Mount Zion Baptist Church celebrates 166 years
January-February 2025
Pastor Sanford Reaves Jr. (photos by Eugene Campbell)
by Audrey Hingley, Contributing Writer
In a modern world where change is often inevitable, Mount Zion Baptist Church in Locust Grove, Va. — which recently celebrated 166 years as a congregation — may be somewhat of an anomaly.
But Mount Zion’s long, storied history doesn’t mean the church is stuck in the past. After all, it does have Wi-Fi.
“As we were approaching our 150th anniversary, I received a phone call from an Orange County official looking for churches who did not yet have access to the internet,” recalls Pastor Sanford Reaves Jr., who is also a board member of Rappahannock Electric Cooperative. “I just happened to be in my church office the day the official called.” Reaves says, at that point, many small rural churches like Mount Zion did not yet have internet access.
Reaves says getting that connectivity changed everything when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. The church put up a sign out front touting “free Wi-Fi.” During the pandemic, families without internet access could sit in their cars in the church parking lot and send resumes for new jobs, upload children’s homework when online schools replaced in-classroom teaching for a while, and do the myriad of things that today all require an online connection.
“We were also able to stream our services on Facebook and communicate with [church members],” he explains.
A LONG HISTORY OF SERVICE
Mount Zion has remained an oasis for the area’s residents, particularly the African American community, by emphasizing family connections and a hometown atmosphere.
Before President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, some local Black residents formed a “Prayer Band” in the home of Peter and Maria Armstead in an area off Indiantown Road near the present Mount Zion church in Locust Grove. Their earliest place of worship was known as a “brush arbor,” a rough open-sided shelter built by vertical poles being driven into the ground, with additional long poles laid across the top to support a roof of brush, hay or cut branches. First appearing in the 1700s-1800s, brush arbors were used by some churches for worship or to accommodate lengthy revival meetings.
The church later erected a log cabin nearby and moved again in 1858, eventually becoming Mount Zion Baptist Church. Historically, there was dynamic growth in independent Black churches in Virginia between 1865 and 1900, as many freed slaves adjusted to a free life in post-Civil War America. In 1894, Black Baptists formed the National Baptist Convention, today the largest Black religious organization in America.
CONTINUING TO SERVE
Mount Zion’s latest church building was erected in 1954, and the church sanctuary was dedicated in 1963. In recent years, many improvements have been made to the structure, including converting the church’s oil heating system to a new electric heat pump, replacing a side entrance deck and a handicapped ramp, and replacing the entire sanctuary floor. The church building also added a fellowship hall, a multi-purpose area and an office for Reaves.
In 2005, Reaves became the congregation’s 11th pastor. As an area realtor, he owns Sanford and Sons Construction and Janitorial Services, is chairman of the Culpeper County Planning Commission (where he has served for 25 years), and is a past president of the local NAACP.
A 26-year member of REC, Reaves has also been an REC director for the past seven years. A graduate of Richmond’s Smithdeal-Massey Business College, Reaves also graduated in 2005 from Virginia Union University’s School of Divinity with a Master of Divinity degree.
“I had a calling,” Reaves says of his later-in-life decision to become a minister and receive training at Virginia Union. In 2006, after a trip to Ghana and his Virginia Union graduation, Reaves called Rev. Frank D. Lewis Sr., a moderator with the Wayland Blue Ridge Baptist Association and pastor at Antioch Baptist Church in Madison, Va., to offer his services as a “fill-in” pastor. Mount Zion Baptist needed someone to oversee two Sundays a month until they selected a new minister.
“My wife, Lorraine, and I were well-received here,” Reaves recalls.
Two Sundays then turned into three and then four Sundays a month, and in 2007, Reaves was installed as a pastor, which he calls “God’s plan.”
William Washington, chairman of the church’s deacon ministry, explains, “I saw the pastor when he was younger and he always had a mission — he always had something to do and somewhere to be. When he came here to preach, I knew in my heart he was called [here by God]. He was a good guy.”
Left to right: William Washington, Pastor Sanford Reaves Jr. and Clayton Tyler.
AN EYE TO THE FUTURE
Today, Reaves, Washington and Clayton Tyler, chairman of the church’s trustees board, all see Mount Zion as a church with multigenerational appeal. Both Washington and Tyler note that their wives’ families were originally Mount Zion members and both say they were drawn to the church through them.
“Some of the ancestors [who started the church] have family members who are still with us today,” Reaves notes. “When you come to this rural church, it’s usually filled up for a wedding or funeral — the church used to be the main gathering place for the community. One of my ancestors was a circuit rider who came here.”
Reaves recalls that when he was growing up in nearby Culpeper, segregation was still in place. He also remembers “blue laws” prohibiting labor or commerce on Sunday.
In 1988, some store owners whose businesses were still prohibited from operating on Sundays sued the state of Virginia; in September of that year, the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled the law unconstitutional, ending almost 400 years of Virginia blue laws. Today, churches find themselves “competing” with Sunday sports team events and other Sunday activities that were never a factor during the blue law era.
Pastor Reaves emphasizes that no one is ever turned away at Mount Zion. “We have been treated so well here, and we treat everybody the same — all are welcome here,” he says.