Marlborough church revitalizes after it joins the BCNE and develops a family-friendly, interculturally diverse ministry
The revitalization of First Baptist Church of Marlborough, MA, commenced in 2021 when Logan Loveday, a South Carolinian with close family ties to the Baptist Churches of New England (BCNE.net), became pastor of the struggling congregation and was invited to merge it with Hope Community Church, the BCNE-affiliated fellowship he planted in town in 2017.
Logan Loveday became pastor of First Baptist Church of Marlborough, MA, and was invited to merge it with Hope Community Church, the BCNE-affiliated fellowship he planted in town in 2017.
Even casual visitors to First Baptist these days will find a spiritually healthy, family-friendly, and interculturally diverse fellowship of Christ-followers. They will discover that relationships are being developed and people are finding faith that impacts their everyday lives. That was not true several years ago.
When he started Hope Community, they were meeting on Saturday nights in a second-floor space that was rented by a Brazilian BCNE congregation, Connect Baptist Church. They shared a gym and other rooms. Loveday and his core group met there for almost a year before they rented a similar place nearby and then met for worship on Sunday mornings.
Two churches unite to serve their city
Hope Community counted thirty-five members and participants before COVID-19 but, during the pandemic, some families moved away. After the global crisis subsided, attendance was about twenty-five. Meanwhile, across town, the interim pastor of the twelve-member First Baptist decided to retire and ask BCNE Executive Director Terry Dorsett for advice about uniting the two churches.
Loveday met Katie Dorsett, the daughter of Terry and Kay Dorsett, when they were undergraduates at North Greenville University in South Carolina. A South Carolinian who was born in Conway and raised in Myrtle Beach, he received a Bachelor of Christian Studies with an emphasis in youth ministry (2012). After they married, the pastor studied online and received a Master of Arts in Church Planting from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (2016).
Logan and Katie Loveday with their children Emery, Lawson, and Ellie.
Katie Loveday, who is First Baptist’s Children’s Director, shares her husband’s passion for communicating the love of Jesus Christ with those she encounters. She trusted Jesus Christ with her life when she was a child. The Lovedays are parents of three children, Emery, Lawson, and Ellie.
Logan Loveday committed his life to Jesus Christ at a young age and he experienced God’s call to pastoral ministry while attending a ninth-grade summer camp, where he preached his first sermon. “I’m pretty sure I plagiarized ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’” the July 1741 sermon delivered in Enfield, CT, by Jonathan Edwards, the famed revivalist preacher, theologian, and author.
While growing up “in a traditional church and culture,” Loveday said he “felt the call to help others experience a relationship with Jesus, rather than stay stuck in religious traditions.” He never dreamed that the calling would feature living in New England, but God’s plan for the Lovedays included a move to West Hartford, CT, a few miles south of where the famous sermon helped to launch America’s First Great Awakening.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
The 2025 BCNE annual meeting, which is now called the “Nexus Conference,” will be held November 7-8 at First Baptist Church of Marlborough. The conference theme will be “Above and Beyond,” based on Ephesians 3:20.
Interculturally diverse church provides sermon translation
Reflecting the reality of the city itself, First Baptist these days is interculturally diverse. The 140+ members or regular attenders are from Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Guyana, Haiti, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, and the United States. The worship services are translated simultaneously from English into Portuguese to serve the large number of Brazilians—about ten percent of the 41,179 (2023) population—who call Marlborough, a city nineteen miles east of Worcester, their home.
The Worcester Business Journal, in 2019, said “Brazilian-Americans have transformed MetroWest communities like Framingham and Marlborough.” The publication also stated that, “In general, Brazilian-born Massachusetts residents earn considerably less than their native-born peers,” which can be seen in what Loveday said about purchasing a home in 2017 for his then-growing family.
Marlborough “was—but maybe not so much anymore—one of the most affordable places to live” in Eastern Massachusetts, said Loveday. That statement was advertised as a selling point when the Lovedays were looking to buy a home after three years living above a funeral home and planting Faith Fellowship Church on the campus of the University of Hartford, West Hartford, CT.
“Marlborough is historically pretty old. There wasn’t much renovation going on, and so everything was cheaper, but nearby we have Westborough, Northborough, and Southborough, which are much more expensive.” Northborough is where the BCNE offices and retreat center are located.
“Housing costs in Marlborough are among some of the highest in the nation, although real estate prices here don’t compare to real estate prices in the most expensive communities in Massachusetts,” according to an online report.
Members of the church sitting in the balcony whisper the sermon translation in Portuguese, which is delivered wirelessly. French translation is next for the Haitians. “I believe that our church continues to represent what our community is made up of. It looks a lot like our city and surrounding areas,” the pastor noted.
Since his message is translated live, Loveday has “to write and think through my sermons with a reminder that someone is translating everything I’m saying.” Some of the colloquial sayings, the idioms, that he would use are not understood as they might be by English-speaking Western hearers.
Outreach includes hosting a parade float
The members of First Baptist join in the city’s annual prestigious Labor Day parade.
If a church is to be revitalized, their ministry must extend beyond their own walls. The first year as pastor of the united church, Loveday focused “on making sure we went through a gospel, so we made preaching and teaching really easy [to understand]. Everyone was unified under the gospel. We had a lot of fellowship events to bridge gaps and build trust.”
With the physical and financial assistance of many partners including by church teams from North Carolina, First Baptist holds or participates in several community outreach events each year. They join in the city’s annual prestigious Labor Day parade that passes beside the church by setting up a food booth, opening the building for restroom use, distributing candy, renting bounce house and similar inflatables—and even creating and staffing their own float in the parade.
For two years, church members and visiting teams refurbished their building from top to bottom. Almost everything that stood still was painted. As a result, their reputation in the city was also renewed as the church came alive for another generation.
“I love New England. I think people are hungry for the word, and I think they’re hungry for faith conversations. I love seeing this even in our own church,” the pastor concluded.
Historically large church needed revitalizing
Like every congregation, First Baptist has a unique origin story. It started in the years immediately following the Civil War when, the church’s history reports, the “first hope of Baptist interest” in what was just a village of some 8,500 residents began. A home prayer group organized themselves as a church with nineteen charter members on April 14, 1868.
Eventually the membership numbers were remarkable. “At the church’s 90th celebration [1958],” the church web site reports, “Our membership is 350 resident members and sixty-six non-resident members. In all ninety years, it is safe to say that over 3,000 persons have come under the influence of the church as members.”
In the years that followed, though, the church’s membership and attendance declined dramatically because of World War II, financial losses, and the pandemic. Before they invited Loveday to be the pastor, the dozen remaining members were thinking of donating their historic building to the city.
The church was founded on a solid missionary foundation: “To go into all the world and preach the gospel—the gospel message of faith when many are faithless; of hope when many are discouraged; of love when present day collectivism cries hate!” It may be observed that those are still the values of First Baptist in 2025.
Coaching and encouraging other pastors
Paul’s challenges in the form of probing questions about preachers and preaching (Rom 10:13-15) “was a big influence for me when we first entered into church planting.” In one of his part-time jobs these days, Loveday still draws on the apostle’s probing inquiries and on other Bible passages as he coaches pastors who want to revitalize their own churches. Last year, the BCNE appointed him to be the Church Revitalization Catalyst.
He works closely with Gary Moritz, the Church Revitalization Director, to coach small groups of pastors. Loveday leads a monthly Saturday cohort on Zoom of four or five other pastors; he offers them training and encouragement. The confidential conversations are augmented by telephone calls and visits—and prayer.
“They may ask me for some ideas. We brainstorm through some of their plans and then we pray together.” In addition, he also consults with other pastors and churches that, he said, “are in a very similar situation” that he was when asked to lead First Baptist. Some churches are looking to dually align with their denomination and the BCNE, some are seeking a pastor, and some just need to be revitalized.
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When revitalizing a church, as Loveday did at First Baptist, the pastor and leaders must “listen to the Holy Spirit and to the people there, as well as listen for the reputation of the church in the community—or the lack of reputation,” he stated. If church revitalizers keep detailed notes as they reflect on what they hear,” he added, “you’ll hear dreams, you’ll hear needs, you’ll hear concerns, and you’ll be able to start building a list of things to do, things to pray for.”
Honoring Loveday’s revitalization coaching
At the annual meeting in November, the BCNE recognized Loveday’s church revitalization accomplishments with the 2024 Raymond C. Allen Award for Excellence in Evangelism and Missions. In 2023, First Baptist baptized ten people; in 2024 they baptized nine.
In 1983, Allen was asked to be the evangelism director for the general association of churches that became the BCNE. For the next twenty years, he led ministries of evangelism, youth evangelism, brotherhood, stewardship, and disaster relief. After retiring, he was named interim director of missions for the Greater Boston Baptist Association and then director of missions for the Massachusetts Baptist Association.