The Churches of Tucker County

By Dan Geohagan

Parsons, West Virginia- This is week five of the series in to the different denominations of our county. The Baptist faith is one of the older denominations that can be dated all the way back to the early 1600s. We are with Pastor Greg Smith from First Baptist Church in Parsons.
“I have been in the ministry for about 38 years,” said Pastor Greg Smith. “and I have been here in Parsons for two years, now starting my third. I attended Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, Tenn. and studied religious education at that time. I have been in the youth ministry for 33 years serving four other churches.” Smith said “I left Danville where I was for 21 years as an associate and working with the young people in ministries. This was the third church I preached at in my candidacy and just felt a sweet spirit here and fell in love with the area. Then the Lord worked it out, they called to inform me that it was a unanimous vote for me to be their pastor.”
First Baptist Church has a pretty active role in the community with various tasks and helping hands. From helping needy families to building roofs there isn’t too much this church doesn’t help with.
“I found out very quickly this is a community that reaches out to others,” said Pastor Smith. “We have had a group that had been coming up from Burke, Va., they would come in and help us with a lot of projects such as helping with houses, roofs, porches, ramps for the disabled and different things like that. We plan on trying to continue those types of things although the group might not come out this year. It’s our desire to help the community through hands on.”
First Baptist Church is an Independent Fundamental Baptist church which identifies that is a stand-alone Baptist church., which means it doesn’t fall under the larger umbrella of an organization like other Baptists do, such as the Southern Baptist Convention. The church is conservative in nature but is modernizing with things such as integrating new worship songs in with traditional hymns.
“We do have some contemporary music in our worship,” said Smith. “Especially Sunday mornings, one of our problems is that we have no instrumentalists of any kind. We have a variety of different things, we have conservative music tracks and some worship tracks that we project the lyrics on the overhead screen. I am very multimedia oriented so we use the projector for a lot of things such as music and notes for the sermon.”
First Baptist Church of Parsons offers a series of times of worship and fellowship. There is a morning service on Sunday at 10 a.m. followed by Sunday school afterwards. Sunday evening service is at 7 p.m. and Wednesday evening service is at 6 p.m. The church is located at 227 Water St. in Parsons. You may contact them at 304-478-3812.