Doughboy Preacher

As a poor farm boy who was inured to hard labor, Thomas Josiah Kinard I (1889-1971) chopped cotton and harvested timber in the Piney Woods of Polk County. He had already felt the call of God on his life before he received the Pentecostal Baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1915. When war came, he was ready and willing to answer the call of his country as well as his God. He participated in four major offenses France, then marched into Germany to serve in the Army of Occupation.

After the War, Tom Kinard founded several Assemblies of God churches and pastored others, while working full-time at the huge Humble refinery in Baytown, Texas. He wrote:

"I did not mind one bit, this was my country, and my people, and I loved it better than ever before, and tomorrow I will get my Discharge, and go back to my home and loved ones that I have not seen in twenty-three months, with the feeling that I had tried to be a good soldier, for my country in the time of this great struggle against the forces of evil."