Get to Know Us!

A smiling young woman sitting at an outdoor table near a dartboard, with water bottles, a paper towel, and a snack on the table, during daytime.
Three women smiling, wearing name tags, standing together indoors near a table with bottled water, in a room with wooden cabinets and a door.
Three women sitting at an outdoor table under a tent, smiling and enjoying a gathering, with notebooks and bottled water on the table.
Group of five smiling men standing on a city street, posing for a photo during daytime. Four are giving thumbs-up or similar gestures. Background shows parked cars, residential buildings, and children playing.

Who We Are and What We are About

  • The term Gospel centered has lost much of its meaning because of overuse. However, to be truly Gospel Centered means to believe the Bible is about Jesus, preach in a way to exalt Christ, and to put grace not law at the heart of sanctification. That is what we are all about.

  • We believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible, and sufficient Word of God. For that reason we make it our goal to set the Bible before our people every chance we get. We are firmly committed to expository preaching, That is, preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible.

  • We live in an ahistorical age. A time where people live anxious lives unmoored from the past. There is a rootlessness that has crept into the world and even the Church that has detached us from the past, the Christian story, and Christian community that spans the history of the Church. As a Church we value Church history, the Reformed and Baptist tradition, and our rich Protestant history. Our weekly assembly has a rich liturgy with Scripture readings, corporate prayer, and frequent participation in the Lord’s Supper. We also enjoy studying Creeds, Catechisms, and Confessions from our great Christian tradition.

  • A strong commitment to the health of the local Church is of paramount importance. For years the American Church has sacrificed Church health in the name of pragmatism. But no longer! We are committed to the health of the local Church. To promoting Church health through expository preaching, Church membership, Church discipline, a clear understanding of conversion and the Gospel, and a passion for missions and evangelism.

  • We believe that local Churches are embassies of the Kingdom of God here on earth. Given authority and responsibility by God to carry the Gospel to the nations and maintain a healthy culture of discipleship. For these reasons we take Church Membership seriously. Becoming a member of MBC involves attending a six week membership course and participating in an elder interview where we discuss the Gospel and your personal testimony.

Community. Fellowship.

Gospel centered community is part of our DNA! Fellowship and community can be hard to find in the New York Metro area, and so we make it our aim to foster healthy gospel community at MBC.

Our Purpose and Identity

Purpose

Metropolitan Baptist Church exists to create a passionate pursuit of God’s glory that leads to active worship, profound fellowship, hungering discipleship, purposeful ministry, and the enthusiastic spreading of the Good News.

Identity

As an urban church, MBC is metropolitan in outlook, understanding that God has placed this church in a cosmopolitan area to meet the needs of the city through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As Baptists, we hold to the belief of the priesthood of each believer, with the right to enter directly into God’s presence without a need for a priest, that baptism by immersion as a believer identifies one as a disciple of Jesus Christ, and that the local church determines its policies and programs answerable to God alone. As a Church, MBC joins with all the true Christians since the time of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension until now in proclaiming Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.

Our History

In 1652, the Dutch community of New Utrecht was founded on this very property where we meet. The cemetery next door received its first inhabitant in 1654, and a Dutch Reformed Church was built in 1657.  When the center of New Utrecht was moved from 84th Street to 18th Avenue in 1828, the stones from the old Dutch Reformed Church were removed and used to build a new place of worship at 18th and 84th.

According to the cornerstone on the bell tower, the present building was erected in 1897 to house a German Lutheran congregation.  It remained St. John’s Lutheran until 1974, when the building was purchased by Metropolitan Independent Baptist Church

The first meeting took place on June 16, 1974 on 4th Avenue.  On September 8th of that same year, Metropolitan held its first meeting in the Fellowship Hall of this site.  During the next twenty years, the church went through many changes including shifting to become a Reformed Baptist church in the early 1980s.