Meshanticut Park Community Baptist Church records (MS.2012.007)

Biographical/Historical note

The Meshanticut Park Community Baptist Church was founded by Rev. Cyrus D. Harp, a Congregationalist minister from Ohio. After serving a church in Rehoboth in the 1890s, he settled in the village of Meshanticut in Cranston, RI. Feeling that a church was needed in the neighborhood, he started a Congregational Mission and began holding a Sunday school in his home and other locations. In 1900 or 1901, a Congregational Society was organized and a chapel built for the congregation. However, the church did not prosper, and the Congregationalists decided to give it up, including the disposal of the chapel. The Rhode Island Baptist State Convention bought it on December 1, 1905 and it became the Meshanticut Park Community Baptist Church. Still, the congregation continued to struggle, and it was not until the 1920s that they hired a settled minister. Meshanticut Park chapel remained a mission church of the RI Baptist Convention until 1939.

The 1940s ushered in a dramatic increase in the population of Cranston and the Meshanticut Park Community Church. They outgrew the old chapel on Cranston Street, so they built a new meetinghouse at 180 Oaklawn Avenue in 1950. The prospered until the 1970s when the church declined somewhat, paralleling the experience of the larger denomination. By 2000, the church had various problems and issues of conflict. The last pastor, who took over in September 2004, was Robert Lancia who drew his inspiration and models from Robert Schuller (the Crystal Cathedral) and Rick Warren (Saddleback Baptist Church). Lancia sought to remake Meshanticut Park including renaming it “The Orchard Church” in 2008. The church dissolved in 2011 and the building was sold to the Evangelical Euphrates Armenian Church.