First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City

Christ's love to all Hear a sermon or subscribe to our feed Click here for Tom's Blog	A Heart For Our Church
	What Makes Us Who We Are? Unapologetically Urban On two different occasions in its history, First Baptist Church chose to stay downtown to be a part of the rich cultural landscape that defines urban Oklahoma City. With the rebirth of Bricktown, Downtown, and Midtown the church is in the ideal location to reach across generational, economic, and social boundaries in the name of Christ. Our location and our active engagement in our community and the world lets us proclaim with passion that we are IN THE HEART OF OUR CITY WITH A HEART FOR THE WORLD. Celebratory Thematic Worship Our worship services are probably different from anything you've experienced. All the elements - congregational worship, scripture reading, pastoral message, and choir offering - combine and move us together toward a common theme. Each week is different from the last. Our goal in a service is for the Spirit to speak to each heart so that we are all moved to worship and serve God fully. The music at FBCOKC embraces the best traditions of our past as well as the contemporary music of today. Style is not as important as content. Whether we are singing a familiar hymn or a chorus written in recent days, it is the desire of our ministry that people have a vital encounter with God through worship each time they join us. A Heart for Our Community We are committed to making an impact on the community around us. Our community includes some of the brightest young minds in our state. Our members study at the Oklahoma School of Science and Math. Others are graduate students studying at the OU Health Science Center. Business and government employees working in the heart of the city are among us. Our members live in historic neighborhoods, urban lofts, and places of poverty and social struggle. The ministries at FBCOKC are designed to meaningfully and relevantly impact the whole of the social mosaic that surrounds us. Last year, ministries focused on our community touched thousands as most of our congregation engaged hands-on in the ministries that best reflect their hearts and passions. A Passion for the World In the last 36 months First Baptist family members have served in diverse places like: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Guatemala, Ghana, India, and Kazakhstan. We understand that the commission to go "ends of the earth" still calls us just at it did the first disciples. A Community for the World in Our Midst The world is moving to Oklahoma City and we see that expressed in the faces of the refugees and immigrants now making the city their home. First Baptist is actively engaged in work among the refugee community and serves as the home of the United Myanmar Baptist Church. We offer a bilingual (Spanish-English) ministry that is reaching out the growing Hispanic/Latino community. The congregation is also home to an English Language Center offering personal and computer based learning options for those trying to develop their language skills. The first Sunday of each month, the various congregations and ministries come together in a multilingual worship experience. We learn with each other and from each other. We are glad to be an engaged community for the world in our midst. A Commitment to Church Planting In the first long season of its ministry, First Baptist Church was a leader in church planting in Oklahoma. Over the past five years, we have reclaimed our commitment to church planting, serving an integral part in the birth and growth of a Cowboy church in Chickasha, an Emergent congregation in OKC, and a Burmese refugee focused church. We currently host a new church plant focused on the growing downtown population and are assisting in the development of a new Hakha congregation. Our hope is to help start a new congregation every 24 months. A Teaching Church First Baptist serves as a live congregational teaching lab for students who are pursuing their sense of call into congregational ministry. Over the past few years we have hosted student interns from George W. Truett Theological Seminary, the Baptist University of the Americas, and other students seeking to define or develop their ministry gifts and skills. This summer we will be working with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Collegiate Internship program and will host three students, each at a different place in their ministry journey. We celebrate the opportunity to help shape the next generation of congregational ministers. A Collaborative Moderate Baptist Voice The Baptist religious/political landscape is ever changing. The era when simply saying a church is "Baptist" seems to have faded into the sunset of history. Finding the right words to define any congregation is complex as there is always a healthy diversity of v iewpoints in any Baptist family. But three words accurately describe the First Baptist family overall. The first word is "collaborative." While FBCOKC withdrew from the Southern Baptist Convention in 2001, the congregation still partners with the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma and the Capital Baptist Association. We work with joy with the Oklahoma Baptist Home for Children. We partner missionally with the Cooperating Baptist Fellowship of Oklahoma. Internationally we partner with the Baptist World Fellowship and nationally with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. We also partner with a wide array of missionally focused organizations beyond the Baptist family. We believe we are most effective when we join our efforts with others in mission and ministry. The second word is "moderate." We see ourselves neither as the fundamentalist side of the Baptist family to our right, nor do we see ourselves as the more liberal side of the Baptist family to our left. We find ourselves among the historic Baptists who sought to live in the tension between legalism and unfettered freedom. Our congregation has affirmed the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message that was crafted under the direction of Dr. Hershel Hobbs, a former pastor of this church. The final word is "Baptist." While others have chosen to drop the word "Baptist" from their name, FBCOKC continues to embrace the Baptist heritage that has helped to shape us. We still find value in the historic Baptist tenants of believer's baptism, the autonomy of the local church, the priesthood of every believer, the divine inspiration of the Bible, and religious liberty. Intentionally Intergenerational In too many congregations the generations become naturally divided over worship style, congregational focus, or facility layout. At FBCOKC we have sought to learn how to bring the generations together by our worship design and by offering intergenerational mission and ministry opportunities. While each generation brings its own distinctiveness, we believe we all have much to contribute and much we can learn with and from one another. A Place Where Men and Women are Valued in Leadership Galatians 3:28-29 tells us There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. We believe this passage speaks the truth and gladly embrace men and women as equal in the eyes of God and equally qualified for congregational leadership as both members and ministers. A Spirit of Expectation We are in the midst of an exciting time in the life of First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City. Just was we are witnessing the revitalization of downtown Oklahoma City, the church is experiencing its own season of renewal. New singles and families are finding their way into the life of the church. Our children's ministry is growing by leaps and bounds and our youth ministry is reaching students from an ever growing list of middle school and high school campuses. We have seen the rise of the 20-somethings and the choir loft is once again full. While these are fun days, we look forward to the future with a spirit of excitement and expectation. We can hardly wait to see what God will do next. Come join us as we discover our future.