Thursday, August 17 was declared “First Baptist Church of Haddonfield Day’ in commemoration of the first sermon preached in the Borough of Haddonfield 200 years ago.
On Aug. 17, 1817, the first sermon was preached in Haddonfield. Exactly 200 years later, members of the First Baptist Church of Haddonfield came together in an intimate ceremony at the site of the former Grove School House on Thursday, Aug. 17 to commemorate the significant moment in both the town and church’s history.
“If John Sisty preached his first sermon here on Aug. 17, 1817, that means that that was the first sermon preached in the Borough of Haddonfield,” said First Baptist’s Rev. Michael Feicht at Thursday’s gathering. “I know that the Quakers were here first, but the Quakers don’t preach.”
On behalf of the Board of Commissioners and the Borough of Haddonfield, Deputy Mayor Jeffrey Kasko proclaimed Thursday, Aug. 17, “First Baptist Church of Haddonfield Day.”
First Baptist Church of Haddonfield historian Robert Gardner detailed the history of Haddonfield’s first sermon for those in attendance Thursday night.
“It was here at this location in the Grove School House that once stood where we now stand that an ordained minister by the name of John Sisty preached his first sermon to the people of Haddonfield,” Gardner said. “This event would lead to the founding of the First Baptist Church of Haddonfield, New Jersey, less than 10 months later.”
He said according to the church’s history books, in 1817, Sisty was a member of the First Baptist Church of Mount Holly and was preaching once a month at the Evesham Meeting House when Haddonfield resident Lettice Evans asked Sisty to preach in Haddonfield.
Evans was “concerned about the spiritual welfare of her son” who was studying to become a smith, Gardner said. Sisty accepted the offer and gave his first sermon at the Grove School House located on the intersection of Grove and Lake streets. At the time, the only place of worship in town was the Quaker Meeting House, and the closest Baptist churches were eight miles away in Evesham or 16 miles away in Mount Holly.
In 1817, Haddonfield was home to around 50 families, but the town was “quite busy and modern” with farms, stores, taverns, a post office, a fire company, the Friends School and the Grove School, Gardner said. The Grove School was built first and foremost as a school but with the understanding that any religious domination was allowed to occupy the space on evenings and Sundays.
Sisty’s first sermon was simple and without music, but it was well-received, Gardner said. Sisty found his meetings quickly attracted attention, which led to the formation of the First Baptist Church on June 11, 1818, where the Baptist Cemetery currently resides. The church would later move to its current King Highway location in 1885.
Sandra Mezger, the organizer of Thursday’s commemorative celebration, said when she and her fellow members of the church’s 200th anniversary committee were trying to decide how to kick off the church’s 200th anniversary celebrations, they came upon the story of the first sermon.
“We were thinking every good story starts at the beginning, so what was the very beginning?” Mezger said. “That’s why we wanted to celebrate this. It’s like the preamble to next year.”
Mezger said starting in January, the church will celebrate its bicentennial for the entire year with guest speakers, concerts, dinners and a variety of other events.
Feicht said he thinks the church has endured for 200 years because of God but also because every generation has had people who continuously cared about reaching out to others in the community. He said for two centuries, people such as Mezger and Gardner have felt called to preserve the church’s legacy.
He said taking the time to trace the church’s history back to the very beginning and pausing to commemorate the first sermon in Haddonfield is an important way to honor the parishioners who came before them.
“We owe the present to the past; we owe something to the people who have hung in there for 200 years,” Feicht said. “We’re just the present link in the chain that’s going to go on into the future.”
For more information on First Baptist Church of Haddonfield, visit http://firstbaptisthaddonfield.org.
