First Baptist Church of Minneapolis earned its name by being the first church organized in Minnesota Territory west of the Mississippi River. Ten people from St. Paul and St. Anthony organized the church March 5, 1853.
Worship services were held in homes, and Missionary E.W. Cressey, brother of Timothy Cressey, led the fellowship of believers. The group met on the second floor over a store on 2nd Avenue South. An 1893 history of Minneapolis describes the meeting room this way:
The room was rough, and its furnishings of the rudest. Seats were few, but not for believers, made of planks and supported by empty boxes and nail kegs. The pulpit corresponded, a platform six or eight inches high, for top board smoothed by a saw and supported by two side pieces of the same sort, with pieces of lath nailed on to brace it up. The worshippers, however, were not troubled by their uncouth surroundings. Prayer, praise, and holy thoughts hallowed the place for them.
Rev. A.A. Russell candidated and was called as pastor in this hall on June 2, 1854. A Sunday school began a month later, and a library opened with two dozen books. A number of men served as pastors for short periods of time. Rev. Amory Gale led the congregation from July 1857 until June 1858. He left to become General Missionary Explorer in Minnesota, a position he held for 16 years.
The building erected at 3rd & Nicollet was the largest meeting place in Minneapolis at the time, but by 1857, the congregation built a larger house of worship at 5th & Hennepin. The congregation’s final move occurred in 1885 when it found its present home at 1021 Hennepin Ave. Charles A. Pillsbury and his sons Charles A. and Frederic donated $8,000 for the church organ.
First Baptist planted four churches in the 1870s and 1880s, including Fourth Baptist, currently located in Plymouth, and 1st Swedish Baptist, known as Bethlehem Baptist today.
William Bell Riley, nicknamed the Grand Old Man of Fundamentalism, served as pastor from 1897 to 1942. Riley’s fight for the fundamentals of the faith will be discussed at a later time, but First Baptist, Minneapolis no longer aligns itself with Fundamental Baptists.
Sources:
History of the City of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Volume 1, edited by Isaac Atwater, 1893.
fbcminneapolis.org
