DeSoto’s Hampton Road Baptist to celebrate 60 years

by Daphne Brown of of DeSoto TODAY

Although there remains much work to do, Hampton Road Baptist Church is celebrating 60 years of the work it has done.

Church personnel are organizing the milestone anniversary with one joint service at 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 23, which will culminate with a reservation-only dinner on the campus to honor and acknowledge its former pastors, church elders and long-time members among all of its other accomplishments.

The diverse people who make up the church's congregation today couldn't have worshiped together when HRBC was founded six decades ago, but the church is overjoyed with the diverse congregation it proudly boasts now.

Head Pastor Dr. Jerry Raines said he believes the HRBC congregation is more aware of the world through its missions and evangelism work, an invaluable component of the overall church philosophy.

“We have had direct involvement in mission ministries in Romania, Moldova, Guatemala, Ireland, Mexico, Hong Kong, Korea and Brazil,” Raines said. “We expect to see these ministries grow in the future.”

Members also have a greater world awareness, he said, because of those visiting the church, as well as those who have decided to make HRBC their church home.

“On a recent Sunday, we had people in the worship services whose homelands were Pakistan, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Korea, Africa and Germany,” he said. “We are actually an international church and love that we have that privilege.”

Currently located in the same place as when it opened in 1947, HRBC started out in a frame building on Hampton Road. That building is now the church's college building, home to a small congregation, Celestial Haven Baptist Church, temporarily displaced from their church due to an electrical fire.

The congregation moved to a second facility across the parking lot from the original building, which now houses the church's children's ministry, according to Bob Moore, HRBC minister of education/administration.

“We moved to our current worship center in 1974 and completed our current facility with the addition of the new fellowship hall and educational facility in 2001,” Moore said.

Church Historian Beth Price said, according to records, HRBC opened with between 14 and 28 regular attendees.