The Oldest Brick Church in Corbin

In the first decade of the 20th century, FCC, then called the First Church of Christ, was looking for a home. The college where the church was founded had burned down, and the congregation met in various community buildings. The first attempt at building a church on Ford Street faced several calamities. The brick that was ordered was cheaply made, and crumbled. So those plans were scrapped and a wooden church was built instead. It was struck by lightning twice, the second time burning the building down. The FCC congregation swapped that property for a new lot at the corner of Center Street and Christian Street, and the first brick church in Corbin was built in 1908. While the history of street naming in Corbin is fuzzy, this may be why the block-long street is named Christian Street.

FCC kept growing, and soon the brick church was too small. In 1921, the congregation moved to a tabernacle on the lot at First and Kentucky Streets, where they would build a new, larger church. They rented out the Center Street church to different organizations. For a time, it was a kindergarten. In 1932, the Corbin Church of the Nazarene was founded there, and used that church until they constructed a church at their current location on the other end of Christian Street. The building was the home of the Center Street Church of God for a long time, until that church moved to the Cumberland Gap Parkway somewhere around 1980 and became known as Parkway Ministries.

The 1908 church, the first brick church and the oldest church building still standing in Corbin, is now the First Pentecostal Church at 500 Roy Kidd Avenue.

Learn more about FCC history at our Homecoming Celebration on September 28th!