Historic Job’s Temple to Hold Sunday Service Tomorrow

Worship and Song Service

with Pastor Bryan Groves

9 a.m.

June 19, 2022

Job’s Temple, a Gilmer County landmark, is a log cabin church, one of few remaining in West Virginia.  At one time. perhaps when Gilmer was part of Virginia, there were log churches scattered through each county.  Most have been lost through neglect or replaced with frame and brick buildings.  There was one such church located at Pisgah, only three miles away, but it was destroyed by fire over a hundred years ago.  It is from the  Pisgah Church that Job’s Temple originated.  The congregation split in the mid-1850’s over the same wrenching and divisive issues which were breaking America apart at that time.  A number of people from he Pisgah Church, some of whom had children buried in its cemetery, preferred the Southern side of the national debate.  They decided to build their own house of worship.

Construction of the new church was begun shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War.  When the great conflict began building work appears to have been suspended as some members of the congregation entered military service.  As far as it is known, little if anything was done towards finishing the project until after the war ended in 1865.  Meanwhile West Virginia had become the 35th state.  Hence Job’s Temple, begun under the jurisdiction of one state, was finished under that of another.

The land on which the log church was built was donated by Jonathan and Margaret Bennett.   The original site consisted of “one acre and nine poles, more or less, ”  according to the deed recorded in the Gilmer County Courthouse.  Apparently construction was begun well before the church body owned the land, because the site was not deeded by the Bennetts until 1872.  In 1913, and again in recent years, more land was donated so that the church grounds now comprise some four acres.

Job’s Temple was organized as a Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at DeKalb, Gilmer County, State of West Virginia.  The original trustees were Levi Snider, N. W. Stalnaker, William H. Stalnaker, James A. Pickens, Edward T. Gainer, Salathiel G. Stalnaker, and Christian Kuhl.  Of that number, three were later buried in the church cemetery.

Job’s Temple stands near Job’s Run, a minor tributary of the  Little Kanawha River.  The fact that the church was named for the stream, and not the other way around, is documented in the writings of the Reverend E. B, Jones, pastor from 1889 to 1893.  The Reverend Jones wrote that his church took its name ‘from the a small run on which the Temple is situated, the run being named in honor of Job Westfall, who was the first settler on the run.”  Another account identifies Westfall as an itinerant preacher and says that he was active in founding Job’s Temple.

More information about the historic site can be found at jobstemple.org