Midway Baptist Church

Midway Baptist Church. Organized July 28, 1852. Midway, a part of Barbour County in the mid-19th century, was also known as Five Points, a small community of a handful of dwellings, two stores, and a Methodist church of logs. In this Methodist church, Joel Willis, J.M. Thornton, Robert G. Hall, M.B. Johnston, W.J. Coleman, and Lorenzo Faulk met in the summer of 1852 to organize the Baptist Church of Five Points. Articles of Faith and Decorum were approved August 31 and Joel Sims was called as the first pastor. By April 1855, the Five points church was being referred to in its own records as the Baptist Church of Midway.

The southwest corner of Feagin’s field was selected as a building site in December 1852 and, in February 1853, a frame structure with glass windows, but no steeple, was dedicated. A steeple and bell were added to the building in 1859 and gas lamps replaced candles in 1869. In 1872 the Church was rebuilt with the original materials at hand. Renovations in 1902 and 1930 added stained glass windows. Sunday School rooms, restrooms, and a kitchen but the structure has retained some of its original building materials and rests upon its original site.

The Church has been actively associated with other congregations since its beginnings in the Salem Association of Barbour County to the Bullock Centennial Association of the present. It has been associated with the Baptist State Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention since early in its history.