Open Door Fellowship came into existence in December 2004 when a church planter moved to Lowndes County, Georgia to work with a small group who had a desire to see a viable, thriving Free Will Baptist church in the Valdosta-Lowndes County area. The group relinquished control of church property to the Mission Board of the Georgia State Association of Free Will Baptists for the purpose of planting a church in Lowndes County. Free Will Baptists link their beginnings in America to two prominent church planters who started churches in the 1700s. The Rev. Paul Palmer was baptized in an Arminian Baptist congregation who moved from Wales in 1707 to a location on the Delaware River in northern Pennsylvania. Rev. Palmer is recognized as the founder of a church in Chowan, North Carolina organized in 1727. The Rev. Benjamin Randall who is credited with beginning the northern line of Free Will Baptists organized a church on June 30, 1780, in New Durham New Hampshire. Free Will Baptists first surfaced as an organized church in Georgia in the Columbus area. The Rev. John Brodnax established the Providence Church between 1793 and 1795. As early as 1760, evangelists from the Welch church in Pennsylvania had already begun to work in and around Savannah and had made many converts who were Arminian in faith. As churches were organized, they began to unite into local associations. The first Georgia state convention met in November 1892 on the Friday night before the second Sunday at New Shiloh Church in Erwin County, Georgia. The National Association of Free Will Baptists came into existence November 5, 1935 when the Cooperative General Association (the remnants of the Randall movement) and the General Conference (the Palmer movement including the Georgia Convention) joined together in Nashville, Tennessee. Today the National Association of Free Will Baptists comprises more than 2,400 churches in 42 states and 14 foreign countries. ^Revelation 3:8 (NLT) I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can shut. You have little strength, yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me.