Marion Avenue Baptist celebrates 50 years

WASHINGTON — A longtime church building just off the square marked half a century as a Baptist place of worship Sunday, 50 years to the day after former Pastor Larry Brown arrived in Washington from North Carolina.

The building, which was first constructed in 1869 as a Presbyterian church before its sale to a group of families that made it Marion Avenue Baptist, has undergone some notable changes since then. New additions, an added building on a nearby lot, and an expanded choir area are just a few items on the list.

Larry Brown said he felt called to start a new church in a new town when he left North Carolina Sept. 24, 1973.

“North Carolina, it’s part of the Bible Belt, there’s a church on every corner, a Baptist church,” he said. “There wasn’t many Baptist churches here … when we came here, my wife was touched and she said, ‘Promise me we’ll come back.’ It was through that, that God led me back here.”

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Brown said he never expected the church to grow as much as it did. Today, the church runs 10 buses a week transporting Iowans to and from services from across Southeast Iowa. It also holds 10 Christmas shows a year that tend to pack the pews, and beyond the church building itself, has constructed a community center that opened to the public for the first time on Sunday.

“I feel thankful, and fulfilled,” he said. “To see the work that I spent my life building, going on in the way that I led it all those years … a lot of times pastors will build a work, and when they leave, it falls apart. But my son Joseph took it over, and he’s doing an excellent job.”

Joseph Brown, the current senior pastor, said he was proud of the congregation’s growth as well. Sunday saw hundreds of churchgoers lining up for service and celebration, some of them flying back to town after moving across the country over the last 50 years.

He said the church had put together a documentary, held a massive reunion meal, and held a special service Sunday night to mark the occasion.

“There’s hundreds of people with the same story, I wouldn’t have the life that I have now,” Joseph Brown said of the church’s impact on its members. “I’m grateful for what, ultimately, God has done to bring it all together.”

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The former Presbyterian church building was dilapidated when that group sold it to a collection of four farm families in summer of 1973, according to Ed Owen, a member of one such family.

He said the newfound congregation was initially called “Marion Avenue Bible,” until its leaders fielded enough questions about their denomination that they changed the name to Marion Avenue Baptist a few months later, by the time Larry Brown arrived.

Owen said he was equally grateful about the church’s growth since that day.

“I expected that we could build a church,” he said. “But not 10 times in a row.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com