The Story of God’s Faithfulness to Capitol Hill Baptist Church
Jesus Is Committed to the Church
Jesus’s promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church (Matt. 16:18) was not given to any particular church but to the church universal. No local church is promised that it will remain until Christ’s return. Rather, from the days of the apostles, new churches have been birthed and rebirthed, died and disappeared to this day. But though not given to any particular church, Jesus’s promise to the church universal will not be fulfilled apart from the local church as members faithfully pass the torch of the gospel from one generation to the next.
Oftentimes, however, our zeal for gospel advance exceeds our wisdom and our trust in God’s ordinary means. Like the Israelites of old, we are more impressed with the height of Saul than the heart of David. So we overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what God can do in the long run. We settle for new programs rather than investing in people. And we operate in fear rather than by faith in God’s promises. In a dizzying world of distractions and new methods, where do we look for models of quiet faithfulness that endures?
From Celestia A. Ferris’s first prayer meeting in November 1867 onward, the story of Capitol Hill Baptist Church reminds us that the work of God has been carried on by ordinary people who lived hidden lives and who rest in unvisited tombs. Some, such as Celestia’s husband, Abraham Ferris, did not even live to see the church planted in 1878. But they believed that the local church was a cause worth giving their lives for, even if they did not see the results in their own lifetimes. And it is only because of their quiet faithfulness that the church is what it is today. As Francis McLean wrote in 1886, “We are working partly for those who come after us.”1 Or as Matt Schmucker told his wife at one of the church’s lowest moments in 1992, “We’re here for the people who will come.”2
A Light on the Hill
Caleb Morell
This engaging Capitol Hill Baptist Church biography shares the real-life stories of ordinary people in an extraordinary place, revealing how God works through faithful church bodies.
In our age of megachurches and celebrity pastors who burn hot and fast and rarely last, the idea of unpaid lay members spending their lives for local churches sounds absurd. But the fruit speaks for itself, and 150 years later, the gospel is still being proclaimed from the pulpit of Capitol Hill Baptist Church. What factors and conditions contribute to gospel faithfulness? How does a church preserve the gospel? What factors contribute to church health? How does a healthy church steward success and grow without becoming unhealthy?
The relevance of these questions is nowhere more clearly indicated than in the alarming rate that churches are closing their doors around our nation and cities today. In their 2023 book The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge describe a religious shift in the last twenty-five years greater than at any other time in American history, as more people have left the church than all those who became Christians during the First and Second Great Awakenings and the Billy Graham crusades combined.3 Many of these empty pews indicate churches that abandoned the gospel and ceased to be churches long before their buildings were converted to condominiums. Others left the city due to rising rates of crime and have yet to return to their neighborhoods of origin. To this day, few of Washington’s oldest churches remain centered on the gospel and present in their neighborhoods.
Though hardly the oldest Baptist church in Washington, DC, Capitol Hill Baptist Church has not moved on from the gospel nor moved on from its location. Ultimately, the church stayed centered on the gospel and present in the place God planted it because of the ordinary people who worked, prayed, sowed, and stayed. This is the story of the church that stayed.
What will it take for the torch of the gospel to be passed to another generation?
This is not a story of a perfect church. It contains as many warnings as it does positive examples. There were fights, splits, conflicts, and dissensions. There were contentious members’ meetings filled with vitriol and spite. There were as many nights of tearful sowing as there were days of joyful reaping. But throughout seasons of plenty and seasons of scarcity, the light of the gospel has continued to shine on Capitol Hill.
Early in the life of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, the bulletins often contained this prayer: “May the Metropolitan Baptist Church continue to be ‘A Light Set on a Hill.’”4 The prayer combines the two images from Jesus’s words in Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” From its earliest days, Capitol Hill Baptist Church understood itself to be a light on the Hill. Not the light but a light. As the church’s music director wrote in 1963, “Therefore we will look to the future and work in the present and those future generations shall look back on us and say, ‘Yes, the light still burned brightly on Capitol Hill.’”5
Capitol Hill Baptist Church has navigated the past century and a half as an evangelical witness in Washington. Through wars and pandemics, racial unrest and church splits, God has kept the light of the gospel shining on Capitol Hill. Along the way, we are introduced to the ordinary people who made history, as Capitol Hill Baptist Church was transformed from a small congregation in sleepy East Washington to a thriving congregation just blocks away from the center of world power.
Behind all of the events and figures through the history of Capitol Hill Baptist Church is the eternal God and Lord of history who is writing the story of this church, and of every church, into a tapestry of grace that will stretch through eternity.
Is the light of the gospel still shining in your church? What will it take for the torch of the gospel to be passed to another generation? It will take ordinary men and women who share the conviction of missionary Jim Elliot, whose immortal words are etched into a pillar on the edge of CHBC’s property: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”6 It will take patience, perseverance, and—above all—prayer so that if the Lord tarries, it will yet be said, “The light still burns brightly on Capitol Hill.”
Notes:
- Clerk’s Annual Report, December 31, 1886, MS 1583b, box 6, folder 5, CHBC Archives.
- Matt Schmucker, interview with the author, September 7, 2022, part 1, Washington, DC.
- Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan P. Burge, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Reflective, 2023), 5.
- Fortieth Anniversary Celebration of Gilbert A. Clark’s Class, March 4, 1938, MS 1360, box 5, folder 25, CHBC Archives.
- John D. Cochran, “85 Years on Capitol Hill,” February 24, 1963, MS 1371, box 5, folder 27, CHBC Archives.
- Quoted in Elisabeth Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1981), 172.
This article is adapted from A Light on the Hill: The Surprising Story of How a Local Church in the Nation's Capital Influenced Evangelicalism by Caleb Morrell.
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