Pearl Spurlock

Nestled in the rolling hills of Athens County, Ohio, is LifePoint Pentecostal Church. LifePoint is an apostolic Pentecostal church. The fundamental doctrine of the Apostolic Pentecostal Church is this: “We believe in the Bible standard of full salvation, which is repentance, baptism in water by immersion in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the initial sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance.”

Pentecostalism is the largest religious division to have originated in the United Statesaccording to the West Virginia Humanities Council. Pentecostal churches are present in 385 of 399 counties in Appalachia. The religion was founded in 1901 through the teachings of a Kansas preacher named Charles Fox Parham. Parham brought the concept of glossolalia, known as “speaking in tongues.” Speaking in tongues, often associated with Pentecostalism, is the believed spiritual gift of speaking a language one does not know as a method of prayer or praise for God.

Snake handling is also often linked with the Pentecostal faith, though the practice has largely died out and is illegal in every state aside from West Virginia, where a few churches still handle snakes. The ritual is rooted mostly in a passage of the Bible, Mark 16:17-18, which states, "These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

LifePoint, and most Pentecostal churches, do not practice snake handling, but the stereotype associated with Pentecostals remains. Pastor Barry Blankenship, head pastor, joked about this stereotype in a sermon he delivered, titled “Stop Playing with Dead Snakes,” which addressed the idea of letting go of old vices.

Pastor Blankenship has been the head pastor at LifePoint since 2016. He lives in Athens with his wife, Ashley, and their four boys, three of whom are homeschooled. The couple met at Buckeye Lake church camp and married young. Barry proposed on a mission trip the couple attended in Ireland.

Barry Blankenship leads his congregation with the vigor and emotion for which Pentecostals are known. Congregation members are encouraged to be vocally responsive during services. It is common for church-goers to shout out in agreement, clap, or cheer as Blankenship or other pastors speak. The congregation, which reached an attendance of over 200 people on Easter of 2025, often dances, runs, or stomps, as Blankenship preaches. As he speaks, he paces across the stage and around the room, stomps his feet, and raises his voice to deliver his message, often slipping into song or speaking tongues. He carries a towel on his shoulder to wipe his face from sweat, tears, or both.

Blankenship believes that presence of Ohio University in Athens is an opportunity for Christian revival. “The whole world comes to us,” he told the congregation during one sermon.

Pentecostalism is an evangelical faith, meaning it prioritizes spreading the word of the Bible and “saving souls,” by convincing people to turn to Christianity and dedicate their lives to God, firstly through baptism. LifePoint keeps a baptistry warm at all times in the church sanctuary, and Blankenship encourages people to get baptized if they haven’t been.

“I was born into this. This is all I’ve ever known,” Blankenship says when asked about his upbringing. He was less than a week old when he attended his first Pentecostal church service in Centerville, Ohio. The family moved to Arizona when he was 2 and returned to Ohio when he was around 11 years old.

At 21, Blankenship moved to Louisiana to work for Lighthouse Ranch for Boys, a faith-based nonprofit that provides programming and mentorship for boys 12-17 who have been affected by abuse or otherwise difficult home lives.

Blankenship became the head pastor at LifePoint in October of 2016. He was recently elected as presbyter for all the Pentecostal churches of Southeast Ohio.

Blankenship recognizes that he has an obligation to guide his congregation through social upheaval and political polarization inside and outside of the church. During 2020, he recalls dealing with a variety of strong viewpoints within the church on political and social issues throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, such as masking and vaccinations, as well as with the confrontation of racial tension in America that was prompted by George Floyd’s death and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests. Blankenship says he took this time to preach against racism during services.

“I know right now, for a fact, we’ve got Republicans that come here. We’ve got Democrats that come here. And I love the fact that we can come to church together. And I know where they stand. We know where others stand. But everybody still worships together.”

LifePoint’s mission focuses on teaching biblical values rather than emulating a political message. Blankenship says it’s common for people to ask him which political candidates he supports, but he doesn’t feel that it’s his place to tell them. He feels that neither Republicans nor Democrats in the present day align fully with scripture. “Political parties never stay the same,” says Blankenship. “They’re always changing, evolving… The one thing that never changes is the Bible.”

Barry Blankenship’s wife, Ashley Blankenship, grew up in Lancaster, Ohio, about an hour from the family’s current home in Athens. Blankenship, like her husband, grew up in the Pentecostal denomination.

She homeschools three of the couple’s four sons, Prestley, 15, Huntley, 10, and Hudson, 8. Their oldest son, Peyton, attends a local program for children with disabilities in order to meet his needs.

In her own childhood, Blankenship jokes that she “has done school just about every way possible.” She began at an interdenominational Christian school, which temporarily closed its doors after she finished sixth grade, prompting her to attend public school through ninth grade. In 10th grade, she did a homeschool program with a local woman in Lancaster who was training to be an astronaut with NASA. In 11th and 12th grade, Blankenship took courses at Ohio University’s branch campus in Lancaster through an early version of College Credit Plus called Post-Secondary. She took a break for her marriage to Barry, eventually finishing her bachelor’s degree online at Liberty University.

With her children, Blankenship fell into homeschooling during the pandemic and says she noticed positive changes in the boys’ abilities and overall happiness. The boys follow a Christianity-based curriculum with workbooks and videos for their respective grade levels.

“We start every morning with devotional time,” Blankenship says. After the boys eat breakfast and get ready for the day, they sit a the dining room table to work independently with the help of their mom. “It’s not rigorous curriculum, but it’s more like a devotional style,” she says. “They read Scripture and kind of fill in the blank answers, and then we pray together, and that kind of starts the day.”

The boys follow a typical school curriculum, with math, science, and English, as well as some options for creative projects such as baking or painting. Blankenship makes sure her children understand certain concepts, even with the caveat that they don’t align with the Bible’s teachings. “We obviously believe in creation,” she says, for example, “but we study the theories of evolution, and you know, different theories and approaches. So we’re educated on those things.”

For the most part, she says, though God and Christianity are the backdrop of the boys’ education, the majority of their learning is more straightforward and comparable to a typical public school education. Perhaps the most impactful aspect of homeschool is the flexibility that a homeschool education allows for. As a pastor’s family, the Blankenships often travel to conferences throughout the week, which wouldn’t be possible with the boys being on a typical school schedule. Prestley, who is 15, may travel with his father on a mission trip to Brazil in the fall.

LifePoint Church and its leaders are now looking to the future and hoping to break ground on a brand-new building nearby. LifePoint purchased the land in 2019, but construction was halted by Covid.

We’ve had a lot of work to do just to even prep the site,” says Ashley Blankenship. Several factors have delayed progress over the years, including digging drainage ditches and providing core sample from soil engineers.

The goal is to make a church with not only a larger sanctuary, but bigger office spaces and classrooms that can bear an ever-growing congregation. “We’re just busting at the seams,” Blankenship says. 

The following is a short video capturing services  at LifePoint. The worship style depicted in the film is typical of apostolic Pentecostals.