February 1, 2007

By Virgil Hervey

A visit to worship at the First Baptist Church on a recent rainy Sunday was an occasion for warm greetings from virtually everyone there and a sense that newcomers are truly welcome. While there was no choir present for this service, the congregation sang to the excellent accompaniment of Quinn Ames on organ and piano and solos were performed beautifully by Cathy Hill.

In what Pastor Vurn Mullins described as an “interactive service,” at various times during worship, parishioners were free to request scripture and hymns. Notably, the “Introduction to Scripture” on this Sunday was Matthew 6:5–13, described by Mullins as “everybody needs somebody sometime.”

The richest part of Yellow Springs’ history is perhaps that which is intertwined with the First Baptist Church. Originally known as the Anti-Slavery Baptist Church, it was started in May, 1863, four months after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, by escaped slaves who came to the area as part of the Conway Colony.

Moncure Conway, a Methodist minister and abolitionist son of former Virginia slave owners, had found his family’s runaway slaves in the Washington, D.C. area and escorted them to Yellow Springs, because he apparently perceived it as a welcoming place. That the group founded a church in the same year as their liberation is a testament to a piety that continues to this day.

Isabel Newman, the church historian, is a great, great granddaughter of Dunmore and Eliza Guinn, two of the original founders of the church, which first held meetings in a home at 117 West Center College Street. Many other descendants of that group are still members of the church today.

Newman keeps scrapbooks and photo albums containing virtually every newspaper article and photo published about the church and of every important event, including a step-by-step photo chronicle of the construction of the church’s new building.

Next week will mark the 10th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the new building on the corner of Dayton and King Streets, which the congregation moved into in 1997 after more than 100 years at their old red brick building on Xenia Avenue. Miraculously, last March, less than 10 years later, they paid off the mortgage and held a mortgage burning ceremony.

In a recent interview before Sunday worship, Rev. Mullins, interim pastor for the past two years, talked about an aging congregation that is in desperate need of an infusion of youth. According to Mullins, most of the congregation, which numbers less than 100, is between the ages of 69 and 80 years. On a good Sunday about 40–50 will attend worship, he said. On the rainy Sunday of the interview, the attendance was about 25.

The church, which runs an Awana program for local children, has no children of its own; the Sunday school and Bible study programs are attended only by adults; and choir is a “sometime thing,” he said.

Mullins feels the future of the church depends on its ability to reach out to the community to grow its numbers. As such, the annual Senior Citizens Lunch in the fall and the Calendar Tea in the spring, which have been popular mainstays on the First Baptist calendar, have taken on a new importance, he said.

Another opportunity for community involvement would be increased usage of the church’s modern facilities for community events, Mullins said. As such, the church is receptive to the hiring out of its fellowship hall for appropriate use. Those wishing to inquire are directed to call facility coordinator, Trustee Sandra Smith at 767-7067.

Cathy Hill heads up the church’s Awana program, an international, Bible-centered youth ministry. Awana provides local churches with weekly clubs, programs and training for students in preschool through high school. Its goal is to enable churches to reach out to children and teenagers in their communities, and their families, with the gospel of Jesus.

According to Board Chairwoman Betty Hairston, who is also the treasurer and serves on the usher board, the church used to have a youth choir, which was augmented by driving in kids from Xenia in the church van. But interest waned, or the kids started attending church in their own town, and the youth choir ceased to exist.

“We need young blood, but I don’t know where it’s coming from,” Hairston said.

“There are so many things to attract young people that take them away from the church on Sunday,” Deacon Board Chairman David Hill said. It’s a problem that other churches have as well, he said, especially the older, established ones.

Hill is working with the other deacons to attack the problem of declining membership from within. In addition to considering programs to draw in new members and attract young people, the deacons are in the early stages of a project to contact those on the member rolls who have not attended worship in awhile, he said in a recent interview.

While no one seems to have an answer to their current dilemma, the congregation has over 140 years of history of pulling together to solve their problems.

When the group of former slaves, worshipping in a private home, felt the need to have a building, the official church history tells us that they raised the money by selling “food off their own tables, in addition to the sale of hogs, chicken, corn and the like.”

As they started outgrowing that building, the congregation started several different building funds over the years, Hairston said. They bought the property next to the old church and razed the house on it in preparation for expansion. When they realized that there still would not be sufficient room, they embarked on the plan that brought them to their new building. When cash for finishing the new building was in short supply, the church history states, members donated items such as floor tile, furniture, kitchen appliances, and other necessities. Some parishioners purchased pews and stained glass windows. Near the end of construction, money was donated to complete the brickwork on the exterior of the fellowship hall.

When they felt it important to pay off the mortgage on the new church, members pulled together again with a highly successful pledge drive, Hairston said. However, as former pastor James Nooks said at the mortgage burning ceremony on March 26, the essence of a church is not its building, but its spirit.

Contact: vhervey@ysnews.com