Founded in 1892 under the leadership of the Rev. B.O.H. Cochran, this congregation was the oldest church congregation inside Arab’s original town limits of one square mile. Twenty-eight names were listed on the church’s original membership roll. Affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the members built a wooden structure on First Avenue Northwest in 1893, with the Masonic Hall upstairs and church services downstairs. A second frame building was erected some years later, and a larger brick church was built in 1937. The congregation consecrated a new sanctuary at this location in May 2000. Town founder Stephen Tuttle Thompson and Arab’s first schoolteacher, Union Army Captain James Walter Elliott, served in many church offices from its founding until their deaths. During the 1890s, the Rev. M.E. “Bushwhacker” Johnston, one of their contemporaries and a former Confederate leader, pastored the church and was said to have removed his two guns and placed them on the pulpit while he preached.