|
|
 Our Story 
1955 - In June, Temple Baptist Church began as a mission of Tabernacle Baptist Church. With fifty-eight charter members the Temple Mission began its ministry. Rev. Harry Crump was called in December 1955 as the first pastor.
1958-1960 - In December 1958, Rev. L. D. Munn was asked to serve as the new pastor. As the membership continued to grow the congregation began to see the need for a building program. This resulted in a new complex for Temple, a Sanctuary-Education Building, which was completed in late 1960.
1969 - In November 1969, Rev. J. C. McBride was called as pastor. During his ministry, a youth and bus evangelism ministry was established. As attendance grew through the bus ministry, a fleet of buses was needed to transport the children attending.
1978 - In March 1978, we extended the call to Rev. William H. “Bill” Voorhes to serve as pastor. MasterLife, a program of in-depth discipleship training and a pilot program of the Southern Baptist Convention in-depth training in discipleship began in August 1981 with 8 members enlisted and continued through six generations of MasterLife. The program and other study courses resulted in Temple acquiring the honor and distinction of being second in the nation for receiving the most Study Course awards in all subject areas in the Southern Baptist Convention for 1981-82.
1981-1984 - In 1981, the indebtedness of the Sanctuary was paid. That same year we saw the need to expand God’s work. We began steps to begin a mission at River Bend, a growing community of New Bern. Twelve families from Temple ventured forth to bring this new work to reality. By July 1982, the mission had its first pastor, Rev. Alvin Morgan, and began plans for building a sanctuary-education complex. In November of 1982, the building had been completed and dedicated to God’s work. River Bend Baptist Mission was constituted as a church in January 1984, under the new name River Bend Baptist Church.
1991-1997 - Rev. Lee Ray Greene was called as pastor in June 1991. Rev. Greene continued to direct the expansion program at Temple with the proposed facility being a Family Life Center. This new facility housed a large kitchen area, fellowship hall (which was to serve as a gymnasium for basketball and volleyball) and eight additional classrooms with the downstairs rooms each having adjoining rest rooms. The building was occupied by February, followed by a dedication in April 1994. At the same time, renovation to the sanctuary was being completed. This renovation consisted of enlarging the pulpit and choir area.
1996 - Temple began a preschool in January 1996. By January 1998, the preschool had an enrollment of 32 children.
1998 - Dr. Stephen E. Cobb answered Temple’s call to serve as pastor and began his ministry in June 1998. Under his leadership and introduction of the “Purpose Driven Church”, we realized further increase in growth. Dr. Cobb implemented the new members classes that helped disciple members in the purpose of the church, realize the Spiritual gifts of each individual, and enabled them to grow spiritually as well as disciple others. During this period, a major renovation to our nursery area was completed. This renovation took away very little educational space while providing a much more contemporary nursery.
2000-2002 - Because of the continued growth, a need to expand became more evident. In order to alleviate the problems of parking space and seating in worship service, two services each for Sunday morning worship and Bible Fellowship Group were implemented in October 2000. The Long Range Planning Team asked the church for permission to relocate the church in order to provide areas of growth for its ministries. This plan was agreed upon and a search began in October 2000 for property on which to relocate and build larger facilities. This search led to purchase of 27 acres of land adjacent to the New Bern YMCA in the Ghent neighborhood. As church growth continued, in April 2002 we added a third Sunday morning worship and Bible Fellowship Group.
June 25, 2006 - Temple moved into our new Kingdom Resource Center at 1500 Kingdom Way. There were 1830 people in attendance (over 700 more than our last service at Henderson Avenue), more than 100 first time visitors and more than 20 families joined Temple. All this is just proof that God is a good God.
2007 - Present - After we moved into our new building, we projected that it would be 2009 before we had a Family Life Center. God had bigger plans! We opened our Family Life Center in October and had our first staff cooked meal on November 14.
|
|
sign up for our e-news