of Arnold If Arnold is a buckle on the Bible Belt, the First Baptist Church of Arnold is proud to help the congregation shine with the grace of God. “Founded in 1951, First Baptist Church is older than the City of Arnold, which incorporated in 1972,” says Senior Pastor Kenny Qualls. He assumed that position of responsibility in 2006 after two years as its associate pastor. He had previously served as a top executive, including as President, of the Missouri Baptist Convention, and in distinctive pastoral roles at other Southern Baptist churches. “By God’s grace and our commitment to God’s word we have been on a 71-year journey to share God’s love with our neighbors and the nation all for the glory of God,” he asserts. “We want to share God’s life-changing love with people across the street and around the world.” Senior Pastor Kenny Qualls. First Baptist Church of Arnold In his resume Pastor Qualls praises the Lord for helping to grow First Baptist into one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the Midwest. The resume notes that Pastor Kenny, as he prefers to be called, was saved in 1981, the year he became zookeeper at Springfield, Missouri’s Dickerson Park Zoo. Over the years Pastor Kenny attended Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State); Drury College (now Drury University); Southwest Baptist University; Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; and gained a diploma in Biblical Studies from the Seminary Extension of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000. The Baptist movement in America dates to 1638 when a Baptist church was founded in what is today Providence, Rhode Island, by English-born Puritan minister Roger Williams, who had been expelled by Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A well-educated man, it was said that Williams could speak Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Dutch, and French. A firm believer in religious freedom and separation of church and state, he despised the Church of England as corrupt. The Baptist church Roger Williams founded, also known as the Old Meeting House, is on the National Register of Historic Places. First Baptist Church of Arnold claims 7,530 members. That’s about one-third of the city’s population. Yet as many as six additional, much smaller, Baptist Churches operate within the city limits; they are: America’s very first Baptist church is called The Old Meeting House. Asked how First Baptist Church of Arnold compares to those others Pastor Kenny thinks about it for a few seconds then says, “We have love for all our sister churches. We are not better; we are not worse. We are just different. One of the ways we are different is that there’s only a handful of Baptist churches in Iowa and this part of the country that have more than 2,000 people (attending) on a Sunday morning. That amount of people doesn’t make us better it just makes us different. And it sometimes gives us a different platform to try to help the community. I am grateful for all the churches that we have in Arnold and respect what they have.” Today, approximately 11 percent of all Americans identify as Baptists. That makes Baptists the third-largest religious group in the United States, after Roman Catholics and non-denominational Protestants, according to Wikipedia. The Southern Baptist Convention to which First Baptist of Arnold belongs is the world’s largest Baptist denomination; it is the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States, according to Pew Research Center. The term “Southern” in the name refers to the fact that it originated in Augusta, Georgia in 1845, supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. To celebrate its 50thanniversary in 2001 First Baptist Church of Arnold produced a commemorative boo