Our Mission
Sharing God’s Love in the Heart of the City
Our Core Values
· Agape Love – Choosing to be aware of the feelings of others; accepting one another’s differences; giving people a sense of worth
· Wisdom – Gaining insight on the right thing to do
· Spiritual Growth – Worshipping and learning about God in order to achieve our full potential in Christ
· Inclusiveness – Appreciating the diversity of God’s kingdom
· Stewardship – Responsibly using all of the resources God has given us, including the Gospel, all of creation, our time, abilities, money, and other assets
· Service – Ministering to and serving the community and world with the intention of helping people discover and experience transformation
Introduction
First Baptist Church (FBC) was established in 1924 in Silver Spring, a suburb immediately outside of Washington, DC. We are associated with the DC Baptist Convention, American Baptist Churches USA, and the Alliance of Baptists. By congregational vote, we formally severed our longtime historical affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention in 1996.
We are located in the central business district of Silver Spring, on Wayne Avenue near the intersection with Fenton Street. Although many of our members commute long distances to the church, we see ourselves as an urban church and are committed to ministry in the downtown Silver Spring area. A decade ago, we sold a large portion of our property for the construction of an apartment building and used the proceeds to construct a new 30,000 square church facility on the remaining property adjacent to the apartment building. The new facility was completed in 2018. At the time, we deferred construction of a planned sanctuary and some classrooms due to financial limitations.
The residential population near the church is highly diverse, composed of a wide variety of economic, religious, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. As a result, our worshipping congregation is also very diverse, with minorities and immigrants from many parts of the world comprising more than half of our current members and regular attendees.
For the past 40 years, FBC has shared the use of its facilities with Iglesia Bautista Emanuel (IBE), a Spanish-language congregation, and Eglise Baptiste de la Foi (EBF), a Haitian congregation. Each church has its own ministerial staff and programming, but over time the three churches have developed a closer and more cooperative relationship as partners in ministry. Leaders of the three churches meet regularly. We worked together in the design and financing of the new church facility and now share responsibility for its maintenance and upkeep. The building was specifically designed to permit the three congregations to worship simultaneously on Sunday mornings, with adult Sunday school classes in three languages and joint Sunday school classes in English for children and youth. There is an active youth program serving all three congregations.
Worship
Our Bible-based worship services are traditional in style. The service generally consists of prayers and Scripture readings, a children’s lesson, a sermon, an invitation, collection of tithes and offerings, and a commission and blessing. Hymns of praise and joy are included throughout the service. The music repertory largely includes traditional hymns, with some praise songs and choruses. Communion is observed monthly and is open to all Christian believers.
Christian Education
The church has an active program of Bible study and Christian education for both adults and children, including weekly Bible study classes for all ages on Sunday mornings, regular online Bible study classes two evenings per week, a one-week Vacation Bible School during the summer, and occasional short-term topical classes. Our pastor also holds periodic New Member classes that provide instruction on what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a Baptist, and what it means to be a member of FBC.
Ministries
For more than 50 years, the church has had a sustained commitment to community ministries. It operated a pre-school program for families with working parents from 1968 through 2013, initiated in the 1980s a weekly food distribution program that continues today for low-income individuals and families, donates school supplies for needy students to a local elementary school, and has recently been exploring ways to support immigrant families. In addition, FBC leases space during the week to an organization that trains immigrants for jobs as cooks and food service workers in the hospitality industry and to another organization that provides training to autistic children. We also have ministries for the homebound and senior citizens and sponsor a missionary couple working with children and families in a school-based program to address gang violence in El Salvador. Our interim pastor has more recently led us to extend our outreach to the community by participating in the annual “PRIDE in the Plaza” celebration near our church.
Church Staff and Committees
Our church staff currently includes an interim Senior Pastor, an Office Manager, and a volunteer Organist. The church budget includes funding for a part-time professional staff member for music and/or children and youth, but the church has deferred filling that position until a new Senior Pastor is called.
The church organization includes a Church Council, a Board of Trustees, and a Board of Deacons. We also have several committees that support the church’s organizational infrastructure and direct our ministries.
Church Membership and Finances
The church currently has 136 members that comprise 89 separate households. Our current attendance ranges on most Sundays from 65-90 in worship and 75-85 in Bible study. In addition, the church also streams its worship service every Sunday and posts the service on its website for viewing during the week.
The 2025 church budget is $433,842 and is supported by an estimated $284,500 in contributions from members and regular attendees, $32,000 from IBE and EBF for facility operations, and $71,342 from other organizations for use of the church building. In 2024, we had 93 givers of record, including 28 who gave at least $3,000 during the year. About 75 percent of those large givers were seniors over age 65.
The church took out a 15-year, $1.0 million mortgage in 2018 in connection with construction of its new church building. The balance of the loan was approximately $636,000 at the end of 2024, and it will be fully paid off in mid-2033. Monthly payments on the mortgage total approximately $100,000 annually. The mortgage is paid by separate, dedicated contributions to the church’s Building Fund that are “over and above” contributions to the annual church budget. Pledges to the Building Fund are solicited for this purpose during capital campaigns conducted every three years.
Church Facility and Property
The church building includes a large fellowship hall (currently used for FBC’s worship services), a chapel that is used for worship by IBE, another large resource room used as the worship area for EBF, classrooms and meeting rooms, a choir practice room with storage for music, staff offices, and a large food closet. There is a small playground in the rear of the church. In addition, the church has a small number of reserved parking spaces in the parking garage of the adjoining apartment building. Those spaces provide parking for members and staff on weekdays and handicapped and staff parking on Sundays. The Trustees are responsible for the care and maintenance of the church facility.
The Silver Spring Community
Setting. Silver Spring is a large unincorporated area in Montgomery County, MD. FBC is located in the central business district of Silver Spring, next to a 243-unit apartment building and within walking distance of a wide range of restaurants, stores, and other retail enterprises. There are large numbers of both apartment buildings and single family homes within a mile of the church.
Demographics. Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there were 81,015 living in Silver Spring in 2020. About 22% of them were children under age 18, and 10.9% were 65 years or older. The population was an estimated 32% White, 28% Black or African American, 27% Hispanic or Latino, and 7.5% Asian. Approximately 44% of the population was born outside of the U.S., and 45% lived in households in which a language other than English was spoken (Spanish in about half of these homes). Over 63% of the population had a bachelor’s degree or higher. The median household income was $100,116, with an estimated 8.3% of individuals living in households with incomes below the poverty line. Approximately 37% of the population lived in owner-occupied homes.
Religious Community. According to Sperling’s Best Places, Silver Spring “is home to a variety of religious congregations.” About 40% of the population identifies as religious. The overwhelming majority of those individuals are Christian. About 14% of the population of Silver Spring is Catholic, and 21% is affiliated with a wide range of Protestant denominations. Baptists are the largest Protestant denomination, comprising about 4.7% of the population of Silver Spring. The remainder of those who identify as religious are Jewish or are affiliated with Islam or various Eastern religions.
Transportation. The Washington metropolitan area has a public transportation system that includes local and city buses, trains, and Metrorail (subway). The Silver Spring Metrorail (Metro), an Amtrak railroad station, and an interstate bus terminal are all within four blocks of the church. The Silver Spring Metro station is a main connector for buses and other public transportation. A new light rail project, the Purple Line, is currently under construction to connect Silver Spring with Bethesda to the west and various locations in Prince George’s County to the east. The Purple Line is currently scheduled to be completed in 2028 and will run directly in front of the church on Wayne Avenue. It will have a stop a half block from the church.
Congregational Strengths
We find strength in our diversity. FBC was organized in 1924 by Caucasian members. Our congregation was racially integrated beginning in the late 1960s, and over the next four decades, the number of non-Caucasian members gradually increased to reflect the increasing racial diversity of the Silver Spring community. Minorities now make up a substantial part of our current membership, and our congregation is now blessed by the participation of members from various countries in African, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean islands. The gospel is preached each week in our church in English, Spanish, and Creole though our partnership with Spanish and Haitian congregations that date back to the 1980s. In addition, for more than a year, the church has included a range of diverse voices in the pulpit at one Sunday morning worship service each month.
We have also been blessed throughout our history by strong lay leadership, including both women and minorities. Our first female deacon was ordained in the 1970s, and women are today active in all areas of leadership within the church and are a core strength of our church. However, most of our leadership today is drawn from our senior adults, both men and women. We do have a small number of very dedicated younger members who are very dedicated to our community mission programs.
Our church places a strong emphasis on Bible study. In addition to traditional Sunday morning Bible study for adults and children, we have two longstanding Bible study groups that meet online during the week, and they have been supplemented periodically in recent years by numerous short-term topical classes and book studies. In addition, the pastor conducts classes a couple of times each year for potential new members that focus on what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a Baptist, and what it means to a member of FBC.
We also have a strong program to support the combined children and youth in all three congregations. This includes extracurricular activities almost every month for the children in our Sunday School, and our teens participate annually in one-week overnight Passport summer mission camps.
We are firmly committed to the social gospel, with an emphasis on community missions that serve our local community. Our largest mission program today is our Food Closet that distributes food once each week to families in need in the Silver Spring community. Christmas gifts are provided annually to the children in these families. We have historically served 30-50 families each week, but over the past year that number has been increasing substantially and has ranged as high as 90 families in one recent week.
Congregational Challenges
We recognize a number of challenges in maintaining our ministry to the Silver Spring community in the future:
· The Silver Spring community is in the midst of ongoing economic renewal, with continuing development of new commercial and residential facilities in the immediate vicinity of the church. As a result, the population of downtown Silver Spring is growing and attracting new residents from a wide variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
· Like many churches, our membership has been slowly declining. Our congregation is aging, and we have a substantial imbalance between men and women in all age groups within our adult population. We do not have a large number of families with children still living at home. Although we consider our program for children and youth as one of our strengths, most of the participants today come from our Spanish and Haitian congregations.
· In conjunction with our declining membership, our financial capacity has also been declining gradually. Younger people and families no longer attend church on a regular basis as they once did, and they did not grow up with a tradition of regular tithing.
· We especially need to renew our leadership ranks with younger members. Although our newer members are often attracted to roles within our mission outreach programs, it has been difficult to engage them in important roles within the “working church,” such as teaching in Sunday School or serving on essential boards and committees that maintain the organizational infrastructure of the church. In addition, younger families and singles tend to be at a more transient stage in their lives and move more frequently out of the area for jobs or other reasons.
· During the pandemic, we began to stream our services online each week and have continued to do so. But we need to figure out how to make more effective use of technology and social media to reach our community.
We continue to believe that God is calling us to ministry in downtown Silver Spring. We are seeking a new pastor who shares that vision and will feel called to help us discern the spiritual and other needs of our community and renew and grow our fellowship. We are open to new ideas and recognize that changes may be necessary to fulfill God’s purpose for us in downtown Silver Spring.