Our forebears helped to create and launch Crisis Control Ministries, Samaritan Ministries, Habitat for Humanity, and the Downtown Church Center among others. Denominationally, our church was a founding congregation for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina, in part due to our desire to partner together in the renewing of God’s world and serving the world’s most neglected.
Global Missions
Our global concern found a home for more than 20 years with Mission Emanuel in the Dominican Republic, where members traveled each year in a women’s team, family team, or building team to the small town of Cielo, extending love and care by returning year after year to the residents of Cielo. An ongoing commitment to the beans and rice program allows us to provide hundreds of families with enough beans, rice, and oil for many months’ supply. A handful of the women of our church maintain this commitment even still.
A new partnership through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship was formed from 2022 through 2025, as we became an Encourager Church for Missy Ward Angalla, CBF field personnel in Kampala, Uganda in her work leading Amani Sasa. As an Encourager Church, we offered steady, sustained financial support for Missy. We continue our partnership with Amani Sasa and are exploring the possibility of future trips to Uganda to support Amani Sasa’s work providing holistic, wraparound services for refugees in Kampala.
Winston-Salem Center for Education and the Arts
Because we have long-valued a place to call home, First Baptist Church on Fifth founded the Winston-Salem Center for Education and the Arts (WSCEA), and WSCEA became the primary extension of First on Fifth’s mission in downtown Winston-Salem. At its core, WSCEA is our church’s ‘home grown mission.’
Born in 2014 out of the church’s desire to provide purposeful, rent-free space to organizations committed to changing lives of those on our city’s margins, the WSCEA, operating in the John 3:16 Building, gives its resident organizations – the Winston-Salem Street School, Dress for Success, Authoring Action, and Leadership Winston-Salem – and all those they serve a deep sense of groundedness in place. In so doing, WSCEA gives First on Fifth a direct opportunity to live into its stated priorities – particularly in cultivating the well-being of children and mitigating poverty in our community. As partners together in this home, belonging leads to thriving, and beloved community is practiced in abundance.
Missional Priorities
In a season of discernment in 2018 of aligning the church’s facilities with our mission, the church identified four missional priorities, which are:
Cultivating the Well-Being of Children
Mitigating Poverty in Our Community
Becoming a Teaching and Learning Church
Growing in Number and Faithfulness
Our members live out these commitments in their own individual ways. Any given week, you’ll find our folks delivering Meals on Wheels, building handicapped ramps for residents of Winston-Salem, sorting and tagging clothes at Dress for Success, working the front desk at Crisis Control, walking alongside underserved women in both the Flourish and Pivot programs, building Habitat homes, and this list is, quite literally, endless. This list of mission partners in both our funding and our volunteering reflects the wide reach of our members’ passions and commitments in the world.
Mission Partners
Winston-Salem Center for Education and the Arts
Forsyth Jail & Prison Ministries
Should you desire to apply for special project funding, please complete an application. Our annual mission partner funding window has now closed for the 2025 budget year. Should you desire to apply for mission partner funding for the 2026 budget year, applications will become available in the spring. Email the Missions Committee at Missions@Firstonfifth.Org with any questions you may have.
Shared Work
We’ve learned over the years that often our best, most impactful work is the work we share, and harness, and extend to the community. Together with the Missions Committee, we have identified three shared commitments for our missions work that we do together:
- Tutoring students and supporting the PTA at Ashley Academy,
- Forming a Good Neighbor Team alongside World Relief to support the growing refugee population in our city, most specifically with a family of six from Afghanistan we journey alongside in their acclimation to Winston-Salem.
- Partnering with our neighbors of Crystal Towers, a Section 8 housing complex just out the church’s back door that serves many who are elderly or disabled, and advocating for their well-being within the city.
These commitments are bolstered by a number of hours spent each week volunteering in these various capacities. Our members read with children at Ashley. They take Afghani family members to get drivers’ licenses or help with job applications. They offer wraparound care to residents of Crystal Towers who need assistance with grocery shopping, medical appointments, and simply navigating through the complex web of being a human in the world. They are also encouraged by a number of financial resources, offered from faithful, courageous members who have left a legacy in support of missions.
Contact
We believe that giving of ourselves in service is right at the heart of a joyful life lived following Jesus. Should you desire to learn more about how you might serve, please contact Kyle Caudle, associate pastor.