Jentezen Franklin’s megachurch to hold first service in new Atlanta site
Free Chapel Midtown will hold its first service Sunday at the former site of the Savannah College of Art and Design’s SCADShow.
Senior Pastor Jentezen Franklin will preach from Free Chapel church in Gainesville and it will be livestreamed to the Midtown site.
This is the megachurch’s first permanent Midtown location at 173 14th St N.E.
In 2018, it began services at Center Stage then moved to the Woodruff Arts Center during the following year.
“We’re excited to be in that community,” Franklin said in an interview. “This is a dream come true. I don’t know if the building will be able to hold all that God can do in that community. We expect to see lives changed for the better through the Gospel.”
And it may not be the last church planting in Georgia.
Franklin said the ministry is eyeing another metro Atlanta location, but he said it was too early to discuss. He just said it would likely be on the “outskirts, a little bit.”
Free Chapel, which is nondenominational, has campuses in Midtown, Cumming, Gwinnett, Braselton, and Gainesville in Georgia; one in South Carolina and one in California. The Orange County church is affiliated with the Church of God. Free Chapel has roughly 25,000 members in all locations combined.
The megachurch’s decision to buy the property caused some consternation among neighbors because of Franklin’s connection to former President Donald Trump.
The prominent pastor served as an unofficial evangelical adviser to Trump.