CARROLL COUNTY — Liberty Baptist Church will celebrate 175 years of active ministry in the Jefferson community on Sunday beginning at 10:30 a.m.
The church will host former members and pastors with a homecoming service, followed by a pot-luck lunch at the youth activities building.
All current and former members, as well as those who have attended Liberty Baptist in the past, are invited to attend the service.
Liberty’s pastor, the Rev. Gary Tanner, said the service will include testimonies by three people who grew up in the church, from three different generations. Two former pastors, the Rev. John Gray and the Rev. James Breland, will also share memories of their time at the church.
Lifelong member Rachel DuBard Hays will give a brief history of the church. The Rev. Fletcher Moorman will bring the morning message.
The documented meetings of the church started in 1840, but there is evidence of some Baptist believers meeting in 1803, the church’s history states.
In 1840, William Henry Harrison was president of the United States, and Mississippi was 22 years old. The church became a member of the Yalobusha Baptist Association and had a membership of 14. Today its resident membership is 111.
In 1888, the church’s membership of 175 made it the largest church in the Baptist association.
Hays, who grew up in the church and served as a Southern Baptist missionary in West Africa for 25 years, said she was brought to the church from her earliest days.
“I was born physically and spiritually here. I never remember anywhere else,” she said. “After the rustic situation in Africa, I came home to a renovated building and thought it was the most beautiful thing. We have always had wonderful preachers. I remember taking notes as a young person.”
“Physically, the church is located in a place to be a lighthouse to people who travel through at night,” Hays said. “My spiritual roots are here. I was supported greatly by this church and others when I was a missionary. This is always my heart.”
Nell Whitfield, wife of former Sheriff C.D. Whitfield, said the church has been a very special place for her family. “We’ve been members of the church 50 years. It is one big family community of Christians. We are sad together; we rejoice together. We’re so blessed.”
Liberty’s ministry is not just past, Whitfield said: “Liberty is still a place to come and hear God’s word preached as we pray, worship and sing. I pray we’ll continue to be a lighthouse in our community as we reach the lost for Christ.”
Liberty has an active youth group, which in 2014 took supplies and ministered to residents of a children’s home and homeless shelter in Missouri and Arkansas.
Church members have ministered in the local area as well. Longtime member Jane Blair was honored by the church for her 10-year ministry to women inmates at the Grenada Correctional Facility. Whitfield maintained a clothes closet ministry for many years.
“Many people have benefited from the benevolence ministry of the church,” the church history states.
J.T. DuBard and his wife, Mary Lou, have been members of the church for 60 years.
“We raised all our kids here. We stayed together because of going to church here,” he said.
Tanner, who has pastored the church since 2006, said Liberty is “one of the sweetest, most loving, caring and mission-minded churches I have pastored in 31 years.”
The current building was dedicated in 1946. The church has added a Sunday School annex, as well as a youth building in 2002. The building was the first rural brick church in the county, according to church records.
The membership was assisted in the building by contributions from Carroll County native and Billups Petroleum Co. founder R.A. Billups, who offered to match every dollar raised by the church. The cost of the building was $6,000, with most of the work done by church members.
