WHEELING — The Bethlehem Apostolic Church in North Wheeling kicks off its 91st birthday celebration Sunday with three consecutive weekends of special church services.

This Sunday is slated to be a family affair, according to Suff. Bishop Darrell Cummings. His “little brother,” District Elder Kyo Cummings, is slated to speak at 6 p.m. Sunday at a pre-anniversary service.

Kyo Cummings is the pastor at the Ebenezer Assembly of God in Cleveland – the same church where their father Suff. Bishop Claude Cummings was pastor for many years.

While it has been at three different locations in the area, Bethlehem Apostolic Church does not owe its name to Bethlehem, West Virginia. It actually owes its names to a church in Detroit.

The church was founded and organized in Wheeling in 1932 by Elder Fred Lacey of Philadelphia. Lacey was under the direction of Bishop S.N. Hancock, who was pastor at Bethlehem Apostolic Temple in Detroit.

The church was first located in South Wheeling near the site of the current post office, according to Cummings. It then moved up on the hill above Wheeling to the former Grandview Manor in a former Army barracks, he continued.

The church has been at its current location in North Wheeling since 1972, and Elder Joseph Allen from Dayton was pastor at that time.

Cummings noted that Allen had arrived in Denver for a church convention, and was traveling from the airport to his hotel when he died of a heart attack. The thin air in the city was thought to be a contributing factor, he noted.

Following Allen, the church’s pianist and assistant pastor, Evelyn Moyer, took over the church. In 1979, she received a letter from Cummings, then a 19-year-old pastor of a young church in Ashtabula, Ohio. He had sent the letters to 100 churches in the region, asking each to assist his church by sending them $7 each month. In return, he would send them a cassette of one of his sermons.

Moyer was one of only three pastors to send the $7 each month, and she continued to do so for the next 10 years, according to Cummings.

“It was very encouraging that she would send us the money every month just to encourage us,” he said.

What Cummings didn’t know was that not only was Moyer listening to his tapes, she was also playing them for her congregation during mid-week services.

When she wanted to retire in 1990, she asked the bishop of the diocese to assign Cummings to her church in Wheeling. They had already been listening to his sermons, and were comfortable with him.

Cummings is now the longest serving pastor at the church, having served there 33 years. Over time he has established and become noted for the food and Christmas gift distributions he does each year.

“The church is named for the Bethlehm of Judea, and not the Bethlehem of West Virginia,” he continued. “The name Bethlehem means ‘house of bread.’

“Our church is known for feeding people, and we have become our name by feeding people.”

The church’s 91st anniversary also will be celebrated during a service at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 24, with Suff. Bishop Jeff Akers of the I Am Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

Later that day at 5 p.m., Dist. Elder Scott Logan of Christ Temple Apostolic Faith in Dayton will speak at the church.

At the 10:30 a.m. service on Oct. 1, Bishop Marcus McIntosh of the Agappe International Church in Delaware, Ohio will be featured speaker. And District Elder Levi Downs of the Bethlehem Temple Church in Duquesne, Pennsylvania will speak during the 5 p.m. service that day.