A Living Legacy on Union Avenue (1902-2027)
Union Avenue Baptist Church gathers at 2181 Union Avenue in Midtown Memphis, in a building where Baptist worship has been continuous for 125 years. The congregation traces its roots to a small group of believers who came together in 1902 to plant a church around the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it is now walking through an eleven-month anniversary celebration that runs through August 2027. Senior Pastor Jeff Williamson has called this season "A Living Legacy," a reminder that the story of the church is still being written by the people who walk through its doors today.
The anniversary is more than nostalgia. As Pastor Williamson has written, "The same gospel that gathered a handful of the faithful in 1902 is the gospel we preach today: Christ crucified, risen, and coming again. That continuity is not our achievement. It is God's faithfulness on display." The church frames its 125th year around Scripture's call to remember what God has done (Joshua 4:6-7) and to pass that memory to the next generation (Deuteronomy 6). The anniversary season draws on Hebrews 13:8 ("Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever") and Psalm 100:5 ("the Lord's faithfulness endures to all generations") as anchors for the year, and frames the church's ongoing task in Deuteronomy 6 language - remembering what God has done in service of teaching the next generation to love the Lord with all their heart, soul, and strength.
Sunday Mornings at 2181 Union
Worship gathers on Sundays at 10:45 AM at 2181 Union Avenue, and the same hour is also accessible online at unionavenue.org. Before the worship service, three parallel Sunday morning classes begin at 10:00 AM for the full span of the congregation.
KidTown, the children's ministry, opens its doors with check-in at 9:45 AM. Care and learning are offered from babies through fifth grade, divided into three rooms named after Memphis animals: Pandas (babies through Pre-K), Grizzlies (kindergarten through second grade), and Tigers (third through fifth grade). The children's ministry works through The Gospel Project curriculum on Sunday mornings and pairs it with the Foundations Bible Reading Plan during the week, a 260-day plan built around the H.E.A.R. method (Highlight, Explain, Apply, Respond). Families are challenged to read through their Bibles together each week and H.E.A.R. something from God, then on Sundays they sit down with what they have all read and dig a little deeper into one passage from the week.
UABC Students, the youth ministry for sixth through twelfth graders, also meets at 10:00 AM. Students open with a discussion-based Bible study built around the same passage their families have been reading that week, then join the rest of the church for worship at 10:45 AM. The youth group uses the Foundations teen plan, which walks students through all 66 books of the Bible in a year at five days a week, with daily devotionals and the same H.E.A.R. journaling method.
Adult Bible Fellowship classes meet in rooms across the church campus at 10:00 AM. Four open-admission classes run each Sunday: Senior Men in Room 301, Senior Women in Room 307, Single/Young Couples in Room 303, and Couples in Room 304. Each class is led by a main teacher who fosters open discussion, and the classes are organized to meet people in their present stage of life rather than as a single room.
What the Church Believes
The church holds to a historic Baptist confession of faith, summed up in eleven statements. The Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is described as the inspired Word of God, completely true without any mixture of error. The church believes in one God eternally existing in three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and confesses the classical Christian doctrines of the person and work of Christ: His virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, ascension, priestly intercession, and personal visible return.
Salvation is by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, received apart from any human merit, works, or ritual. The church observes two ordinances: baptism by immersion of a believer in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Lord's Supper, which commemorates the dying love of Christ. The church is described as a spiritual body of which Christ is the head, expressing itself in autonomous local congregations of baptized believers joined by covenant for worship, instruction, evangelism, and service. The final article looks forward to the bodily resurrection of the just and the unjust, and to eternal joy for the righteous and eternal punishment for the unrighteous.
Five Core Values and a Connect-Grow-Serve-Go Rhythm
Under the heading "What Is Most Important to Us," the church lists five core values: engaging worship that connects through prayer leading to praise; Scripture-grounded teaching; openness to all people; service-mindedness; and the Great Commission. The church describes its ministry rhythm with four verbs: Connect (people to a saving relationship with Christ), Grow (people to a growing relationship with Christ), Serve (people using their gifts in the body of Christ), and Go (people sent on mission to make disciples locally and globally). Worship follows the same pattern, with prayer leading naturally into praise and teaching that flows from Scripture.
A Summer in the Psalms: The Selah Series
The Selah series anchored the church's summer teaching through 2026. Each week walked through a single psalm, treating the Hebrew word "Selah" as an invitation to stop, attend, and let the text land before moving on. The first week, "Pause and Know," worked through Psalm 46 and called worshipers to be still before a God who is a refuge in chaos. "Pause and Offer" opened Psalm 20, where Israel's king brings a whole burnt offering (the olah, "to go up") before the battle, and was tied directly to the practice of generous, open-handed giving before the outcome is known. "Pause and Confess" sat with Psalm 32, the song David wrote after a year of silence about his sin, and walked through the progression from concealment to confession to the joy that follows forgiveness. "Pause and Remember" turned to Psalm 77 and the honesty of Asaph, who refused to be comforted, asked God five hard questions in a row, and then made the willed choice to remember God's works before his emotions caught up. "Pause and Long" closed the series in Psalm 84, where the sons of Korah confess that nothing satisfies like a single day in God's courts.
The threads woven through the series are worth lingering over. Psalm 20's burnt offering was a whole offering - nothing held back, the entire sacrifice going up in smoke - and the Selah after verse 3 sits at the altar moment itself, before the battle is decided. Psalm 32 insists that the silence we keep to protect ourselves is often the silence that destroys us, and the psalm moves from a year of groaning to immediate forgiveness the moment David names his sin out loud. Psalm 77 honors Asaph's five hard questions - "Will the Lord reject forever?... Has His faithful love ceased?... Has His promise failed?" - and uses them to show that faith does not wait to feel differently before it chooses to remember rightly. Psalm 84 gently mocks the chase for everything else by pointing to a man who would rather stand at the threshold of God's house than live in the tents of the wicked. Together, the five weeks teach that the pauses in our lives are not interruptions - they are invitations.
Audio of each of the five Selah messages is available for download, and the weekly Avenue writings expand each sermon into a "Message in a Minute" reflection.
The God of All Comfort: A Series Through 2 Corinthians
The Selah series gave way in late September to a four-week series through the opening of 2 Corinthians, "The God of All Comfort." The series walks through Paul's doxology in 2 Corinthians 1 - 4: comfort that overflows from suffering, integrity that refuses manipulation, the surpassing glory of a New Covenant ministry, and the paradox of carrying priceless treasure in fragile, ordinary vessels. The four weeks are titled "The God of all Comfort," "Sincerity, Sorrow, and the Aroma of Christ," "From Veiled Glory to Unveiled Freedom," and "Treasures in Jars of Clay." Together they lay the theological foundation for the entire letter, teaching that God's power is displayed not in spite of weakness and hardship but through it.
The Child Enrichment Center
Alongside its children's and student ministries, the church runs the Child Enrichment Center, a weekday childcare program that serves children from six weeks old through PreK 4 in a Bible-based, Christian setting. The center shares the vision and mission of Union Avenue Baptist Church, and parents in the program are welcome to attend any of the church's Bible studies and worship services. The center ministers to the whole child physically, socially, cognitively, and spiritually, provides nutritionally balanced hot lunches and two snacks a day, and runs activities that promote physical movement, sharing, and cognitive stimulation. Hours of operation are Monday through Friday from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM, with drop-off between 7:00 and 10:00 AM. There is a $50 non-refundable waitlist fee per child and a $100 non-refundable enrollment fee, and the full handbook is available as a PDF. Applications are made by emailing the daycare director.
Generations Sent Out to Serve
Local and global mission has long been part of the church's identity. One example is a member raised in the church's nursery, children's programs, and children's choir, who served through puppets and student ministry as a young person and traveled on a mission trip to Gulfport, Mississippi, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. That early experience of hands-on service reflected the very heart of what the church has always sought to instill. The same member went on to serve on staff at Hope Presbyterian Church in Memphis and at Colonial Hills, where he has served as the Middle School Director of Ministry since 2017 - one of many who have been formed at 2181 Union Avenue and sent out to invest their lives in the next generation elsewhere. The 125th-anniversary celebration calls the whole congregation to keep that pattern going: raising disciples here and sending them out.
One Saturday Each Fall: The Community Fall Festival
Each fall the church hosts a Community Fall Festival that opens the campus to the wider Memphis neighborhood for a free Saturday afternoon of food and fellowship. The day brings food trucks with autumn treats, a silent auction, an antique car show, art and craft vendors, bounce houses, and a Walking History Tour that traces 125 years of the church's story on Union Avenue. The festival has become one of the church's most visible ways of living out its Connect and Serve values with the city around it.
The Team
The pastoral staff is led by Senior Pastor Jeff Williamson, who preaches most Sundays and writes the weekly Message-in-a-Minute reflections. LaFarrah Fennell serves as the director of the Child Enrichment Center and can be reached at lafarrah@unionavenue.org for applications and questions about the program. Gabrielle (Gaby) Zittle serves as the worship and creative media director, a role that includes oversight of the church's music ministry and its online presence through Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Giving, Staying in Touch, and Finding the Church
Online giving is processed through Shelby Giving and is described by the church as an act of worship rather than an obligation. Gifts are handled through a secure SSL-encrypted connection, and contributions can also be scheduled through that portal.
For those who want to follow along at home, the church sends out daily devotionals and a weekly email update through a newsletter signup, and posts a Message-in-a-Minute reflection each week at unionavenue.org. The sermon archive stretches back several years and includes series on Philippians ("Choose Joy"), 1 Samuel ("The Last Song of David"), Easter, Genesis ("The Names of Jesus"), Acts ("Together"), and 2 Corinthians. The church is also active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok under the UABC Memphis handle.
Union Avenue Baptist Church is located at 2181 Union Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee 38104, and can be reached by phone at 901-276-5421. Members can also update their information through the church's Planning Center portal. The church's 125th anniversary celebration continues through August 2027, with guest speakers returning to share what God has done through the congregation since 1902 and the whole church family, longtime and newcomer alike, invited to take part in the story that is still being written.