Members of Quinn Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church of Ironton will host a 3 p.m. service Sunday to celebrate AME Founder’s Day and Black History Month.

The service will feature music, praise dance, and poetry talent from the Tri-State. In addition to the AME congregation in Ironton, the Tri-State area consists of AME churches in Ashland and Greenup, Ky., Huntington, W.Va., and Portsmouth, all of which will all be represented at the event.

The history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church is rich in tradition and heritage, and is a significant part of Black History in this country.

The AME church was originally formed by Bishop Richard Allen in 1787, in Philadelphia, Penn., and was the first major religious denomination in the western world that originated because of sociological rather than theological differences.

It was the first African-American denomination organized and incorporated in the United States; however, AME churches always have been and always will be open to people of all races and nationalities.

The service will be an official introduction for the church’s new pastor, the Rev. James H. Stowe, Jr. He is a graduate of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Lexington, Ky., and later earned a bachelors of arts degree in business administration from Kentucky State University.

Stowe then pursued a career in corporate America and in the political arena.

However, in 2003 he answered the call that the Lord had on his life to enter the ministry. He attends Payne Theological Seminary, where he is in his final year of his master’s in divinity degree. He was licensed to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2004, while attending St. Paul A.M.E. in Columbus where he was the youth minister and co-founder of the young adult ministry. Stowe’s father is also an AME minister in Kentucky.

The public is invited to attend the Sunday afternoon service.