On Main Street in Malden, Massachusetts, the congregation that began in a Salem Street barn in 1803 now gathers as Malden Community Church, a church formed when First Baptist Church of Malden and Maplewood Baptist Church began worshiping together. Sunday worship is held at 11:00 a.m. in the sanctuary at 493 Main Street, in English, with hymns, choir and scripture reading. The church is also known for feeding its neighbors: members and friends prepare free meals with Bread of Life on third Fridays, and the congregation supports mission, refugee and relief work across the country and around the world.
Sunday at Eleven in the Sanctuary
Worship begins at 11:00 a.m. every Sunday in the sanctuary at 493 Main Street. The service follows a shape familiar to Baptist churches for generations: a prelude, a call to worship, hymns, prayer, an offering, a scripture reading, a sermon, a benediction and a postlude. The congregation sings, and hymns are a familiar part of the service. Contemporary songs are also led by Sugantha Jeevankumar and Chandrasekar Muthurajan, who bring a couple of songs each month alongside the traditional repertoire.
A Mission Moment during the service points the congregation toward the work of the church and its American Baptist offerings. At certain services the church covenant is read and the Lord's Supper is observed, a practice that traces back to the first communion celebrated in Faulkner's barn in January 1804. Every service is recorded, and audio and video recordings are posted so people who cannot be in the building can still hear the message and the music. Light refreshments follow worship in the church kitchen, and in summer the service moves to the air-conditioned parlor.
Nursery care for infants and toddlers is provided during worship, and children are welcome in the service itself, including the annual Children's Day when young people lead the worship and the Easter gathering with a family-friendly message and breakfast. The building is accessible: a ramp and automatic door lead in from the parking lot, and accessible restrooms were added during a renovation in the 1980s.
There is a parking lot at the church, and for large gatherings such as the Festival of Carols, parking is also available along Main Street and in the Ferry Street lot. One colorful custom is that the congregation traditionally wears red on Pentecost, the Sunday that marks the church's birthday. Directions to the building are available at the church office, and recordings of services are posted for those who cannot attend.
A Barn on Salem Street, December 1803
First Baptist Church of Malden was constituted on December 27, 1803, in William Faulkner's barn at what is now the Davenport Estate. Delegates from the Baptist churches of Boston, Beverly and Newton convened for worship; Dr. Samuel Stillman of Boston's First Baptist Church preached the recognition sermon from 1 Chronicles 29:5, asking who would consecrate his service to the Lord, and the members of the new church were welcomed with the right hand of fellowship, with Rev. Henry Pottle as pastor.
Baptisms took place at Three Mile Brook near the site of the old city hall, and the cold did not stop the practice; in winter, thick ice had to be chopped away before people could stand in the water. The first meeting house was built on land given by Francis Philips on Salem Street and dedicated in September 1804, a plain structure described in the church's records as an uncouth barn of a place with immense windows and a squat belfry whose bell rang curfew at nine.
The congregation took shape quickly. The first Lord's Supper was celebrated in January 1804, with communion vessels purchased for $17.17. Sunday school was organized under Rev. Ebenezer Nelson and became one of the oldest in Massachusetts. The church was incorporated in 1820 with authority to hold property and to lease or sell pews. Rev. John Cookson wrote the first church covenant, and the first mention of a choir comes in 1827.
The early records also show a congregation unwilling to let doctrine go unexamined. A record from 1812 titled The History of Wars and Fightings (without shedding of blood) in the Baptist Church of Malden documents the church's involvement in the debate over free will and predestination. That same Baptist commitment produced the church's most famous son, Adoniram Judson, a Malden native who left for Burma in 1815 as a foreign missionary. Services in 1888 marked the hundredth anniversary of his birth.
Two Fires and Five Houses of Worship
The congregation has built five houses of worship. The second meeting house, completed in 1843, was destroyed by fire on March 3, 1855. A third was raised on the same site in 1856 for about $12,000, and it too was damaged by fire in 1862, though the pulpit and the Bible were saved. With the country at war, the church rented the Malden Town Hall for Sunday meetings until insurance money and fundraising paid for a fourth house of worship, completed in 1864 for $11,371.42. It had a tall spire on its southwest corner, a circular driveway at the front doors, a balcony along the rear, and a baptistry beneath the pulpit.
A fifth house of worship rose beside it. The cornerstone was laid on May 16, 1890 before 800 people were gathered, and the building was dedicated on November 24, 1891. The appeal had raised $96,000, matched by a pledge from Elisha Slade Converse, so the church was free of mortgage on the day of dedication. That fifth building remains the church's home.
On the morning of February 17, 1915, fire consumed the interior of the church and collapsed the roof, though the pink Quincy granite walls stood firm. Worship continued uninterrupted in the warmth of the Parish House while donations rebuilt the sanctuary, which was dedicated a year later.
The Skinner Organ, the Tower Bells and the Windows
The sanctuary's E.M. Skinner organ is one of its most remarkable features. It was a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Costello Converse and has been called one of the finest instruments of its kind in the northeast, with about 3,000 pipes, many of them visible to the congregation, 45 stops, and a console from which six separate organs can be played.
The tower bells were the gift of Alvan T. Fuller, governor of Massachusetts from 1925 to 1929, in memory of his father. Cast in copper and tin, they weigh 10,500 pounds in total, from a smallest bell of 525 pounds to a largest of 1,050 pounds. They are played from a console below the belfry, and each chime carries an inscription suggested by Rev. Charles H. Moss. On Easter the bells ring at noon, and neighbors have long been invited to stand in the parking lot and listen to the hymns. Volunteers who read music operate the console as tower bell ringers.
Stained glass fills the east and west sanctuary windows, named Prophecy and Fulfillment. The windows were planned by Alvan Fuller and his sister Martha Fuller Halsey and dedicated on Easter Sunday in 1941 before a crowd of more than 1,500 people. Other named spaces include Judson Chapel, named in 1938 for Adoniram Judson, Ireland Chapel, a quiet room used for prayer and small weddings, and Fuller Hall, the meeting hall rededicated in 1937.
Living History in the Parish House
Next to the sanctuary stands the Parish House, dedicated on October 3, 1914 and raised on the site of the 1868 parsonage to give the expanding church school more rooms. When fire swept the sanctuary the following February, the Parish House sheltered the congregation and kept worship warm through the rebuilding year. Its four floors have held classrooms, offices and a large meeting hall, and the fireproof Corey Room at the lowest level preserves the church's minutes, pamphlets and artifacts.
The Parish House has long been a shared building. Triangle, Inc., an organization founded in 1971 by business leaders and their families to empower people with disabilities and their families, occupies the renovated second level. A Spanish-speaking South American congregation, Casa de Fe y Alabanza, has used the upper floor for worship and Sunday school, and Korean and Nepali Baptist congregations have shared the space as well. The basement has housed a daycare center and a Head Start program. The building has also made possible joint services in which scripture and music were shared in three languages.
Two Congregations, One Sanctuary
Maplewood Baptist Church grew out of a branch Sunday school organized in the Maplewood neighborhood in 1868. Two years later, 22 members left to help organize a Baptist church in Everett, and in 1872 the church voted that the Maplewood chapel property be transferred to the new Baptist society as soon as it was legally constituted.
Beginning on a Sunday in late 2022, Maplewood and First Baptist worshiped together at 11:00 a.m. in the Main Street sanctuary, led by Rev. Gary McClenthen, who had served Maplewood for nearly a decade. The two leadership teams described the move as a step taken one at a time, and members of both churches read a book called Better Together as they sought to understand what God might be doing. A transition task force of clergy, moderators and members from both congregations was introduced in worship, and on October 6, 2024 the new name was revealed: Malden Community Church.
The union has brought a new leadership team to the Main Street building. Rev. Gary L. McClenthen is pastor. Rev. Mark Hurd, who came from Maplewood Baptist Church and has long been active in the music ministry, serves as church moderator, chairing church council and presiding at business meetings. Matt Houk is Director of Outreach and Family Ministries.
The Pastor of Malden Community Church
Pastor McClenthen grew up in north central Illinois with two brothers and a sister, received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord at 17, and attended and graduated from Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, where he studied pastoral ministry and Christian education. He took a full-time youth pastor position near his hometown after graduation and has continued in full-time church ministry for more than four decades, serving churches in Illinois, New York and Massachusetts in the areas of youth, musical worship, discipleship and shepherding.
He has been a speaker at camps and short-term mission organizations, served briefly on the board of Vision New England, now the Evangelical Association of New England, and traveled with youth and adults on short-term missions to the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Southern Texas, Brazil and Romania. A photographer by hobby, he has used photography as a form of outreach to athletes and entertainers for more than a decade. He and his wife Tami have raised six children and have two grandchildren, and he teaches God's Word book by book, verse by verse.
Learning and Growing Together
Christian education has been a priority from the beginning. Sunday school formed under Rev. Ebenezer Nelson and was among the earliest in Massachusetts, and under Rev. Hillyer Hawthorne Straton, whose 24-year pastorate ended with his death in 1969, Christian education reached from two months old to 92 years old. Classes for men and women, a nursery, a Roger Williams class for college students, and a Mr. and Mrs. fellowship for newlyweds grew out of that work. The women's groups continue as American Baptist Women's Ministries, and the men who once met in the Morse Brotherhood now gather for a monthly breakfast.
Today a Bible study and growth group meets in the church kitchen on Tuesdays at 11:00 a.m., home groups meet in homes around Malden, and a Monday evening prayer gathering is held online. A study of James meets on the second and fourth Thursday evenings, a young men's fellowship meets on Tuesday evenings, and the church has run Vacation Bible School for children. Young people also serve in the choir: the children's choir, a handbell choir of 63 Schulmerich bells, the Singing Angels and the Ringing Halos have all provided music in worship.
Music, Carols and the Festival
Music is central to life here. The sanctuary choir, one of the finest in the area with paid section leaders and soloists, is directed by Richard Freeman, with Marilyn Glover as organ and piano accompanist. The church's musical heritage includes the work of Robert K. Love, whose choral art alumni continue to sing and whose music is remembered in a dedicated program, and the annual Festival of Carols, a gathering of choirs from across Metro Boston that has been presented in the sanctuary for more than seven decades.
The church also takes part in the ecumenical Palm Sunday concert, where area choirs, soloists and orchestra perform the Seven Last Words of Christ by Theodore Dubois at Immaculate Conception Church in Malden, with Richard Freeman featured as baritone soloist. Recordings of services are posted for people who cannot attend in person.
The Feeding Ministry on Third Fridays
One of the church's best-known ministries is its feeding ministry. Members and friends help prepare and serve meals every third Friday, with preparation beginning at 3:00 p.m. and the meal served from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Bread of Life building at 54 Eastern Avenue in Malden. The meals are open to anyone in need, including working people, senior citizens, families with children, unemployed people, disabled people and people who are homeless. No reservation is required, and guests do not need to live in Malden.
The work has grown into Bread of Life's under one roof project, which brings food pantries, evening meals, backpacks, a teen center collaboration, food for families staying in motels, grocery delivery and food access together under a single roof. That project also includes 14 affordable studio apartments owned and operated by Metro North Housing Corp to provide permanent housing for very low-income formerly homeless people. Bread of Life provides celebration dinners at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Chanukah, and at Easter and Passover, filling the gap left when holiday Meals on Wheels deliveries stop for older adults.
The church's connection to Bread of Life runs back decades. It hosted an evening meal every Friday in the early 1990s and housed Bread of Life's food pantry in the Parish House. The collection for the Souper Bowl of Caring, taken up around the Super Bowl, has gone to Bread of Life for years, and the congregation has joined the Habitat for Humanity International Food Fair, serving Korean food with the Korean Global Ark Baptist Church.
Mission Giving: From Malden to the World
The church has tied its local life to a global witness for generations. Its identification with American Baptist Churches USA and the Adoniram Judson Baptist Association shapes a mission life led by the Board of Christian Mission, chaired by Marilyn E. Glover, and the congregation takes part in four annual offerings:
- One Great Hour of Sharing, supporting emergency relief, development projects and ministries to displaced people.
- The World Mission Offering, supporting International Ministries global servants and partners in more than 70 countries.
- The Retired Ministers and Missionaries Offering, providing emergency assistance and annual thank-you checks to retired ministers, missionaries and their widowed spouses.
- America for Christ, supporting chaplaincy, aid for children in poverty, leadership development, discipleship and scholarships in the United States and Puerto Rico.
One Great Hour of Sharing began in 1949 in response to the devastation of World War II, when a national broadcast asked Americans to give generously the next morning and more than 75,000 churches responded. It now serves people in more than 80 countries. The Retired Ministers and Missionaries Offering grew out of a Communion Fellowship Offering given by American Baptist congregations from the mid-1930s and has been administered since 1977. First Baptist Church of Malden was named one of the top 25 giving churches in American Baptist Churches USA.
Its own mission story runs through Adoniram Judson, whose name is carried by the association and by Judson Chapel, and through the Baptist revival in Cuba, the 49 schools run by Hungarian Baptist Aid, a Congo hospital partnership, and support for missionaries including Tom and Terry Myers in Bulgaria and Kathy Charland in Zambia. The church also joins in the Adoniram Judson Association gatherings and builds on its own Judson heritage of education, missions and congregational life.
Neighbors, Newcomers and the Warming Center
Community work takes many forms here. The American Baptist Women's Ministries have sponsored Tools of Hope, Blanket Sunday, White Cross projects for families in Bulgaria and for new Americans in Massachusetts, and a Penny Project for children in poverty. The church collects school supplies for Housing Families, has run Operation Clothesline with hats, gloves and scarves for local agencies, and has joined prayer walks for Malden.
In winter the congregation has supported the Malden Warming Center with blankets and shelf-stable food. The church has helped resettle refugee and immigrant families, including a Cuban family in the 1960s and a Vietnamese family during the Vietnam War, and has packed welcome bags for families at Ruth's Way House and gift bags for new American families served by Massachusetts Baptist Multicultural Ministries. The congregation has also taken worship to Glen Ridge Nursing Home and to a visiting nurse service residence in Somerville, served meals to families staying in motels, and tried outreach close to home, from coffee and doughnuts at a bus stop to a laundromat love project in the neighborhood.
What This Church Believes
Malden Community Church exists, in its own words, to provide for the public worship of God and lead people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ through faith by God's grace. The congregation commits itself to a ministry relevant and meaningful to people of all ages, races and nationalities, with objectives of Christian education, Christian benevolence and spreading Christian influence throughout Malden. It is in the Baptist tradition, and people join through believer's baptism, letter of transfer, profession of faith, experience or reinstatement, after a vote of the diaconate and the right hand of fellowship.
The motto chosen for the church's bicentenary, We Know our Past, God Leads our Future, still captures its posture. That anniversary also saw the dedication of Isaac Watts' hymn O God Our Help in Ages Past to the congregation, with an acknowledgment that the God who has been their help in ages past is also their hope for years to come.
At 493 Main Street
The sanctuary, parlor, Ireland Chapel and Parish House at 493 Main Street in Malden are open to people who want to worship, to study, to sing and to serve. The people of Malden Community Church, formed from First Baptist Church of Malden and Maplewood Baptist Church, carry a history that runs from a December 1803 gathering in Faulkner's barn to a sanctuary that has hosted two congregations and a church formed from two. They sing old hymns, welcome visitors for worship at 11:00 a.m., and keep the table set for Malden's hungry neighbors on third Fridays.