GREENFIELD — First Baptist Church of Greenfield has closed, and the building is up for sale.
The Rev. Joseph Merriman, the church’s pastor, said the church closed earlier this year.
“It’s very simple: Not able to compete with the bigger churches,” he said. “The bigger churches have more of the world attached to them — bands and coffee shops and all this other stuff — and small churches can’t compete with that.”
The church began in 1948. The Rev. John B. Kenyon led a meeting in the Memorial Building that October. The congregation that formed would later gather in a garage off South State Street.
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In its early years it was known simply as “the Baptist church,” later becoming known as the Baptist Tabernacle. In the mid-1950s it incorporated as First Baptist Church and bought land. The current building that sits on 1.4 acres at 404 S. West St. was dedicated May 27, 1956.
The church sponsored a show on local radio station WSMJ during the 1960s. It had a women’s missionary society and at least one revival that extended beyond the guest speaker’s stay, according to past editions of the Daily Reporter.
In the mid-1990s, some members wanted to sell the building and change locations. Not everyone favored that plan. Locks were changed, a lawsuit was filed, and those who wanted to stay rented space in another church for services until they could get back into the building. Those who wanted to move met for a time at the Lee’s Inn in Greenfield.
In 1996, Merriman began ministering to those who had stayed. He retired from International Harvester and knocked on doors, inviting people to church.
He brought in well-known music groups and college performance teams. The church had a day care for a while. A congregational profile published in the Feb. 10, 2007, edition of the Daily Reporter listed the Feb. 4, 2007, attendance at 52.
Over the years, though, there were people who died or left. “I can’t say it was one particular thing,” Merriman said.
Merriman preached his sermons using the King James Version of the Bible and laments the changes made in other versions that he said leave out important points.
The pastor, who said he had not been paid since 2003, said he told someone recently that the worst thing that could happen to him would be to stop preaching and teaching.
When he visits Florida this winter, he hopes to get a Bible study going among snowbirds. “If I could preach and teach someplace, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” he said.
While he hates to see the church close, he remembers the role it played during its 70 years in launching other churches, among them Grace Baptist Church of Mohawk. He also remembers all the local residents who pitched and donated items when he and his late wife, Alma, took cleanup supplies to Vevay after the 1997 flood.
“I appreciate everything that the community has done for us,” he said.
And he hopes the church building’s next chapter will be good for the community.
“It is God’s building. I want to see a ministry come in that will help the county, the city.”
