Church and pastor both celebrate 30th anniversary in Mt. Vernon

When many young pastors are getting ready to lead a church for the first time, they will seek out an existing church in need of a preacher. Tony Wyatt, however, felt he was led to build his church from the ground up.
Pastor Tony Wyatt came to Mt. Vernon with his wife, Linda, and their then-four children (a fifth child was born to them later) from Cassville in 1989 to start the Apostolic New Testament Church.
“We came here as North American missionaries for the United Pentecostal Church, because there was no United Pentecostal Church in Mt. Vernon,” Wyatt said.
For Wyatt, answering the call to come to Mt. Vernon was a true leap of faith. At the time, he didn’t even know where Mt. Vernon was.
“We were at one of our organization’s conferences,” he said, “and I was just praying, and I (heard) the Lord, not in an audible voice, but it felt like the Lord spoke inside of me to go to Mt. Vernon, Mo. The first thing I did was, I had to find out where Mt. Vernon, Mo. was. I found it on the map, and I just knew that God was wanting us to come to this community to start this church here and that’s what brought us here. We just felt the calling of God to come to this particular community.”