Founded in 1808, First Baptist Church sits in the historic district of Wilmington, North Carolina. The congregation was founded in 1808, and the church is today part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Those concrete facts—an 1808 founding and a current affiliation with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship—are all the source gives, and they are enough to anchor this place in time.
You are on ground labeled historic: a church whose origins reach back into the early 19th century and whose present identity includes membership in a wider Baptist fellowship. Stand here a moment and let the simple record shape your sense of the spot: founded in 1808, still identified as First Baptist, and connected to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. This simple evidence—First Baptist, founded 1808, part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship—marks a continuity between past and present here.
Take in the quiet authority of that record as you look around. Picture that simple record — founded in 1808, still First Baptist, still part of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.