KMBC has a great godly heritage. Many spiritual giants have helped shape the college and form it into what it is today. Had Miss Lela G. McConnell not heeded God’s call to come to the mountains of eastern Kentucky in the 1920’s, KMBC likely would not be here preparing men and women for ministry.
Miss McConnell attended Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. While there, she joined the Mountain Missionary Society, a group founded by Claude Mingledorff in 1915. The society was made up of students who had a desire to take the gospel to the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. It was her earnest prayer that God would send missionaries to those mountain communities. God soon began to make it clear that He was calling her for that ministry. Upon graduating from Asbury in 1924, college president Henry Clay Morrison commissioned her as “the General of the Kentucky Mountains.”
Miss McConnell preached the gospel and the message holiness to the people of Breathitt County. It was not an easy calling, but it was what God had called her to do. Although satan fought her bitterly, souls were soon being saved and sanctified.