Town Leaders Honor New Hope Bible Chapel Founders as Citizens of the Year for Their Sustained Dedication to the Food Pantry and the Families It Serves
A Templeton resident stopped by the pantry during a food donation drive.
When they decided fourteen years ago to plant New Hope Bible Chapel in the North Worcester County community of Templeton, Massachusetts, Bob and Michelle Cote could not have imagined what would happen in the years ahead and especially what transpired the evening of June 1 when they were called in to meet with the Select Board that governs the town.
The Cotes were surprised to learn that they were being named 2026 “Citizens of the Year” because of their “selfless” work since 2020 at the town’s only food pantry, a recognition that, according to a report by TheGardner News, “cited their sustained dedication to the local food pantry and the families it serves.”
“Town officials described the pantry as a critical source of assistance, compassion, and stability for residents during difficult times.” The Cotes “have devoted countless hours to ensuring community members have access to food and support. Their efforts were credited with helping strengthen the town by making sure neighbors in need are not overlooked,” the news article also stated.
The five-member government board serves 8,149 people (2020 census) in a town of four villages, and six churches; none of the churches are said to preach a Bible-focused gospel, quite the way Bob Cote does—as offering “a personal relationship with Christ, that he is Lord and Savior of our lives.”
A Food Affordability Crisis
Church volunteers packed Thanksgiving boxes of donated food. The Templeton Food Pantry serves more than 600 people each month.
The town has a significant food affordability crisis that Michelle Cote, director of the Templeton Food Pantry, manages without any religious restriction. “The food pantry allows me to put my faith into action. If I claim to be a follower of Jesus, then I need to be his hands and feet. I get to not only give bread for physical nourishment, but I also get to offer the Bread of Life [John 6:35] to folks. Lastly, the Bible speaks volumes, in both the Old and New Testaments, about our responsibility to the poor among us.”
The town leases the pantry, which is housed on the lower level of the senior center, to the church for just one dollar a year. The Cotes, who had dated while high school students in Rhode Island and have been married forty-three years, and their team of volunteers have been remedying the crisis one bag of groceries at a time. They also take the time needed to minister to the spiritual and social needs of more than 600 people a month.
“One morning, after it had rained all night, there was a gentleman on the lawn near the food pantry,” she recalled in an email. “He was obviously homeless (which is very rare in Templeton) and had slept outside the night before. His clothes, shoes, and socks were soaking wet.”
That day, she had “the privilege of giving him food, drying his shirt and socks in a clothes dryer next door, and talking to him about Jesus. I’ve never seen him again. Could he have been an angel?” she asked, with reference to Hebrews 13:2 (ESV): “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
Last November when her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were cut off for a month, a young single mother of five visited the food pantry. “She was noticeably uncomfortable about coming to a food pantry and said she had never had to go to one before,” noted Michelle Cote.
“Immediately, I reassured her that there was no shame in coming and we were just so happy to have the opportunity to help. My volunteers and I loaded her vehicle with groceries for her and her family and she was in tears, overwhelmed with gratitude.”
“My motivation comes from the Lord,” wrote Michelle Cote, a certified health coach and a graduate of the University of Rhode Island with a Bachelor of Science in Food Science and Nutrition. The first class she took at the university was Food in Affluence and Poverty. Since then she has been passionate about helping people, especially those with health and nutrition issues.
The mother of three home-schooled the couple’s children and later taught nutrition at a Christian school. Today, she divides her time between being the pantry’s director and the church’s operations manager. “What I enjoy most is the fact that this ministry truly is making a difference in our corner of the world,” Michelle Cote concluded.
Commitment to Community Ministry
Bob Cote echoed his wife’s commitment to community engagement. Since moving to town in 2012, “we had always been looking for ways to be involved in the community. We figured if we could serve them in meaningful ways, we’d be the hands and feet of Jesus in this community, and that would be the best thing we could do. So we looked for all kinds of opportunities within the first two years that we were here.”
When Templeton celebrated its own 250th anniversary, they held a parade along Baldwinville Road. “They had a huge parade and we decided to make a statement” to introduce the new church in town. They communicated that “we’re here, we love you, and we care about you!”
The Templeton Select Board honored Bob and Michelle Cote as 2026 Citizens of the Year for their sustained dedication to the food pantry and the families it serves. “My motivation comes from the Lord,” she said.
To make this point clearly, the Cotes purchased 8,000 bottles of water, put them on ice, and handed out the free water with a message about their church plant. “It was such a hot day. We handed out the free ice-cold water to anybody who wanted it through the whole parade route. It was well received; it was ‘an ice breaker’, so to speak,” the pastor commented.
They organized other outreach efforts including participating in an annual art and craft fair, at which they raffled off gift baskets for the benefit of the food pantry.
In 1994, the Cotes planted Worcester City Baptist Church, a Baptist Bible Fellowship International (BBFI) congregation. Two years later they merged the fellowship with Adams Square Baptist Church, also in Worcester, Massachusetts, but they did not join the regional church association.
By the time they launched New Hope Bible Chapel, after leading the two Worcester churches for a combined seventeen years, Bob Cote reflected, “we were pretty much independent. The BBFI’s Massachusetts chapter did not support our starting a new church in [Templeton] because it was in the territory of another [BBFI] church some twenty-one miles away. This was the breaking point for me because they supposedly stood for planting churches, but it was in word only.”
When Bob Cote met David Jackson, formerly the Baptist Churches of New England (BCNE) church planting director and strategist but now the North American Mission Board’s Replant Team Specialist for the Eastern US, Jackson “was intrigued about my time in Worcester and my experience in planting churches. He invited me to a few lunch meetings with new church planters,” the Templeton pastor recalled.
“This is where I was introduced to the Baptist Churches of New England, and to their desire to plant churches and fund them—something I had not experienced before. As I began researching their history and heart for the gospel, I knew this was a good fit.”
New Hope Bible Chapel joined the BCNE in October 2017 and Bob Cote has been a BCNE Board of Directors member for the past four years. The effective community ministry being practiced in Templeton would be a good model for churches throughout the region. The church “does a lot of great work in many areas, but they are especially effective running the food pantry that they took over from the town. That’s just amazing,” said BCNE Executive Director Terry Dorsett.
A new report from the Greater Boston Food Bank finds more people in Massachusetts are food insecure now than before the pandemic. The 6th Annual Massachusetts Food Access Report indicates that food insecurity has more than doubled since 2019, and now 40% of households are struggling to get the food they need.
A new report from the Greater Boston Food Bank finds more people in Massachusetts are food insecure now than before the pandemic. The 6th Annual Massachusetts Food Access Report indicates that food insecurity has more than doubled since 2019, and now 40% of households are struggling to get the food they need.
Consider making a generous gift to the Baptist Foundation of New England’s endowed
HUNGER MINISTRY FUND