trinity75: a story of sending (part i)

by lenny spitale

Trinity Baptist Church sent me and Wendy out as missionaries in 1979. After we had raised our support, we joined the prison ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ and moved to California. We returned home in 1982 when I became the director of prison ministries for the Evangelistic Association of New England (now Vision New England).


While it was good to be back with our “family” at Trinity, I had always felt a burden for our hometown of Pepperell, which had long lacked a Gospel-focused church.  So around 1985, I left the elder board in order to start an evangelistic Bible study that would meet weekly in our home.

The study was nondenominational. It was to serve as an informal environment to invite townspeople, neighbors, and anyone else who might be spiritually open. As God gave us opportunities to enter into spiritual conversations around town, the weekly study provided a natural place to invite them to come and learn more. While many who came were unchurched, we also had folks from varying religious traditions, including Catholics and mainline Protestants.


About a year or so after the launch of the study, a totally unrelated circumstance developed.  A small number of believers had become disaffected with their church experience in a nearby town and had begun to meet in their homes for mutual comfort. Through mutual connections I was invited to join them on a few occasions. Eventually, our discussions began to take shape around the possibility of starting a church in Pepperell, with the idea of merging our two groups. After praying about it for some time, we decided to go ahead. We filed incorporation papers under the name of Grace Baptist Church and rented the large upstairs room of the old Grange Hall. When Trinity heard the news about these developments, it was met with enthusiasm. This was partly because a heart for missions had always been in their DNA, but also because the endeavor in Pepperell included a few of their own people.

The merging of the two groups went well for quite some time, but this period of unified enthusiasm was disrupted by a growing dissatisfaction that surfaced among a few members. It was then that the elders agreed that the two sides should separate amicably. The result was that Grace Baptist remained at the Grange, and our group began to meet at our home on Groton Street. Despite our human weaknesses, the Chief Shepherd’s gracious hand was still at work. The two groups became two churches, and today they both stand firm as solid Gospel witnesses in the town of Pepperell. 

Our first Sunday as a new entity began on November 13, 1988, when a group of 25-30 people made their way to the back room of our house on Groton Street. For the following Sunday, I prepared a bulletin for the service. Since I didn’t think it fitting that a church bulletin should lack a church’s name, I chose “Pepperell Christian Fellowship” to place at the top. As it was passed around on Sunday, I explained that the insertion was only a stopgap measure until we could decide on an official name. Someone asked, “What’s wrong with this name?” And one or two others verbalized the same. A little surprised, I asked what the others thought. Everyone agreed that we should go with the name on the bulletin. And so it was....


(Continued in Part II)