Church Planters Become Answer to Prayer, Find Family in AG
When AG newcomers Scott A. and JoAnna D. Trowbridge told Peterson—then the network’s pastoral care director—they might be interested in planting a church in the town 100 miles west of Phoenix, Peterson relayed the news to then-Superintendent Steve Harris.
“Tears came to his eyes,” says Peterson, 63. “He was just thrilled. He had driven through that region and saw all the clusters of lights and was struck by the need for a Pentecostal presence there. He had started praying about it five years ago.”
Forged was one of 10 AG churches launched in Arizona in 2024, boosting the overall total to approximately 230 congregations.
Forged started small, with about 50 attending its first service last November. But the founding pastors expect their youth-oriented congregation to grow during the 2025-26 school year, which began July 29.
The youth group preceded the first church service by three months; over the past year, Scott says the teens have developed an appetite for worship and prayer.
“A year ago, they were reluctant,” says Scott, 56, who pastored in another denomination before joining the AG in 2021. “There was no confidence in their personal walk with the Lord. Now they’re all prayer warriors. God has called us to lead people, young and old, into a deeper relationship with Jesus.”
Longtime residents of Missouri, the Trowbridges moved to Arizona four years ago so JoAnna could be closer to her aging parents. They settled on land her parents owned about 20 miles west of Salome, a town of about 1,100.
The Trowbridges also changed church affiliations, settling at Bouse Community Assembly of God, serving the youth there. The town is about 30 miles northwest of Salome.
During a visit to Bouse by the former superintendent, Scott found himself intrigued by Harris’s comment about the lack of Pentecostal churches in the valley west of Phoenix.
“That stuck with me for a year and a half,” Scott recalls. “We were getting comfortable at Bouse and I didn’t want to get too comfortable.”
They decided to start a church in Salome, home to one of only two high schools in LaPaz County. It took JoAnna a while to agree to the move. She didn’t want the teens in Bouse to feel abandoned.
“A lot of youth around here don’t have a father,” she says. “We’re raising a teenager (17) whose parent is addicted to drugs. We had her siblings prior to her; they’ve graduated. They’re the second family that’s lived with us.
“When you take kids home to drop them off and see that they’re living in trailers with cardboard covering their doorways, it changes you,” Joanna says. “So it was difficult to think about planting in a different location, even though the kids go to school in Salome.”
To get started, the Trowbridges received help from the Church Multiplication Network (CMN). That included attending a large CMN meeting in Phoenix and participating in several smaller gatherings of pastors preparing to plant churches.
The Arizona network supplied some audio gear and an eight-by-10-foot trailer for hauling equipment to the Indian Hills Community Center. In addition to an 11 a.m. worship service there, Forged’s youth group meets at 5 p.m., with dinner served prior to praise and a sermon or teaching.
Getting youth to Sunday services means JoAnna has to provide transportation for out-of-towners. Driving an eight-passenger van, she estimates traveling 200 miles a weekend to shuttle teens.
In addition to long distances, the couple have had to adjust to a number of part-time members: “snowbirds” who spend several months a year in Salome before heading for cooler climates during the summer.
The other is the area’s largely non-Christian population and resistance to the Pentecostal experience.
Some of that falls in the face of miracles: at a revival last fall, they prayed for a man experiencing heart trouble before he went to the hospital. The next day, a doctor called his wife into the surgery suite. Pointing to a monitor, he said, “There’s nothing wrong with his heart.”
“That brought him to his knees,” Scott says. “He cried, knowing God had healed him. They had done scans and everything, which showed he had a blockage.”
The planting of Forged has been a miraculous answer to prayer in many ways, one of which, according to JoAnna, is finding spiritual family within the Assemblies.
“It’s been transformative for us,” she says. “We had never had the sense of community with an entire state of people and other states we’re joined with. Having people support us, pray for us, and check in on us is wonderful…Now we’ve found ourselves among family. It’s been overwhelming. It’s beautiful.”