New Howard Chapel Missionary Baptist Church celebrates 150 years in Macon

One of Macon’s oldest churches celebrated its 150th anniversary Sunday.

New Howard Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, which sits between Lamar Road and Interstate 475, is led by the Rev. Cleveland Jarrell. Jarrell has served in his role as pastor of the church for almost 43 years, and will celebrate his 44th year at another church in Monroe County.

“We wouldn’t have what we have, we couldn’t do what we do if it weren’t for the faithfulness of the members that we have,” Jarrell said.

The church is steeped in history, having been a religious home for Maconites since 1873. The congregation moved to its current location on Lamar Road in 1958 after a contribution of land was donated so that a new church could be built, with construction beginning in 1956.

Upon becoming the church’s pastor in 1980, Jarrell set out to expand the church’s footprint. The nave of the church was enlarged and other features such as a finance office and kitchen area were added in recent years. With the expansions, the church has been able to increase what services and programs they offer to the congregation.

Choir practices and youth groups are facilitated by the larger building, something that has been able to bring together both the older and younger generations of the church. In recognition of the work that he had done, the portion of Lamar Road that the church abuts was named in Jarrell’s honor on his 80th birthday.

The renovations are substantially paid for by contributions from the families that attend the church, and memorial plaques are posted throughout the nave dedicated to individuals and families who contributed money to the church. Offerings each Sunday also help pay for the church’s different funds.

“We’re small in number but we’re big in heart,” Deacon Marshall Bell said.

The church has also undergone a change in its services. Jarrell stressed that the church was moving toward the “present age.”

One way that that can be seen is in the technology included in each service, but also in the songs that are sung by the congregation. Spiritual songs and hymns are being replaced with more contemporary tunes, moving the church towards “praise and worship” songs.

The newer songs are generally more repetitive and resemble pop music whereas hymns are more traditional pieces of music. The gradual move was done in order to attract and retain younger worshipers before the older generation passes the baton to them to lead the church for the coming decades.

Members of the congregation from Mt. Vernon Missionary Baptist Church were present, many of whom sang various selections from the choir. The relationship between the two churches was a reminder of how New Howard Chapel had reached its milestone anniversary: through the care of its community.

Jarrell’s four decades of service to the church have allowed him to be a driving force for change in the community.

At the service on Sunday, former Macon Mayor C. Jack Ellis was present, as well as Macon-Bibb County’s Executive Director of Community Affairs, the Rev. Henry Ficklin, who also serves as the pastor for Mt. Vernon Missionary Baptist Church. The two guests spoke to the congregation about the progress that the church has made, as well as about where it came from.

The speakers touched on the time during which the church was started, and who the members were at the time the church was founded. The Rev. Kedrick Williams pointed out that it was only eight years after the end of the Civil War when the church was founded, meaning the original congregation was made up of previously enslaved African Americans.

In the early days, the church met in a wooden framed building, a far cry from the sturdy brick structure it inhabits now. That it has come from formerly enslaved people making up the first congregation to having in its midst the city’s first African American mayor was not lost on the speakers or congregation.

Ficklin centered his sermon around believing in one’s faith, an impassioned argument that resonated deeply with the crowd. Belief, he said, was the key to solving some of the issues in Macon, including the gun violence that has increased in recent years among the county’s youth.

Bell introduced the theme of “unlimited possibilities” at the start of the service on Sunday and it was recalled by many of the speakers throughout the day. They made the case that on the church’s 150th anniversary, there were many opportunities left for the church to take advantage of in the future.

Gabriel Kopp is a Mercer University student interning with the Telegraph this summer.