By AMBER DILLEY
GLASGOW — United Faith Independent Church is getting more space.
Pastor Brother Allen Harper said the church is growing every Sunday.
“Right now we’re located at 129 Park Avenue and that’s a storefront building,” Harper said. “We’re growing; we started with 50 people and now we’re up to about 100 every Sunday. It seems like it’s growing every Sunday. There is a need for the space. With the place now, it’s packed, elbow to elbow, shoulder to shoulder. Now it will be 250-300 capacity.”
The new church, on U.S. 31E, in the Goodnight community, will have 6,000 square feet of land, with 3,600 square feet of building space and 2,400 square feet for the fellowship hall.
“We’re gaining quite a bit of square-footage,” Harper said. “It’s 2,000 to 2,500 more square feet.”
Harper said the location was a place everyone in the church was drawn to.
“The amazing part about it, we talked to a gentleman named Bobby Bailey and he said he would sell (the land) to us,” Harper said. “When he passed away, nothing was finalized. We went to pay our respects at the funeral home and his daughter told us that he had told her about us wanting to buy the site and that we could still purchase the land. After that, we had some problems with the banks. We had only been a church for 10 months.”
Harper said being a young church meant that most banks didn’t want to help them with a loan.
“We went to every bank trying to get the money to pay the land off,” Harper said. “No bank would loan us the money, so we began to pray and put our faith in God. With Bobby’s daughter, we made a contract that within four months we would purchase (the land.) In four months, we managed to raise $60,000.”
Harper said the church held its first service on the site June 20 and he hopes the church will be open and ready for service by early November.
