Georgia-Cumberland Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
The Georgia-Cumberland Conference of Seventh-day Adventists is the organizational body of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for Georgia, East Tennessee, and Cherokee County, North Carolina in the United States. Its headquarters are located in Calhoun, Georgia.
| Formation | 1932 |
|---|---|
| Type | Religious/Non-Profit |
| Headquarters | Calhoun, Georgia |
Region served | Georgia, Tennessee, and Cherokee County, North Carolina |
President | Gary Rustad |
Parent organization | Southern Union, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists |
| Website | www.gccsda.com |
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The conference is a subdivision of the Southern Union, which in turn is part of the North American Division, one of the 13 worldwide organizational "Divisions" of the church.
The Conference oversees more than 150 churches and 50 elementary and high schools. There are also four Adventist hospitals, nine Adventist Community Services Centers, and one Adventist university, Southern Adventist University.[1]
History
Early Years
Seventh-day Adventist publications penetrated the territory of the present Georgia-Cumberland Conference in 1872, four years before the first Seventh-day Adventist workers arrived, resulting in the conversion of J. A. Killingworth and his family of Griffin, Georgia. Rufus Eugene Seagraves learned about the Seventh-day Adventist health principles from a Dr. Irwin in 1875 and was baptized three years later by C.O. Taylor, the first denominational worker in Georgia. Taylor came to the South Georgia town of Quitman in the autumn of 1876. Knowing of no other Seventh-day Adventists in the state, he engaged in personal evangelism. The next spring he learned of the Killingworths through the Review and Herald.
In 1876, the same year that Taylor arrived in Georgia, a church was organized in the present Georgia-Cumberland Conference territory in Tennessee as a result of the work of Orlando Soule, who came to visit a Seventh-day Adventist friend named Wetherby, who had moved from Michigan to Sparta, Tennessee, on the edge of the Cumberland Plateau. Asked to lecture there, Soule remained to preach in several places, was ordained by D. M. Canright in May, and built up the first church in the conference area, the Mount Gilead church, not many miles from Sparta. He organized the church in the autumn, with Patrick D. Moyers, his first convert, as elder. Moyers, one of the earliest Southern-born Seventh-day Adventist preachers, was a strong pillar at Mount Gilead and later at Graysville, Tennessee.[2]
Merger
The Cumberland Conference was combined with the Georgia Conference in March 1932, forming the Georgia-Cumberland Conference, with H.E. Lysinger as president, and with headquarters at 547 Cherokee Ave., SE., Atlanta, Georgia. The 24 churches in the Cumberland Conference and the 23 in Georgia made 47 churches, with a total membership of 2, 490. In 1938, there were 49 white churches with 2,781 members and 9 African-American churches with 772 members. When on January 1, 1946, the African-American churches of Tennessee were taken into the South Central Conference, and the African-American churches of Georgia and the Carolinas and all of Florida, except that portion lying west of the Apalochicola River, were taken into the South Atlantic Conference, there were 61 churches left to the Georgia-Cumberland Conference, with 3,000 members and 18 ordained ministers.[3]
Presidents
[6] Georgia Conference Presidents
- C.A. Hall, 1901-1903
- R.M. Kilgore, 1903-1906
- George W. Wells, 1906-1910
- C.B. Stephenson, 1910-1912
- L.T. Crisler, 1912-1913
- N.V. Willess, 1913-1916
- B.J. White, 1916-1917
- B.W. Brown, 1917-1918
- W.F. McMahen, 1918-1919
- B.W. Spire, 1919-1922
- A.S. Booth, 1922-1926
- B.F. Kneeland, 1926-1932
Cumberland Conference Presidents
- Smith Sharp, 1900-1903
- O.C. Godsmark, 1903-1905
- W.W. Williams, 1905-1907
- J.F. Pogue, 1907-1910
- P.G. Stanley, 1910-1913
- W.H. Branson, 1913-1915
- R.W. Parmele, 1916-1917
- J.L. Shuler, 1917-1919
- A.W. Coon, 1919-1921
- B.F. Kneeland 1921-1926
- R.I. Keate, 1926-1932
Georgia-Cumberland Conference Presidents
- H.E. Lysinger, 1932, 1937
- R.I. Keate, 1937-1943
- I.M. Evans, 1943-1949
- G.R. Nash, 1949-1965
- A.C. Fearing, 1956-1958
- N.C. Wilson, 1958-1960
- A.C. McKee, 1960-1963
- LeRoy J. Leiske, 1963-1964
- Desmond Cummings, 1964-1980
- Gary Patterson, 1980-1985
- Bill Geary, 1985-1994
- Gordon Bietz, 1994-1997
- Larry Evans, 1997-2002
- Dave Cress, 2002-2004
- Ed Wright, 2005–2019
- Gary Rustad, 2019-Present [7]
References
- Georgia-Cumberland Conference: About Us
- History of the Georgia-Cumberland Conference
- History of the Georgia-Cumberland Conference
- Church leaders die in plane crash
- Small plane crashes in Tennessee, killing five of six aboard
- Georgia-Cumberland Conference Presidents
- Gary Rusted appointed president of Georgia-Cumberland Conference