HISTORY OF KING'S TEMPLE WORD & WORSHIP CENTER

 

King's Temple Word & Worship Center began on February 13, 1981 under the name of the Shiloh Evangelical Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  Prayer meetings and services were first held at 170 North Main Street, in Paterson, New Jersey.  As a result many souls were converted, baptized and won to Christ.  Our membership began to grow and the work of the Lord prospered under the leadership of our founder and Senior Pastor, Dr. Gary Kirkwood.  Through him, a new vision was born.

 

God led our ministry to the city of Plainfield, New Jersey in December of 1981.  We rented space at the Seventh Day Baptist Church of Plainfield, on the corner of Central Avenue and West Fifth Street.  We continued in the work of the Lord, rejoicing and praising God.  We continued to hold services at the Seventh Day Baptist Church for about two years.

 

God blessed us to purchase our next home at 121-23 New Street in March of 1984. Once in our new house of worship, after careful planning, we opened the People That Love Center which helped feed and clothe the homeless and needy.  We also established the Believer's Day Care Center and the Believer's Restaurant located at our church annex at 117 New Street (purchased in 1993).  We also opened the Believer's Word Of Faith Bible School for adult ministry training. Our food service ministry continued with the purchase of a fast food eatery located at 412 West Front Street (also purchased in 1993).

 

God led us further to provide managerial services to a once-closed theater in the city for a period of two years.  We promoted many gospel programs featuring such artists as Shirley Caesar, Albertina Walker, The Mighty Clouds Of Joy, Dorothy Norwood, the legendary Rev. James Cleveland and many others.  We also sponsored 50 Days Of Prayer for the city of Plainfield, which brought together an array of local church groups and pastors to work for a common cause.

 

God has continued to bless us spiritually as well as numerically.  Dr. Kirkwood determined that our 121 New Street location, no longer had the functionality that we needed for worship.  So God opened the door for us to locate larger facilities for worship.  In the midst of the search, God guided Dr. Kirkwood to purchase a local Central Jersey radio station.  In January of 2003, Dr. Gary Kirkwood and the King's Temple Family launched WKMB 1070AM as Harvest Radio.  Harvest Radio provides Christian broadcasting via the local bandwidth and through the world wide web.  The focus of our ministry has been and continues to be toward "The Development Of The Total Man".  God has given us a much greater direction in the establishment of the Harvest Fellowship Covenant Partnership Ministry.  This fellowship consists of many pastors and ministries who utilize our airways to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  With the ability to broadcast over the world wide web, we have been blessed to create the Harvest Global Network where the message of Jesus Christ is taken around the world.

 

As our media ministry developed, Dr. Kirkwood and the King's Temple Family returned their focus to find better worship facilities.  Dr. Kirkwood's efforts led us to move into the former St. Stanislaus Kostka Roman Catholic Church of Plainfield at 1020 West 7th Street, in January of 2007.  Since then, God has blessed us to take ministry to yet another level.  During our time of transition to our new home, God led Dr. Kirkwood to establish our church as A FAMILY CARING, CHRIST-CENTERED, COMPASSIONATE, MULTI-CULTURAL CHURCH.  God spoke to our pastor that we would be a congregation of many nations and the establishment of our multi-cultural ministry formed.

 

Since this new direction, mandated by God, our congregation and ministry began to see growth like never before and the unity of people from different countries began to manifest itself. Our bi-lingual ministry celebrates victory like never before.