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By Christine Weerts

Special to the Selma Times Journal

Grace Shannon was a new bride when she began worshiping at New Bride Missionary Baptist Church in 1957 with her husband, Earnest. In fact, New Bride pastor the Rev. D.V. Garrett married the young couple on the bride’s front porch.

This Sunday, Grace, 87, will be recognized as the oldest member of the Sardis church, which is celebrating its 138th anniversary. She will be leading the “Gone But Not Forgotten” memorial moment during the service, which begins at 1 p.m.

“I have enjoyed my church.  I never had a mind to go anywhere else,” said Grace, who with her husband raised their five children there. Earnest died in 1988, and Grace moved to Selma and was a caregiver at Cedar Hill, but she faithfully attended New Bride, singing in the choir, teaching Sunday School, and raising funds for pastor’s aid and missions.

“I really like our current pastor, Elder F.D. Jackson. He always brings the Word,” said Grace, who was baptized as a youth at Good Hope MB Church in Pleasant Hill, where her father was a deacon.
Rev. Jackson, serving since 2011, will preside over the special service on June 22, the date chosen as was closest to the founding of the church in a brush arbor in 1887 by members from New Shiloh M.B. Church.

“The service is an anniversary and a homecoming,” Jackson said, “and should fill up the sanctuary.” The Rev. Thomas Patterson of Brein Community Church in Burnsville is guest speaker on a program that will include the church history and music, led by Geraldine Givhan, Grace’s goddaughter and church musician for over 30 years. A catered meal follows.

Pastor Patterson’s father, Rev. J. H. Patterson, served as a pastor at New Bride from 1932-1948.  During his tenure, a brick-lined baptizing pool was built next to the church. Members James L. Jackson, Jr., 74, deacon, and Elza Landers, 81, trustee, remember being baptized there as children.

Many signs point the way to the church, which is a lonely outpost at 1691 County Road 134, at the end of the paved road in Sardis. There is no history on how the distinct name “New Bride” was chosen, except for its reference to New Testament accounts referring to the church as the “bride” of Christ. (Ephesians, Revelation). A simple white clapboard church was built in late 1887; Deacon Jackson remembers the windows that swung open, to beat the summer heat.

The large vibrant congregation has dwindled over the years to about 30 regular attendees today, as older members died and younger members left the community. Like many churches, New Bride never completely rebounded from the church closure during COVID-19.  Gone are the days when you never questioned going to church, said Pastor Jackson. “You didn’t have a headache on Sunday because you knew it didn’t matter. You were going to church and Sunday School.”

Pastor Jackson felt the call to ministry at age 17, but enlisted in the U.S. Army after high school,  serving in Da Nang, Vietnam from 1960-1961 in airborne infantry. Later, he worked for Fisher Body Company, a division of General Motors, in Detroit until a car fell off the assembly line and broke his back. Jackson returned home to Birmingham, where he finally answered God’s call, earning his bachelors and master’s degrees in divinity from Baptist Bible College, now Birmingham Easonian Baptist College. He drove a truck for 30 years and pastored churches in Demopolis (Eastern Star) and Selma (Mt. Zion) before coming to New Bride.

“Too many pastors today see themselves as motivational speakers preaching the prosperity Gospel,” he said. He preaches the Biblical Gospel, not entertainment.

New Bride has had its struggles; a heavy storm sent trees across the roof, severely damaging the church in 1966. Their beloved Pastor J. L. Worthey was killed in a car crash July 28, 1999 on his way to church for its annual revival services.

After the storm, members built concrete block around the original wood structure, and in following years adding indoor plumbing and an indoor baptistery. Later renovations included bricking in the church, adding air conditioning, stained glass windows, a remodeled sanctuary, new ceiling, floor, carpet, steeple and roof. In 1995, the church expanded with a fellowship hall and classrooms.

Everyone is invited to the anniversary, which promises like all its services to be “joyful worship,” Grace says. One of the rural church signs echoes the invite: “Come and worship with us. The Door is open, come on in.”