March 30, 2006

David Hill, the chairman of the First Baptist Church Deacon Board, talked during the church’s mortgage burning service Sunday, as interim Pastor Vurn Mullins looked on.

By Diane Chiddister

Members and friends of the First Baptist Church celebrated a milestone in the church’s history, marking the final mortgage payment on the church’s nine-year-old building with two services last weekend.

The celebration began with a special Saturday evening service and culminated with a mortgage-burning ceremony at the conclusion of the church’s Sunday worship service.

The mortgage-burning ceremony honored not only current members of the First Baptist congregation, but all those who came before and helped to make the dream of building a church a reality, said former First Baptist pastor James Nooks, who delivered the sermon on Sunday.

“This is the culmination of a lot of folks’ work that goes back over 100 years,” Nooks said, referring to the group of former slaves who founded the church in 1863. The founders included several members of the Conway Colony, a group of slaves in Virginia who escaped captivity and fled to Yellow Springs.

The church’s founders endured considerable sacrifice to purchase in 1876 their first building, a small red-brick structure on Xenia Avenue, Isabel Newman said during Saturday’s service. The group “was forced to sell food from their tables in addition to the sale of their livestock, hogs, chickens and corn in order to raise money to make payments,” according to a written history presented by Newman. The history also states that many of the former slaves learned to read and write in the First Baptist Sunday School.

“They had a vision which was a light that must have been a spotlight in God’s favor that led them to buy the little red-brick church,” Newman said.

About 50 people attended Saturday’s service, and more than 100 attended the Sunday morning service. The Saturday service included presentations by special guests, including Rev. Dr. John Freeman of Central Chapel AME Church, Pastor Charles W. Hill of Yellow Springs United Methodist Church and Pastor William Randolph, a Yellow Springs native who is now pastor of the First Baptist Church in Jeffersonville.

“We stand on the shoulders of people who struggled and gave so we could be here,” Randolph said.

Special guests on Sunday included Village Manager Eric Swansen, attorney Noel McKeown and loan officer Tony Page.

Page said the service was the first mortgage-burning service he’d ever attended even though he has handled loans to about 300 churches, because “most people don’t pay off their mortgage.”

He said he was especially impressed with the First Baptist congregation.

“There was a lot of support here, a lot of giving people,” he said.

According to the church history, First Baptist began experiencing growing pains in its small Xenia Avenue location in the 1950s, and established a fund to finance expansions, including a basement. In 1982 the church purchased land at the corner of King and Dayton Streets “with the goal to build a new church building.”

Construction of the new church began in January 1997 under the leadership of former Pastor Nooks, who now lives in Canada, and the church’s deacon board, chaired by the late Harvey Roberts. Roberts proved to be a guiding force behind the new building, which was completed in August 1997, Naomi McKee said at the Sunday service.

“I’ve never seen a man work harder than he worked for this church to be built,” McKee said.

Following the example of their founders, First Baptist members have continued to give of themselves for their church, the church history states. When financial reserves ran low, members contributed floor tile for the kitchen, furniture and kitchen appliances; some donated pews, and others donated stained glass windows.

The church has contributed to village life in a variety of ways, according to the history, from sponsoring the Calendar Tea each spring, which is now in its 47th year, to establishing an after-school tutoring program for students at Yellow Springs High School and the McKinney School.

Music plays an important part in the church’s life, and the Saturday and Sunday services included spirited piano and organ playing as well as singing from the church’s Male Choir and Mixed Choir, along with performances by soloists Cathy Hill, Karen Durgan and Robin Jordan-Henry.

While speakers congratulated First Baptist members on their accomplishment, several also emphasized that the church’s work is far from done.

The essence of a church is not its building but its spirit, Nooks said in his Sunday sermon, recalling that the First Baptist founders worshipped in fields before they had their own building.

“I’m not looking for a material church but for a church that is real to people because they know God is there whether there’s a building or not,” he said.

At the end of Sunday’s service, the church’s mortgage was burned by Nooks, interim Pastor Vurn Mullins, the Deacon Board chairman, David Hill, and the Trustee Board chairwoman, Betty Hairston.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com