Our Blessed History
Our church was started in 1875, in a small community on the west bank of the Oostanaula River, known at that time as DeSoto - named for the famed explorer supposed to have camped on that spot. On the corner of Avenue A and West 10th Street, then known as Mill Street and West Fourth Street, people of DeSoto began meeting in the unfinished home of John Hunt, who had invited the Rev. James A. Clement from Forestville (now North Rome) to hold services. At the first meeting six people were present. One month later the congregation had doubled.
At the beginning of 1876, DeSoto Methodist Church was placed on a regular circuit and the Rev. F.F. Reynolds was appointed to be its first pastor. His salary was a whopping $104 for the first year.
He was succeeded by the Rev. Sam P. Jones, a man at that time suffering from alcoholism. With the help and prayers of many friends, Rev. Jones was able to overcome his drinking problem and went on to become an evangelist of national renown.
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1606
Under his leadership, the church began to expand and through his efforts, in 1877, a small frame building was erected on the present church site.
A Rich Heritage
The great flood of 1886 did considerable damage to the church’s building foundation and, because membership had outgrown the small building, construction of a new building was started. The church’s pastor was the Rev. C. C. Cary.
- Walter Reece, Martha King’s grandfather, designed and built that church, which is still our sanctuary, in the form of a cross. At that time, what is now the middle section served as the sanctuary, and the side sections were partitioned off and used as Sunday School and meeting rooms.
In 1888 that building was dedicated by Bishop Warren A. Candler and the church was renamed Second Methodist Church. Three stained glass windows in the front of the building were donated by a group of young girls known as the “Pansies.” Those windows are the only feature of the building that have not been replaced in any renovation program.
Trinity Methodist Church
During the pastorate of the Rev. George Stanley Fraser, 1914-1916, the church was given the name Trinity. Membership grew so rapidly that ten years later a new education building was erected at a cost of $20,000. A central heating system was included in the renovation. A second education wing costing $23,000 was completed in 1949, allowing the sanctuary to be enlarged into its current cross shape.
Sanctuary renovations occurred in 1952, 1961 - when air conditioning was installed -1964, 1977 and 1998. The Memorial Entrance from the parking lot to the sanctuary was completed in 1980.
A new educational building was completed n 1971. This building included Mobley Hall, named for the Rev. Lavern Mobley who was pastor at Trinity at the time of construction.
By 1982 an influx of young adults made necessary additional church school facilities. To provide these, an addition was built which became an office suite. The upstairs offices were made into classrooms. Along with this addition of space, the existing education building was restored. The room which had been our old fellowship hall was converted into a parlor and the old church kitchen became the parlor kitchen.
Between 1976 and 1982 the entire facilities at Trinity were restored at a cost of approximately $220,000.
In 1992, the vacant Church of Christ building, across Avenue A, was purchased. It was at first called “The Annex,” but was later named the “Martha King Building.” The King Building served as a youth and activity center.
In 1997, the Trinity Building, a former bank building on Fifth Avenue, was purchased. It was used for adult Sunday School classrooms, and additional office space for our associate minister.
In 1999, the number of children in our nursery prompted a major renovation that included the Crusaders Class generously giving up their large and beautiful downstairs classroom, to make a new and much larger nursery. When they moved to an upstairs classroom, an elevator was installed, near Mobley Hall. And all three nurseries were beautifully redone.
In 2001, the Parlor and Parlor kitchen were renovated in memory of Burnita Burton.
Trinity’s Influence on the World
Trinity Methodist Church has twice been the starting point for a national spiritual movement. The first was an all-night prayer meeting with Sam Jones and the second was in 1963, with the beginning of the 100 Days of Love movement.
According to Believersweb.org: “Samuel Porter Jones 1847-1906 . . . (was) reared at Cartersville, Georgia. He studied to be a lawyer, but drinking and gambling soon brought him to the brink of ruin. At his father's deathbed, he fell on his knees and repented of his sin and trusted Christ. He preached his first sermon one week later and was licensed to preach in the Methodist Church after only three months. He served several pastorates but gained fame as a lecturer and evangelist. Soon he was conducting campaigns in some of America's largest cities. Wherever he preached, liquor stores closed, theaters and jails emptied, and cursing was reduced to whispers. . .. Well over 500,000 people were converted to Christ because of his ministry.”
Most of Rev. Jones’ biographies report that he gave up drinking before becoming a Methodist pastor. But, according to both Martha King and Jeanne Holt, when he was assigned as our pastor, he was still struggling with alcoholism. The Methodist Church informed our congregation that their new pastor had a problem with drink. And the congregation agreed to take him anyway, and help him with this struggle. A group of men, including J. Walter Reece, Martha King’s grandfather, stayed up all night praying with him and he gave up drink.
And in 1963. . .
Rev. Charles C. Shaw invited Dr. Tom Carruth to Trinity to preach a revival in September 1963. Twenty years later, what started in that revival at Trinity was still affecting the world, and still being printed. Dr. Carruth reported in his preface to the 20th anniversary edition of 100 Days of Love:
THE PREFACE to the 20th Anniversary edition
"Sweetest Story Ever Told"
by Dr. Thomas Carruth
On a Sunday afternoon, September 23, 1963, I went out to a park in Rome, Georgia, to meditate and pray. There God gave the Dream, "100 Days of Love." Beginning that night at midnight there were exactly 100 days left in 1963.
We took this dream back to the revival where I was preaching at Trinity Methodist Church in Rome, Georgia. On the front of the pulpit were the words "God is Love."
We knew this movement originated with God. The pastor, Rev. Charles Shaw, was most cooperative and so were his people.
We developed a full page in the newspaper with Bible verse, prayer, and meditation. These pages were first printed in The Atlanta Journal and The Constitution.
Following the tragic death of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, the local churches put on “100 Days of Love" programs in their area. Daily papers carried a Bible verse and meditation on love.
Following the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis, four newspapers carried the full-page witness "100 Days of Love."
In Washington, D.C., while the battle over segregation was raging, a full page of 100 Days of Love was carried in the daily paper. Full pages were carried in Jackson, Mississippi, and other cities.
This most creative wave of love in daily life has been projected by hundreds of churches across America. For these churches, groups, families and individuals, we have provided "50 Days of Love," "Forty Days of Love," and "1,000 Days of Love."
The story is not finished. Each year we have received calls for thousands of programs on love. We have kept the prices low and the material is not copyrighted. Love and prayer go together. PTL has projected this Love Movement to millions across America.
God is love! God is in this Movement!
Let's go with God!
-- Dr. Thomas A. Carruth, September 1983
In addition to his 100 Days of Love, Forty Days of Love, Fifty Days of Love and 1000 Days of Love, Dr. Carruth also wrote 30 Days of Uniting Prayer for the President of the United States. And on January 19, 1977, Congress read his Litany for Praying Together for the President of the Unted States of America.
And in September, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and Trinity United Methodist Church played a role, that reached far beyond the walls of our church.
In our church office you can find a notebook of emails that tell the story of the connection between Trinity United Methodist Church in Rome, Georgia and the First UMC in Gautier, Mississippi. Stories about that first week will send chills down your spine, so clearly did God work in those first hours. The introduction to that notebooks reads:
The youth from Trinity United Methodist Church, Rome, Georgia made friends with the youth group from First United Methodist Church, Gautier, Mississippi, on a youth retreat at Lake Junaluska in 1999. And for 6 years, Trinity's youth group traveled to Gautier over Labor Day weekend, to sing for their church. Each time Trinity came, the good folks of Gautier knocked themselves out to welcome us, feed us VERY well, and make sure we had a good time.
We were scheduled to sing there in September 2005, but Hurricane Katrina intervened.
The first weekend after Katrina, Trinity folks loaded up two box trucks filled with supplies and headed to Gautier to see what we could do to help. And over the next year, almost every weekend, people from Trinity drove to Gautier and took materials, gutted houses, cleaned up, rebuilt houses and did whatever Marcia Stanley put on those yellow sheets of paper for us to do each weekend. That seemed the least we could do for our friends in Gautier.
And, in December 2005, Trinity UMC raised $14,370 for Gautier to have Christmas. When Gus and Steve Davis delivered the check to Gautier, Marcia Stanley said: "Your church was the first church here, on the first weekend after Katrina. You've had a work team here almost every weekend since. And now you've brought us Christmas."
A collection the emails that were sent out to Trinity’s congregation, with stories and news about the relief efforts is in the historical archives. It’s a record of the many ways God worked in and through two churches, bound together by:
- God’s prevenient grace,
- a mutual desire to be the hands and feet of Jesus in a broken world,
- and a love of good food (jambalaya and gumbo in particular.)
This history is based on a history of Trinity, written by Robert Candler, and the introduction to 100 Days of Love, by Dr. Tom Carruth, and church emails from 2005-6.