Black Creek Baptist Church in rural Southampton County, Va., celebrated its 225th anniversary last month. The home folks put thought and effort into the anniversary. They invited former pastors and members. They created an instant museum out of one of the Sunday school rooms. They printed a keepsake enlarged bulletin. They decorated the social hall and served a wonderful meal which included two of the area’s specialties: fried chicken and country ham. They planned enough program for “an all-day meeting” yet squeezed it into Sunday morning. When the time came for the offering, a little boy named Ryan took his place alongside grown men to help take the collection. It was a visible sign that the youngest generation is following in the footsteps of earlier generations. It was a day to be remembered.
Fred Anderson
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There were lots of hands to shake, people to greet and stories to be told. Clayton Newsome remembered that as a boy the 10 folks in his family “would pile into a ’51 Chevy, sitting in each other’s laps, and head to Black Creek.” Another man admitted that he had been attending for 80 years, beginning with the time in his mother’s womb!
Larry Cribb, who served as pastor from 1972-77, was the church’s first full-time pastor in its recent history. He shared that when the pulpit committee came calling, he was “scared to death.” It would be his first pastorate. Garland Hendricks, a professor at Southeastern Seminary, had written a book on rural church development so Cribb went to his prof for practical advice, which in a nutshell was: “Go there and love those people!”
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Cribb confessed: “That’s what I did. Even if my sermon was not quite right, I loved the people and they returned the love.”
Willis Switzer served twice as pastor and his wife developed a reputation as the “pie queen” because of all the pies which she lovingly baked for the church folks.
Wayne Underwood served from 1987-99 and observed that Black Creek “helped raise our children.”
Melvin Bradshaw began his long spiritual pilgrimage at age 15 as the janitor of the church. Among his tasks was to saw wood for the heaters. He did this early in the morning and then went home to put on his Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes. If the wood was not dry and the fire went out, he said folks would complain. They felt a right to complain; after all, they were paying him $3.75 a month!
Melvin Bradshaw grew up in a Quaker church but declares that he was “saved at the Baptist church.” He was baptized in Johnson’s Millpond, “snakes and all.” He gained his first practical speaking experience in the Baptist Training Union. Like many of the preacher boys of his generation, he found his way to the University of Richmond; and in 1950 he was appointed as a missionary to Japan.
“Many times when I have been discouraged,” he shared, “I remembered what this church meant to me and it helped me in my time of discouragement.” At age 86 he still recalls a time some 70 years ago when a member of Black Creek told him, “We love you and are praying for you.” He admits, “That comment made an impression on me.”
Churches such as Black Creek are in the loving business. In 1786 the church was gathered by David Barrow, one of the pioneer Baptist preachers of Southeastern Virginia. He led the constituent members to adopt an elaborate church covenant. Among the agreements was that members would “give themselves to the Lord and to one another, to meet together every Lord’s Day, to watch over each of our families and children under our care [and that] they do the same [to each of us], and at all times to behave ourselves as becometh the Gospel of our dear Redeemer Jesus Christ.” In short, they were to love one another.
David Barrow was persecuted for conscience’s sake in the time of a state religion in Virginia. He was nearly drowned by an angry mob as they made mockery of baptism by immersion. He also was among the group of Baptists who hoped in the 1780s to create a seminary in Virginia.
David Barrow actively opposed slavery. It did not always make him popular but it was his stated conviction. In the end, he chose to move to the frontier of Kentucky where he could work his family in the fields instead of owning slaves. Barrow wished “that all masters, or owners of slaves, may consider whether they are doing as they would others should do to them.”
In the 1820s another anti-slavery preacher, Jonathan Lankford, had rough sailing as pastor of Black Creek because he refused to administer the ordinances of the church to slave owners. Nat Turner’s slave insurrection of 1831 occurred in Southampton County and Black Creek’s whites were anxious. They examined the black members of the church; and once satisfied that they were innocent, the blacks were restored to fellowship. The “peculiar institution” provided a testing of the Christian love within the church’s covenant.
In the latter half of the 19th-century there were outstanding pastors at the country church. Putnam Owens served when the church was on a field with several other churches. If all the members of the several churches could have been gathered under one roof, it would have been a congregation of 900 members. He served the church for 36 years.
Another pastor who planted himself in the area was the beloved Joseph Franklin Deans. He recognized that area youth needed education and he opened an academy at Windsor. He encouraged “poor, struggling” children to enter his academy and in time these became leaders across several counties in Southeastern Virginia. For generations the people in area cited Deans as the man who brought education to the farmland. Both Owens and Deans promoted a loving fellowship.
Today Black Creek occupies a handsome sanctuary building along with an educational facility which was expanded in 2004 to include a modern kitchen and large social hall. Greg Kitts has led the church as pastor since 2001. The members continue to show loving care over one another and, through missions, to those in need at home as well as around the world. In these respects the covenant from 225 years ago is still fulfilled and such a long practice of love is always worth celebrating.
“a new humanity?”
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies, located on the campus of the University of Richmond. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.