By Miles Layton

HOBBSVILLE — Often, I travel past Warwick Baptist Church, coming and going from Gates County or long trips to Virginia—for me, when I see the steeple pointing at the heavens near Hobbsville, near the county line, I know I’m home.

Roots beneath the oaks

Deacon Allen Harrell traced those roots in a historical reflection, supported by a slide presentation of church photographs and memories reaching back generations.

The church began, Harrell said, with a small group of Christians who gathered near the convergence of the two counties for prayer, Bible study and worship. They met “beneath the shade of oak trees and in an unused house,” he said, “drawn together by a shared faith in Jesus Christ and a desire to honor Him.” Itinerant preachers later led meetings, ministering to families and baptizing converts.

In 1861, with the support of its mother church, Ballard’s Bridge Baptist Church, and 21 charter members, Warwick Swamp Baptist Church was formally organized. The Rev. Ephraim Bunch was called as its first pastor. It was also the year the Civil War began, and church history records that the gospel of Christ, preached in love and peace, held the congregation together through that painful period.

“Those founding believers left us a rich heritage,” Harrell said. Their church covenants, he noted, called for faithfulness to Christ, devotion to God’s word, love for one another, service to those in need and a commitment to pass the faith from one generation to the next.

The first sanctuary still stands, covered in brick in the late 1950s, with educational and social hall wings added over the years. Within the past half-century, the name shortened to Warwick Baptist Church.

Harrell said the congregation has supported missions through the North Carolina Baptist Cooperative Program, the Chowan Baptist Association and local ministries, and that its women’s and men’s mission groups remain strong. “This is not simply a celebration of a building or an organization,” he said. “It is a celebration of God’s work through generations of faithful believers.”

He closed with a charge to the present. “We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us,” Harrell said, “so that we may faithfully serve Christ in our own generation.”

Russell’s opening prayer gave thanks for the church’s long endurance. “Through wars and through harvests, through depression and through times of blessing, Lord, you have guided every generation here in this community,” he prayed.

A son of the church returns

The morning’s speaker was a product of that guidance. The Rev. Russell Blanchard, co-pastor of Center Hill Baptist Church in Tyner, grew up in Warwick, was licensed and ordained to the gospel ministry there, and has now served as a pastor for nearly 30 years. He was recently elected vice moderator of the Chowan Baptist Association.

Russell introduced him as “a living legacy” raised in the congregation.

Blanchard opened with gratitude. “I want to thank you for the privilege of being back home,” he said. “Never forget your roots, never forget your church. Never forget what somebody poured into your life, because I promise you, when the going gets tough, what somebody poured into you will come out in a good way.”

He built his message around how much the world has changed since 1861 and how much has not. Early members, he said, “came in a mule and cart, or they walked.” Today’s worshippers arrive in air-conditioned cars. Values and beliefs have shifted, and churches, he said, can feel small and tired in a world that has pushed them from the center of community life to its edges.

His answer was encouragement, drawn from four passages of Scripture.

First, he said, God’s plan did not end with the founders. Citing Jeremiah 29:11, he told the congregation, “God had a plan then; God still has a plan today.” He added: “It’s not over. It’s not done, and you’re not through.”

Second, citing Philippians 1:6, he said God is not finished with the church or with any individual in it. “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion,” he said, quoting the verse.

Third, drawing on Galatians 6, he urged members not to give up, even when numbers seem small and results hard to see. “Don’t let what somebody else is doing, what somebody else appears to be, become what causes you to become less in the sight of God,” he said. He pointed to the church’s dual calling: reaching outward while caring for one another. “A weak church that doesn’t take care of its own has no power to reach beyond its own walls,” he said.

Fourth, citing Ephesians 3:20, he said God is able to do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.”

Blanchard said smallness is no measure of strength. “I pastor a small church,” he said. “But I’m going to tell you that I don’t serve a little God.” Earlier in the sermon, he put it this way: “The influence never wanes when the people of God stand up and call on the name of Jesus.”

He closed in prayer, asking God to “let this church be alive to this community.”

Russell took up the theme as he thanked the speaker. “Remember, as Zechariah says, ‘Do not despise the day of small things,’” he told the congregation. “God has raised up a powerful witness in this community.”

Voices from the pews

Much of the service belonged to the congregation itself. Deacon Chairman Lynn Hobbs invited anyone who had been a member or worshipped at Warwick in 1961 to stand and come forward. More than 20 people received a leather bookmark commemorating the occasion, and each was invited to share a memory into the microphone.

The answers drew laughter, and some tears.

Celia Bunch Hollowell said she has attended the church “all of my life, except for the 16 years that I followed my husband in the Air Force.” When they returned home, she said, they came back to Warwick.

Sandra Spivey Rountree recalled being a child at a Christmas program in the 1950s. “I turned around and saw Santa Claus,” she said. “I was scared to death, and I crawled under” the pew.

Aubrey Wadell Harrell, 85, who has been coming to Warwick all his life, was ordained a deacon there at age 25, in 1966, and has served as a deacon for 60 years. He is the father of Allen Harrell, who delivered the historical reflection. “I still enjoy coming to this church,” he said.

Jean Spivey Winslow, 92, who has attended the church since she was born in 1934, said she keeps coming. “I have thoroughly enjoyed it,” she said.

Annie Lee Hobbs, the church’s oldest member, joined Warwick from a Methodist congregation more than 70 years ago. She remembered teaching children’s classes and Bible school.

A woman who said she was baptized in 1961 recalled that her family sat on separate sides of the sanctuary. One member shared that she had only recently learned she is a descendant of the Rev. Ephraim Bunch, the church’s first pastor.

Loretta Spivey Wiggins, a longtime member whose husband, Joseph Wiggins, played piano for the service, reminded listeners how much of the building was made by hand. The older generation, she said, “nailed the nails in this building. They hung the chandeliers” and installed the leaded glass window. She also recalled a church member who drove young people to a Royal Ambassadors event in Asheville in her “big long Cadillac.”

Lynn Hobbs also honored his mother, Mrs. Hobbs, who turned 95 the day before.

The memories, Blanchard noted in his sermon, are the evidence of the church’s work. “I want you to think about the many homes that were established when couples came and said ‘I do’ at this altar,” he said. “I want you to think about the many souls that have been saved.”

Music and a table to share

Music carried the morning from its first moments. The praise team opened with “The Church in the Wildwood.” The congregation joined in “Faith of Our Fathers,” with Pastor Russell’s reminder that “because of that faith we’re here today.” The church choir, under the direction of Denise Basnight White, offered the anthem “Holy, Forever,” with Joseph Wiggins, Jaimie Winslow Lane and Virginia White Beaudoin accompanying on piano and organ. The service concluded with “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord” and “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.”

Altar flowers were given in memory of Jacob and Gussie Copeland Spivey by their family.

The invitation at the close of the service gave worshippers a chance to respond. Russell encouraged anyone who wished to profess faith in Christ, or to renew and rededicate their lives to service, to come forward or speak with him.

When the benediction ended, the congregation moved to the fellowship hall for a covered-dish meal, a tradition Russell called “good old-fashioned Warwick Baptist dinner on the grounds.” He had promised visitors there would be “plenty of food to go around.”

The anniversary was planned by a committee of Joyce Lassiter, Denise Basnight White, Cynthia Harrell, Lynn Bunch and Lynn Hobbs. Russell thanked them for the time and talent they poured into the celebration.

In his closing prayer, the good pastor asked that the church continue “thriving and growing and reaching and making an impact upon this community and upon this world.” He ended with the line that echoed through the morning: “May all who come behind us find us faithful.”