Kiwanis Club Honors Fellowship Church Granite State with a Community Impact Award

Aaron Cockrum and his family pose with a Community Impact Award given to Fellowship Church in New Hampshire

Aaron Cockrum takes seriously God’s challenge to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you . . . and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Apparently, town officials and civic leaders in Hooksett, NH, concur.

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah’s admonition in a letter he sent from Jerusalem to the exiles and their leaders in ancient Babylon (Jeremiah 29:7) is relevant to contemporary New England. Its faithful application by a transplant from Missouri was honored with a prestigious award on May 15. Cockrum moved to the Southern New Hampshire town in August 2021 to plant a community-focused and “radically-different” church.

The Kiwanis Club of Hooksett supports an array of not-for-profit organizations and events — everything from a food pantry to a golf tournament. They presented Cockrum and the thirty members of Fellowship Church Granite State (FCGS) with one of its Community Impact Awards at a buffet dinner at Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester.

“One of the first tasks for Aaron Cockrum, the church’s Lead Pastor and a former union ironworker foreman, who identifies himself as an ‘undeserving yet completely grateful and forgiven sinner,’” was to discover ways that he and his congregation could “serve their community,” the Kiwanis Club’s online tribute reads.

“The overwhelming response to their generous volunteerism was thankfulness, because, as Cockrum described it, ‘the town officials said they never had a church ask how they could help the community,’” the tribute adds.

Church members, friends, and visiting short-term missions teams from other states helped Kiwanis members plan and execute their Winter Carnival and Beautify Hooksett Day. They also painted walls inside the town hall. The congregation gathers for worship and other meetings in the town hall’s gymnasium.

FCGS assisted with the town’s Old Home Days, painted dugouts at a baseball field, helped to conduct a local gathering of the National Night Out campaign that promotes police-neighborhood partnerships, made a donation to the police department for their LEAD drug program, and assisted their neighbors with other events such as the annual Trail Race and Kids Fun Run and a Bike and Car Safety Day. Next month the church will hold a Basketball Camp in the town hall gym and cosponsor a Summer Camp. They also host an annual Easter Egg Hunt and cosponsor “Trunk or Treat” programs with four other evangelical churches.

Just before the church’s first anniversary, which was March 26, Cockrum received a phone call informing him that he and his flock had been nominated for the annual award that is given to “the person or entity that has the greatest impact in the community.” Fellowship Church is the first church to receive the award. The former atheist from Kansas City serves Hooksett without a thought of recognition. “We just are trying to live out our vision to be a church for the city and for the kingdom.”

The Kiwanis Club leader who called the pastor described FCGS as “an absolute godsend for this community,” which “coming from a secular organization has been amazing,” Cockrum stated.

“What an honor to receive this award! We love our hometown of Hooksett and we love being able to bless the community at every opportunity! We want people to see church as something of value in their community and their lives, and we earnestly seek to be a church for the city, [and] for the kingdom,” the lead pastor wrote on Facebook.

FCGS, which affiliates with the 380+ Baptist Churches of New England congregations, is not the only BCNE church in the village of some 15,000 people. Harvest Baptist meets on the other side of the Merrimack River. The two churches cooperate and cosponsor numerous community events.

“Pastor Aaron, his family, and the saints of Fellowship Church have made an amazing impact in the town of Hooksett in a very short period of time with a relatively small group of people. Their focus ‘for the City and for the Kingdom’ is contagious,” said Rich Clegg, New Hampshire Regional Coordinator for the BCNE.

“Not only has Fellowship Church faithfully served their community, [but] this heart of service has encouraged other churches in Hooksett to be more engaged in serving their neighbors,” he added. Cockrum was a pastoral intern at FaithBridge Church, Manchester, before launching FCGS. Clegg is also pastor of FaithBridge.

Hooksett is located in the Granite State’s south-central region between Manchester and Concord, just 43 miles west of Greenland, where forty people gathered on August 17, 1958, “to discuss the possibility of beginning” what became the first Southern Baptist church in the six-state region served by the Baptist Churches of New England.

Fellowship Church Granite State is among the most recent congregations to join the association of churches. In just a few years, it has become a model for future church planters. 

A Massachusetts native and a New England Baptist since 1970, Dan Nicholas is the BCNE managing editor.