North Tiverton Baptist Church (NTBC) was evidently established in 1885, according to a date posted on our original building. The name on the building is also Temple Chapel. Apparently, Temple Baptist Church of Fall River was instrumental in the establishment of this church. According to The Phillips History of Fall River (printed 1944), "Temple Baptist Church was responsible, by its assistance and support of chapels on Tucker Street and on Foster Street, for the establishment of the Third Baptist Church on Brayton Avenue. The 'Temple', by giving assistance to a neighborhood effort helped to establish the Temple Chapel in North Tiverton, now known as North Tiverton Baptist Church." This book does not list the establishment date. At one point in time, Rhode Island listed the date of foundation as 1879. Perhaps this was an organized group before the building was constructed. The original certificate of incorporation under Rhode Island law indicates that our church incorporated under the name, The North Tiverton Baptist Church, in 1917. We recently dropped "The" from our name.
Over the years, the church grew and shrank as did other churches. In many ways the church was in its "heyday" in the early '60s, again, as with many other churches. Coming into the '90s, the church appeared to have been in a steady state of decline. It seems that some of the pastors used this church as a "stepping stone" to larger works. Others seemed to have enough of their own problems and were thereby incapable of helping the church and its members. Perhaps others simply could not find motivation in the membership. Regardless of the reasons, by 1997, the membership had shrunk to just a few people. It seemed that the church would close its doors like so many others.
In July 1997, the church agreed with Pastor Hamilton to give him a three-month trial. He had offered himself as a serious, hardworking minister and his wife as an equally hardworking pastor's wife, who would give all that they could for the benefit of the church and the folks there. He served out his trial and was asked to stay. Since then the church has had generally steady growth, even though we have continued to have ups and downs as have others. We came to the point where we we were struggling to meet in our original building at 331 Main Road. The building was pressed to seat 60 people. The parking lot was almost non-existent. There wasn't enough land footprint to set up a picnic table! The building had also developed significant structural issues, which had remained unknown to the membership until it was too late. We needed to move to a building with more room and in better condition.
As God would have it (not chance), a building a short distance away became vacant. This was the First Primitive Methodist Church of North Tiverton. They, like NTBC, had suffered membership decimation over the years. Unlike NTBC, they did not recover. The pastor of NTBC set himself and the church membership to pray for this building. It would be perfect—very close by, much larger building, much larger parking lot and land, etc. The property was leased to various groups several times over the years, to the detriment of the property. Along the way, our church made an offer on the property, but was refused. After seven years of prayer in this matter, the Lord moved in a very miraculous way that NTBC was able to acquire this property at 198 Main Road, our current location. We moved to our new home in December, 2008. This property has been a trememdous blessing for us since we moved there. We expect it to serve us wonderfully for many years to come.
In April of 2022, after 25 years, Pastor Hamilton turned over the work to Pastor Robert Lewis, who will serve as an interim pastor until a permanent replacement is found.
