First Baptist goes to New Orleans!

Three members of First Baptist traveled to New Orleans to help rebuild homes still unrepaired after Hurricane Katrina struck the city in 2005. Our congregants Aleta Bryant, Cindy Watson, and Bob Wilson participated as part of a joint-effort sponsored by the American Baptist Churches/USA, Church World Service, and other denominations. Click here for the article featured in the Bennington Banner.

To learn more, watch this video, featuring all three congregants appear in the opening housepainting footage, and then hear from ABC and CWS staff celebrating the good work).

For more information, visit the special website assembled by ABC National Ministries.

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On Pentecost Sunday (May 31, 2009), First Baptist welcomed the Rev. Dr. A. Roy Medley, General Secretary of the American Baptist Churches/USA, as our morning speaker. Dr. Medley's visit made the front page news of the Bennington Banner.

Click here to read the article.

(Featured L to R: Rev. Dr. A. Roy Medley, ABC/USA General Secretary; the Rev. Jerrod H. Hugenot, coordinating minister, FBC Bennington; and the Rev. Rohn Peterson, acting executive minister, American Baptist Churches of Vermont and New Hampshire)

PASTOR’S NOTES JAN/FEB 2009

As we look ahead to the New Year, I suggest that First Baptist mark 2009 as a festive year. In 2009, Baptists celebrate a major anniversary: the 400^th anniversary of our religious tradition. In the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries, the Protestant Reformation was well underway, however, some religious groups still experienced persecution and harassment even by those who were reformers themselves. A group of English dissidents fled to Amsterdam, a safer place for religious tolerance. By 1609, English pastor John Smyth’s congregation began articulating religious views we now look back upon as the earliest evidence of a Baptist way of believing and practicing the faith.

Throughout 2009, you will receive notes about our Baptist history and heritage through special bulletin inserts, newsletter articles, and congregational events highlighting the spiritual hallmarks of our tradition. Keep an eye out for announcements of special opportunities via the congregation’s various ways of communication: email, website, newsletter, and bulletin. It is my hope that the congregation will see our tradition’s “big 400^th” as an opportunity to celebrate our past, reflect on our present day identity, and deepen our resolve to keep the Baptist tradition alive and well into the future.

This January, U.S. citizens recognize the only civic holiday named in honor of a religious leader: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The legacy of Dr. King takes on a particularly poignant note this year as the King holiday falls on the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African American president. A number of organizations are encouraging communities to celebrate the King holiday and the new opportunities presented by the incoming White House administration by hosting local events or dedicating themselves anew to local grassroots initiatives.

By happy providence, First Baptist and other interfaith-minded religious communities are doing just that with the dedication and grand opening of the Bennington Free Clinic the week before. On Wednesday, January 14, 2009, from 5-7 PM, the community will celebrate the dedication with local and state leaders attending to help cut the ribbon. I encourage every congregant to attend the dedication so you can enjoy the words of thanks and recognition for your part in making this community initiative take flight.

This clinic will offer free healthcare to adults, especially the seventeen percent of Bennington County residents (ages 18 to 64) who are without health insurance. On Thursday, January 15, 2009, the Free Clinic will begin its weekly efforts to help our community members in need, utilizing space at First Baptist every Thursday evening and the skills of various area doctors and other medical professionals and community volunteers. To donate or volunteer, call 802/442-3700 and talk with Sue Andrews.

The Free Clinic is illustrative of First Baptist’s growing understanding that our congregation has a Missional calling. With the tutelage of Dr. Ron Carlson of ABC/USA National Ministries in the past (and the future—we’re hoping to have Ron back in early March 2009), First Baptist is considering what it means to be a Missional church. Dr. Carlson is crossing our nation working with congregations just like First Baptist, and I believe we are hearing his good word about the future of our faith (and the change necessitated to get there!). As part of his introduction to Missional church training, Dr. Carlson writes,

You have been chosen to live during the most accelerated rate of change in human history. Human knowledge is doubling every two years. Think for a moment of all the ways life has changed in the last fifty years: communication, technology, medicine, science, culture, global economy. How has all this change affected the church?

Just fifty years ago, eight out of ten Americans got up on Sunday morning and went to Christian worship. Today fewer than two out of ten Americans attend worship on any average Sunday. What changed? Everything!

As Christians, we believe that the gospel message of Jesus is good news for every era, and we know that the church has adjusted to every new challenge in each new generation. How will the church respond to today's challenge?

Missional church is a growing movement throughout America in response to this time of change. A missional church is "an authentic community of faith that primarily directs its ministry focus outward toward the context in which it is located and to the broader world beyond”.

Along these same lines, Dr. Troy Jackson, a minister and author of a new book on Dr. King, explores how the Missional church movement harmonizes with the thought of Dr. King. He writes, “King would challenge you to think first about the welfare of your community rather than the size of your congregation the next time someone asks how your church is doing”.

While we are not a congregation of considerable size, First Baptist seems to be coming to terms with being “smaller than we used to be” and reframing its identity and ministry around the new day at hand. Whether it is renting space to non-profits, cooperating with other religious communities on common ground efforts, or engaging in creative projects with our own congregants, First Baptist has much to offer. Let the year 2009 serve as a time to remember the past and go forward boldly into the future as the heirs of Smyth and King.

The Rev. Jerrod H. Hugenot, coordinating minister

Pastor’s Notes  June 2008

“Building Ministry”

When you think of First Baptist, rightfully you think of the people first. Each congregant brings something unique and diverse to our church and its ministries, and together we live out the faith as American Baptists, committed to the continuing story of the First Baptist Church of Bennington, Vermont. At the same time, when we think of “First Baptist”, we also bring to mind the physical edifice that sits on the corner of Valentine and Main Street. Indeed, we are graced with a beautiful building where our worship and spiritual life take place week to week.

As we think about the church in a time of transitional ministry, we should take note of the good things that have been happening with our building since the congregation entered into a three-year interim period. The trustees have brought about several improvements to the aesthetics of the building with new floor tile in the hallways, a beautifully renovated church lounge, new paint here and there, a handicap accessible bathroom, and a facelift for the church office area.

[On this latter count, let me extend gratitude for the redesign of the pastor’s office. The new ceiling, better lighting, a good size closet and storage space, and the reconfiguration of my workspace is quite helpful. The pastor’s desk no longer dwarfs the useable floor space, so it has been wonderful to welcome people into my office for conversations and meetings. I am working on making the pastor’s office more as the pastor’s study, less of a place geared toward an administrator’s office, and more a place where you can sit down and talk about the life of faith. I still have files and spreadsheets and committee notes piled here and there, but it is starting to feel more like a place where I can tend souls. I hope you will visit me in “the pastor’s study” and we’ll talk a spell.]

Another way that the building is changing can be noticed when you look at the “master calendar”. We have events, meetings, and other opportunities for the community to utilize our building, quite different from where we were a couple of years ago. First Baptist is becoming a great place for groups to meet, and Cindy Watson (in her role as building coordinator) is fielding phone calls to rent out space for events to community groups. This summer, we will be the site for three community events: June 7 is the annual Chocolate Festival and Play benefiting PAVE (The Project Against Violent Encounters). June 21 and 22 will be the Bennington County Chorale Society’s last concert of the season. We are working right now on arranging an evening in August featuring a rabbi and a Muslim who perform stand-up comedy that will be a riotous evening of interfaith mirth.

In May, the congregation voted affirmatively to install a lift to make our second floor accessible to all persons. The capital improvement (project cost: $32,000) will answer a long-standing problem with the Nichols Educational Wing, allowing everyone to access the great space we have upstairs. (Did you know that the second floor has more useable space and more bathrooms than downstairs?) While we are looking at this improvement as a necessary improvement to allow more use (and we hope more building rental income) for First Baptist’s space, I find the handicap accessibility that the lift and the new first floor bathroom symbolize as good theology at work. We are making “all persons” welcome, and when we complete the lift installation later this summer, we will take an opportunity to give thanks and bless these new and accessible additions to our physical space as sign and symbol of our increasing ministry of hospitality.

I also take joy in seeing how our space is allowing other groups to flourish. For the last several months, PAVE has offered a multi-week parenting course through its Family Time program. Families are encouraged to learn various skills to build healthy communication and relationships, and the program is growing as word of its helpfulness is getting around town. PAVE hopes to expand the program so they can keep up with the list of folks wanting to take this course. Your building is helping make these things possible!

Sometimes when we think of First Baptist, we think of the church building as the place we go Sunday to Sunday to receive the spiritual nourishment to get us through the week. Perhaps during the week, we might pop in for an event, a committee meeting, or something else that causes us to drop by the church. Know that as the congregation is rethinking its ministries and we are working together to bring about a new day, your building is also doing new things as well. Indeed, the tenets of faith are being lived out as we share our space and allow many good things to flourish through partnerships with community groups looking to improve the social, cultural, economic, and spiritual life of Bennington through time spent at that wonderful place we call “First Baptist”.

Keep our ongoing efforts in your prayers as well as the staff of the congregation as they help coordinate this work. Say a word of thanks to the hardworking trustee board, and give yourselves a pat on the back, too! Our desire to share the building is doing great things. It is indeed building ministry!

The Rev. Jerrod H. Hugenot