Oak Street Baptist Church celebrates 80th anniversary

Published 9:20 am Friday, November 9, 2018

By Rozella Hardin
Editorial Director
rozella.hardin@elizabethton.com
Oak Street Baptist Church will celebrate its 80th anniversary Sunday with a breakfast at 9 a.m. followed with special speakers, the Rev. Bob Polk and the Rev. Kenneth Jordan, who will bring the message at the 11 a.m. worship service. The Rev. Jordan grew up in the church, and the Rev. Polk is a former pastor at Oak Street Baptist.
The church began as a mission Sunday School organized by B.F. Siler and a group from First Baptist Church, Elizabethton, in May 1932. The first services were held in the waiting room of the ER & WNC Railroad at the corner of Johnson Avenue and Stateline Road.
The first organizational meeting was attended by 10 to 35 people and it was suggested by Siler that the organization be formed under the name of South Side Mission of the First Baptist Church.
Both interest and attendance grew and by March 1932, the mission had outgrown the ET &WNC meeting place, and the old Bottling Works place was secured as a meeting place. Later, the congregation moved to a store building on Stateline Road, and used some of the members’ home for Sunday School space.
In March 1937, Mr. and Mrs. J.A. Arney deeded to the First Baptist Church a lot at the corner of Oak Street and Stateline Road, which was designed to be used for a church. Funds were secured and a white-framed sanctuary was constructed. According to the church’s history, 90 percent of the funds for the church came from members of the mission and citizens of South Side.
Once the church building was completed, members of the congregation requested First Baptist allow them to organize into an independent and separate church, and on Feb. 2, 1938, South Side Baptist Church was organized. It was not until February 1947, the congregation adopted the name of Oak Street Baptist Church.
Through the years, the church has been served by 16 different pastors. The Rev. Bob Polk has served the church on three different occasions. Also, the church has been served by eight interim pastors, with the Rev. O.C. Anderson serving in that capacity on three different occasions.
The present pastor is Dr. Chris Shumate, who succeeded Bruce Hendrich, who moved to Colorado to do church planting.
Numerous improvements have been made to the building, new classrooms added as well as an educational building. The current sanctuary was completed in June 1969, and during the ministry of Dr. Larry J. Riddle, who served the church in the 1990s, a gymnasium that also serves as a large fellowship hall, as well as new classrooms, bathrooms, and a large kitchen were added to the church.
Oak Street Baptist has grown into a very mission-minded church. Dr. Shumate in an anniversary message to the church noted: “Over the past 80 years, the ministry of Oak Street Baptist Church has reached far beyond the community of Elizabethton and Carter County. Our members have been on mission trips to Florida, Louisiana, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, Venezuela, Canada, Brazil and India. Missionaries all over the world have been supported spiritually and financially. A church has been planted in Mead, Colo. Over $760,000 has been given for missions, mercy missions, church planting, and theological education through the Cooperative Program of the Southern Baptist Convention and over 750 people have been baptized here in our own church.”
Little did B.F. Siler and that group from First Baptist Church that organized a Sunday School mission in a small building on Stateline Road realize what would follow in the years to come.

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