{"id":567,"date":"2025-06-17T13:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T13:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/?page_id=567"},"modified":"2025-06-17T14:51:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T14:51:50","slug":"central-history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/?page_id=567","title":{"rendered":"Central History"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Central History<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Central Church is a rural Church, located in beautiful Back Creek Valley at Ganotown, West Virginia, in western Berkeley County.\u00a0 Its life began in 1890, when on April 26 of that year, the new white frame church was dedicated under the pastorate of W. H. Clary, with Rev. C. H. Crowell as the presiding elder.\u00a0 The church building was 32 ft. by 38 ft. and cost approximately $450.\u00a0 A cemetery, adjoining the church, was started almost immediately with the first grave place October 29, 1891.\u00a0 The nucleus of membership was United Brethren, who found the distance too great to other U. B. Churches on the Jones Spring Charge, and a few Methodists who broke away from their church<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\u00a0The current\u00a0cemetery is the location of the original white church.<\/p>

Over the years Central grew slowly, and with the perseverance of dedicated Christians and the Holy Spirit, made her contribution to the Kingdom in saving men and women from sin.\u00a0 Young people were converted and began to help build the Kingdom, and by the 1940’s, the church began to show real growth.\u00a0 It was then that the membership\u00a0began to give serious thought to enlarging or rebuilding.\u00a0 Because of lack of space within the cemetery, an agreement was finally reached to build a new edifice on the opposite side of the highway.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\u00a0On February 27, 1955, ground was broken for the new structure to be built in the shape of a cross, 36 ft. by 82 ft. with wings on each side, 16 ft. by 26 ft.\u00a0 Rev. C. A. Moon served as pastor during the planning and construction and finally the dedication on June 24, 1956.\u00a0 The total cost of the new structure, including all furnishings, was $71,000.\u00a0 The membership was 160, with an average attendance of 140 for worship service at that time.<\/p>

Information taken from Pictorial History of the Virginia Conference by David Franklin Glover, McClure Printing Co., Staunton, Virginia 1965.<\/em><\/p>

The church became debt free in 1962 with an appropriate note burning ceremony held on July 22, 1962.\u00a0 Pastor Frank S. Dounty was pastor at this time.<\/p>

In 1968, the Evangelical United Brethern Church merged The United Methodist Church.\u00a0 Under Pastor Dounty’s leadership, Central withdrew from the conference and became an independent church known as Central Chapel.<\/p>

Over the last 26 years, we have had three building projects.\u00a0 On September13, 1992 ground was broken for a multipurpose building\/fellowship hall.\u00a0 It was dedicated on November 9, 1997.\u00a0 On July 23, 2006, a groundbreaking ceremony was held to construct a 600 seat sanctuary adjoining the present church building and fellowship hall.\u00a0 It was dedicated in March of 2008 with Pastor Don Cherry.\u00a0 After much planning and dedicated volunteer work, a new childrens’ and youth worship center was constructed in the basement of the new church.\u00a0 It was dedicated in 2018 with Pastor Keith Walsworth.\u00a0 Because of the dedicated hard work and sacrificial giving of our church body.\u00a0 Central Chapel is debt free.\u00a0 A debt retirement ceremony was held on March 14, 2021 to burn the note of our present building.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Central History Central Church is a rural Church, located in beautiful Back Creek Valley at Ganotown, West Virginia, in western Berkeley County.\u00a0 Its life began in 1890, when on April 26 of that year, the new white frame church was dedicated under the pastorate of W. H. Clary, with Rev. C. H. Crowell as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-567","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":175,"href":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":751,"href":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/567\/revisions\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centralchapel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}