Auburn Community Church (ACC) has served as a home away from home for both Auburn students and residents for many years. What began as a small gathering has grown into a vibrant community, with hundreds of people coming together each week.
ACC is a place where people connect with one another and with God, often through the sermons of Lead Pastor Miles Fidell. The vision of ACC traces back to Fidell’s calling to ministry. At only 13 years old, Fidell knew he wanted to be a preacher. According to Fidell, it wasn’t something he was actively searching for or expecting to become. Rather, his passion for Jesus and preaching grew together, taking root simultaneously.
“The first time I spoke in front of a crowd, I was probably 14, and I gave a short message to a group of students my age,” Fidell said. “It was the moment you realize this is what God created me to do and it felt natural. It felt conversational, and like I could connect with people.”
Before Fidell founded ACC, he was a youth pastor in Metro Atlanta, where he lived for most of his life. Fidell anticipated working in Atlanta for the foreseeable future until he connected with a group of students from Auburn.
Soon after, Fidell began to envision the type of church that he would want to pastor one day. His ultimate goal was to be a leader of a church, but he never thought it would happen in his mid-twenties.
“It was so scary and strange, but when you read the Bible, that happens all the time,” Fidell said. “This is when God does amazing things.”
When his connection to Auburn and passion for Christ converged, the outline for ACC became clear and his dream began to come true.
“We didn’t start with a network, a denomination,” Fidell said. “We were literally a group of random people in an Ace Hardware store trying to figure out why we were even there talking about starting a church.”
With only a few committed families and college students, it wasn’t easy to clarify what the church was or to gather members. Fidell remained grounded, knowing that no matter what, God was there.
“When they would get together to read His word, it was hard to put it together,” Fidell said. “But once they were actually in a room, singing songs and preaching sermons, the local church gathered and started to flourish because the spirit of God was moving.”
When Fidell first imagined ACC, he knew it needed to be a multi-generational church, but he didn’t expect membership of the church to expand so rapidly in and outside of the Auburn area.
One of the defining moments of the church was the first time ACC offered a baptism service.
“That sort of brought everything into focus,” Fidell said. “Hearing people’s stories who have been transformed by Jesus through this local church, and them getting baptized in front of their local church, it tells everybody what we are all about.”
Fidell said that a leading principle of the Church is the Great Commission, or Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
Miles Fidell worshipping at the ACC's Easter Sunday service inside of the Neville Arena on April 20, 2025.
For Fidell, he leads ACC by leading himself to God first. He explained that if something breaks down in his personal life or if he experiences a disconnection from God, it becomes more difficult to lead people.
“I’ve learned 10 years in that if I get full of the Holy Spirit and in my spirit dwelling together, that union that Jesus talks about in John 15, ‘I’m the vine, you’re the branches’, that union brings life to you and the whole church around you,” Fidell said.
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