Abundant Life Assembly of God, 1502 Fisher Ave., Warsaw, will celebrate its 50th anniversary Sunday.
First services for the church were Easter Sunday in 1975. Founding pastor Rev. Glen Mitchell said the church met for a couple months at the Holiday Inn before moving services to The Wagon Wheel.
Titus Funeral Home owned the corner where the church is now with the intention of building a funeral home there, but the property was put up for sale, Mitchell said. At that point in time, Abundant Life was under the jurisdiction of the Indiana District Assemblies of God, who were starting a church planning program, and Abundant Life was the first church in that program.
In October 1975, “we bought the land.” The mortgage was co-signed by the district. The district took on the mortgage payments until Mitchell was brought on full-time.
At the time, the district owned a mobile chapel, which was sitting down in Whiteland, he said. The mobile chapel was not needed in Whiteland because the church there had built a building, so in December 1975, the district moved the chapel to Warsaw. Mitchell said the chapel looked like a double wide, but the floors opened up and the roof came down, “so it came down the road in one piece.”

    Pictured is the mobile chapel Abundant Life Assembly of God used on its current property until the building was built. Photo Provided
  

In winter 1981, the building project started, Mitchell said. Lead Pastor Anthony Green said at that time the building was just the sanctuary and Fellowship Hall. Mitchell said in about 1986, the section with classroom, pastor’s office and nursery was built.
When Abundant Life started in 1975, Mitchell said he started with one family. When the church was at the Holiday Inn, there was a “smorgasbord” of people that came to services. When the church moved over to The Wagon Wheel, Abundant Life had people come that were actually searching for a home church.
Mitchell said he did go knocking on doors in town to tell people about the church. He said it didn’t bring in people to the church, but it was the effort he felt God wanted from him and then God “sent people He wanted to be of Abundant Life Assembly.”
Mitchell retired in 1999 and there were about 130-150 parishioners at that time. Green said after Mitchell left, the church hit a little bit of a rough patch. By the time Green took over, “there were about 20 people here. And so by the grace of God, it was built back up to around 50 or 60 on a regular Sunday.”
Green said the church’s goal isn’t to increase the church’s finances, but to increase the kingdom of God.
On Sunday, Green said several of the past pastors and district representatives will be at services.
“Other than that, we’re just taking a little walk down memory lane,” Green said. “Pastor Mitchell started the church in 1975 on Easter, so he’s preaching that day. It’s just a remembering, a looking back and celebrating what God has brought us through and to.”
Green said the church has been celebrating their anniversary all month long. Last week, previous Pastor Ray Hansen came back to preach.
“We are celebrating the 50 years, but we still want the service to be about Jesus because it is Easter, so the focus is still on God, we’re just taking a little bit of time to say, ‘Hey, thank you, God, for everything that’s happened over the past 50 years,’” Green said, noting he’s “very grateful for all the previous ministers who have poured in their heart and soul and their lives into the ministries here because that gives me as the current pastor, a foundation to continue to do ministry from. They did a lot of the hard work and I’m just laying work for the next generation to come along and continue the ministry after me. We want the church to grow. We want the church to continue to flourish and thrive.”
Mitchell said the 50th year is the jubilee year. In Leviticus Chapter 25, scripture says God established the year of the jubilee, “which is kind of a sabbatical year for the Israelites. They didn’t plant, they didn’t harvest, so it was rest for man. It was rest for the land, the animals. And there were slaves, they were released. They got their freedom back. If families were separated, families were put back together. So that was the year of jubilee.”
Since it is Easter Sunday, “Jesus is our jubilee,” Mitchell said. “He released us from our sins, forgiven us of our sins. And jubilee is also a year of forgiveness.”