By Bill Webb, Word&Way Editor
Fee Fee Baptist Church in Bridgeton celebrated its bicentennial in earnest a little over a week ago. The congregation is believed to be the oldest non-Catholic church west of the Mississippi River in continuous existence.
This is no small accomplishment for a church. It is especially remarkable because Fee Fee is not just a church that is barely holding on. Nor are members letting grass grow under their feet. The same forward-looking attitude that has preserved its ministry for 200 years is alive and well. If the Lord tarries and the folks at Fee Fee continue to seek His will, there’s no telling how many anniversaries this congreegation will celebrate.
Churches do not amass rich spiritual experiences for 50, 100 or even 200 years by marking time and simply trying to stay alive. Avoiding extinction isn’t listed in the Ten Commandments or even the Beatitudes. In fact, the religious landscape is littered with the remains of congregations that simply dried up from lack of vision or an unwillingness to keep up with the Holy Spirit or the times.
Missouri Baptists took note last year of another church anniversary — it, too, a bicentennial — of the first Baptist church organized in Missouri. The folks who started Old Bethel Church down near Jackson in southeast Missouri were like the earliest saints at Fee Fee. They must have been hardy, tenacious and courageous, for they were a minority faith.
On the rugged frontier, these early Baptist believers stood as a beacon to countless settlers and travelers not unlike some of our neighbors today. In their own way, many of those were highly secular people, often antagonistic to the Old Bethel and Fee Fee saints, who stood for godly values and often paid the price for their convictions.
Old Bethel and Fee Fee are examples of churches that took different paths. Old Bethel chose wrongly during the frontier missionary controversy. Its members fell into the anti-missionary camp. Most Baptists realize today that churches that decide not to reach beyond themselves have no future. Old Bethel discovered that after about 60 years as a congregation. The church died.
Baptists in Missouri still remember the contributions of the Old Bethel members. In fact, Missouri Baptists have constructed a memorial to the congregation’s past in the form of a reconstructed log structure on the site of the old church and adjacent to Old Bethel Cemetery. It appears that original church logs outlasted the church itself.
There’s nothing wrong with memorials to the past. No doubt, many good lessons can be learned from a historical study of places like Old Bethel. But one of the most enduring lessons the site can teach today is that churches that do not reach out aggressively with the gospel are without a real purpose or future.
The church that began on Fee Fee Creek in 1807 today sits awfully close to Lambert International Airport. Certainly, pastor Thomas Musick and the others who were around at the beginning could not have imagined all the changes and all the challenges that Fee Fee Baptist Church has endured.
If Musick and the earliest members have been allowed to lean over and peer down from heaven at the congregation that keeps on moving forward, they doubtless have been pleased that God has honored their faithfulness and perseverance. I’m guessing it would please them to know that today’s church facilities butt against the Bridgeton campus of the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home. The congregation has been a good friend to that ministry and countless others.
As a part of its bicentennial celebration, the folks at Fee Fee broke ground in April for a family life center that is intended to serve the church family but also to reach out to children and families and undergird other ministries in the community. Fee Fee simply can’t avoid reaching out beyond itself.
We congratulate the oldest continually serving Protestant church west of the Mississippi. Could it be that the best days of this congregation are still ahead? Surely that would be our prayer for each of the congregations across our state. The heritage of this church provides a good example for many others.