From the Pastor

This is a weekly devotional space where our pastor, as well as staff members on occasion, offer reflections, spiritual insights, and words of encouragement rooted in Scripture and everyday life. These writings are intended to challenge, inspire, and draw us closer to God and to one another as we strive to live out our faith with boldness and compassion. Whether offering comfort, conviction, or a call to action, each column invites us into deeper discipleship and shared community. When The Columns does not run, there is no new entry for From the Pastor.

Oct. 18, 2026

On the wall inside the lower 12th Street door, hanging prominently over a table with a lamp on it, is a large, autographed line drawing. It is the First Baptist Church of America, founded in 1638 in Providence, Rhode Island.


You may remember my asking your pastor search committee for time to wander around the building alone last October. I clocked this art piece that night. It mattered to me to see it there, making a statement about FAB’s pride in being an American Baptist congregation.


If you’re scratching your head, let me say a bit more. I have worked with American Baptists as much as I have worked with Cooperative Baptists over the years. Many of my closest colleagues are ABCUSA clergy and pastoral counselors. Your search committee asked me how I felt about being pastor to an American Baptist Church. “I like that idea. I’ve been ABC-adjacent for about 15 years,” I replied.


The West Virginia Baptist Convention is one of 34 regions that make up the American Baptist Churches USA. This week, the WVBC held its annual gathering here in Huntington, and FAB loaned our church vans and fed a group of American Baptist men following their Thursday morning volunteerism at Facing Hunger Foodbank on 7th Avenue. Jim Mitchell asked me to offer a devotion and a prayer.


So, I did what I do. I pulled the big line drawing of First Baptist Church of America off the wall and put it on an easel in the fellowship hall. I told of the Triennial Convention, founded in 1814 in Philadelphia, that became the ABCUSA in 1907. I told of the Triennial Convention’s origins in Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island Colony and founding pastor of FBC of America in Providence in 1638. I told of that same bunch of Rhode Island Baptists later working with

others to found Brown University in 1764, just up the hill from Williams’ church.


“Like a relic, this line drawing holds our larger story as American Baptists in West Virginia,” I said. “We are independent congregations working together as associations and conventions to do ministry and missions and educational work that serves God’s world. You served at a food bank this morning, but you didn’t do it alone. You were there with all the company of Baptist Christian people all the way back to this spot in Providence, Rhode Island. What Roger Williams started in Jesus’ name in 1638 with the First Baptist Church of America is still going. It’s going right here in Huntington, West Virginia, in 2026. It’s still going in you.”


Beloved of FAB: It’s still going in you, too. Your story, as part of this larger ABCUSA story, as part of God’s Great Story. Still today, in you.


~Rev. Zach Bay