Although interesting and instructive, the history of the Laurel Presbyterian Church in the nineteenth century contains little after 1867 that might distinguish it from other churches in its community or presbytery. In this sense, the first four decades of the church's past do not prepare us for its fifth decade. As the congregation went about rebuilding its burnt building, it also presented a call to the Rev. Adolph E. Baker. Baker accepted the call of this unpretentious little church with a membership of only forty, a Sunday School of just 25, and a total giving for 1899-1900 of $331.20.

Mr. Baker was born on August 13, 1870, in Jerseyville , Illinois , and when his father died he came to Baltimore to live with an uncle. After receiving a B.A. from Johns Hopkins in 1894, he attended Union Theological Seminary in Richmond , and upon graduation from Union in 1897 he accepted a call to the Springfield Church in Maryland Presbytery. There he quickly achieved a reputation as a capable pastor, and the Springfield Church displayed visible dismay at having to part with him when he accepted the call to Laurel . Presbytery approved that call in June 1900, but illness delayed his installation, and, presumably, his assuming full pastoral duties. His illness, however, did not prevent presbytery from electing him in September 1900 its Moderator. Nor did that illness prevent him from setting a new, hopeful tone for the future of the church within months of his moving to Laurel . The presbytery finally installed him in October 1901.

Changes came rapidly in the Baker years. In November 1900, he moderated a congregational meeting at the Masonic Hall where a new Board of Trustees was elected to take charge of the nearly completed new church building and to assume control of the church's financial affairs. Baker promptly organized the Board, and on November 28, it elected William Orr chairman, Emmett Pettit treasurer, and George Earle secretary. Immediately thereafter, the Board began regularizing the church's financial procedures, reorganizing the collection of funds, obtaining clear title to church property in the Board's name, and checking into the incorporation of the church. This board represented something entirely new in the life of the church: a large, relatively business-like, energetic administrative board. As Elder Snowden quietly faded from the scene, this new generation of lay leadership on the Board of Trustees took an increasingly large role in the administrative oversight of the church. The Board first considered the problem which constantly threatened to undermine the growth of the church in the decades ahead: finances. Church receipts at the end of 1900 amounted to less than half of the sum needed to meet expenses, the most important of which was the pastor's salary. Nevertheless, the congregation opened the twentieth century in fine style by occupying its new building on January 6, 1901, the first Sunday of the new century. Dedication came some months later, on May 5th, as the congregation had to wait for its new pews to be installed.

Events after Baker's arrival contributed to a notable sense of optimism in the church's 1900-1901 annual report. That report pointed to a number of indications of increased spiritual growth and activity in the six months prior to April 1901, including: increased attendance at worship; greater attention to meeting financial obligations; promptness in paying the pastor; a cordial Christian fellowship and sociability among members; a willingness to cooperate with the pastor in all of his plans; and additions in church membership.

These supposed indicators of spiritual growth provide a clear statement of certain values that appear as threads throughout the Laurel Presbyterian Church's records. The church, strikingly, gave worship a central place to the degree that it appeared to be the single most important reason for the church's existence. It almost seems as if the very fact that the church held regular worship services justified its existence. These indicators of spiritual growth, taken together, show that the church drew very clear boundaries between itself and the outside community around it. The church sought to sustain and augment its worship of God by harmonious internal relationships, by avoiding falling into disrepute for not paying its debts, and by expanding its boundaries to include larger numbers of individuals.

In spite of the death of John U. Whiteside, the church's sole deacon, the next church year, 1901-1902, continued the hopeful trends of the previous year. Financial records for that year show a phenomenal increase of 683 per cent in giving to benevolences and to the general fund. Although funds given for the new building inflated this figure somewhat, it still represented a substantial gain over all previous years. At the same time, membership rose to fifty.

The following church year, ending in April 1903, proved to be a year of significant changes. Baker energetically collected funds to pay off the debt on the building, and his efforts received a considerable boost when John K. Ober, a trustee but not a member of the church, gave a substantial contribution to that end. The election of George Earle as treasurer in July 1902 focused his active commitment to a stronger congregational life directly on the financial problems of the church. His assumption of the treasurer's duties came just months before Maryland Presbytery began pressing the Laurel Church to become fully self-supporting. This meant that the congregation had to find another $150 to pay the pastor's salary. The Ladies Aid Society further complicated matters by asking that its annual pledge of $125 to the pastor's salary be ended. After further communication with presbytery, the Trustees decided that the church would try to do without presbytery's assistance. For that decision, it received commendation from presbytery, and as of April 1, 1903, the Laurel Church became self-supporting for the first time since 1870.

Change piled upon change. William Snowden, still the sole elder of the congregation, died at the end of 1902, and even though he had moved out of Laurel in the Fall of 1901, the church felt his passing keenly. Administratively, his death had less impact an the church. Because of his advanced age and the distance he lived from Laurel , the church had been without a functioning Session for at least a year. The Board of Trustees had responded to this situation by assuming greater responsibility for the total life of the church, and, after Snowden died, the Trustees called a congregational meeting to elect a new Session. It also nominated two individuals to be elders. The congregational meeting held on January 25, 1903, accepted the Trustees' nominees and elected William Orr and George Earle elders. Almost as an afterthought, the congregation also elected Mr. A. R. Weston and Mr. Herbert A. Filer as deacons.

Snowden's death and the election of a new Session without a Snowden on it marked an important administrative turning point. The church now had a more active Session to complement its active pastor. But, Snowden's death also meant that church lost direct contact with important elements of its own past, especially its first decade. The church, in effect, forgot that it had ever been something other than a Southern Presbyterian Church or that it had participated in the great events of the 1860s.

The new Session immediately organized itself and formulated a new program for the Church. It elected Earle Clerk of Session. It adopted an aggressive plan for seeking out newcomers to Laurel and inviting them to attend the Presbyterian Church. It started regular advertisements in the local papers. The Session also took steps to ensure that the church gave visitors a warmer welcome than had hitherto been the case. New life flowed in other places as well. The Ladies Aid Society expanded women's concerns and role by forming a Ladies Foreign Missionary Society. The Trustees continued to reorganize their work by amending the church's Articles of Incorporation clauses regarding elections to the Board. In March 1903, the church elected a new Board of nine members. All members of and contributors to the church voted. The Session also initiated plans for a Christian Endeavor Society for its young people.

In spite of the great advances made during the year, the church year ending April 1903 closed on a financial sour note. The Trustees found it necessary to appeal to the members to increase their giving to meet the pastor's salary. Some did. But others either reduced their giving or stopped giving entirely, because they resented the pressure they felt being put on them. Thus, the pleas of the Board of Trustees resulted in only a minimal increase in giving. One could sense in the church a certain financial tension as the congregation entered its first year of self-support. Still, the statistics for 1902-1903 show that the church grew by sixteen members to 66 while the Sunday School increased from 52 to 78 students in the same period. These figures reflect a new level of activity and of confidence in the church.

The next church year further demonstrated not only the Laurel Church's new level of activity but also a deeper involvement in its larger community. In April and May of 1903, the church held a series of 'men only' gospel services for the church and the community. At these meetings some sixteen men publicly pledged to live better lives. These meetings included a strong dose of temperance concern. They gave impetus to the Presbyterian Church's joining the Episcopal Church in protesting to the Laurel City Council over the presence of two saloons an Main Street between the two church buildings. As a direct result of these men's services, a group of men met at the Laurel Presbyterian Church on May 15, 1903, and established a permanent Temperance Association in Laurel . In July, the Session made plans to invite a temperance speaker to lead services in August and hold a special temperance service in September led by the Superintendent of the Maryland State Anti-Saloon League. In fact, the church's involvement in the temperance movement also demonstrated a new level of ecumenical openness in the church. For example, when Baker took his vacation in August 1903, pastors from the Baptist and the two Methodist (Northern and Southern) churches took turns filling the Presbyterian pulpit.

Baker influenced every aspect of the church's life. In May 1903, he led the founding of a 'Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor.' And as the total program of the church took on new life, the congregation faced a problem it had never before experienced: so many new people showed up at worship that the church had to have ushers to show them to their seats! Yet, the old problems did not disappear. Several members persisted in their inactivity while some others had moved but failed to transfer their membership. A fairly heavy debt still hung over the church. The Session felt that the level of commitment of the church needed to improve. These problems did not dampen the growing excitement of the congregation, and nothing witnessed to that excitement more than the first Annual Meeting ever held by the church. The reports and statistics of that April 1904 meeting reveal that church membership had again risen (to 75) and that the Laurel Church had become the seventh largest church in Maryland Presbytery. Even more encouraging, the Sunday School had climbed back up to 95 (fifth in the presbytery) and the church's Christian Endeavor Society for young people was the second largest of nine such societies in Maryland Presbytery. The annual narrative for 1903-1904 stated that the church felt a strong undercurrent of expectancy that it would soon experience even deeper spiritual blessings.

The annual report for 1904 presented one set of statistics that particularly underscored the gains made under Baker. Of the forty members on the roll in 1900, thirteen removed their letters and the Session had moved seven more to the non-resident list by April 1904. Within four years, in other words, one-half of the 1900 membership no longer participated in the life of the church, and the church continued to be remarkably mobile. In addition, by April 1904, twelve of the 51 members added between 1900 and 1904 had also removed themselves from the rolls or were listed as non-resident. In short, in this brief four year period, the Laurel Church lost as active, resident members one out of every three of its old and it new members, The annual report presented this data to demonstrate how successfully Baker had dealt with the transience of the congregation since the church had grown rapidly in spite of a substantial loss of previous members. The report did not find this constant movement in-and-of-itself unusual. Just a few years later, George Earle, upon returning to the church after a year's absence, noted that many of the members of just a year before had moved away and that many new faces had appeared.

Baker proceeded to throw all of these gains in doubt in December 1904, when he announced his resignation in order to accept a call to a church in North Carolina . On Sunday, December 15, Baker preached his last sermon to a teary-eyed congregation, and in the evening, all of the pastors of Laurel —at their own initiative—conducted a standing-room-only farewell service for Baker. In that less ecumenical and tolerant age, even Father Donlan of St. Mary's Catholic Church planned to attend, being unable to do so only at the last moment. Each of the clerics present (Baptist, Episcopalian, and two Methodists) lauded Baker. The service moved Baker deeply. In the days following the service, the town's newspapers also expressed the general sense of loss. The Laurel Leader for December 23 noted that Baker was widely respected in the community irrespective of creed or politics, while the Laurel Democrat pointed to his wide circle of friends in the community. The church made it perfectly clear to the presbytery that it parted with Baker only with extreme reluctance.

Baker's leaving marked yet another organizational milestone as the church elected its first pastoral nominating committee. That committee, composed of three women and two men, joined with the session in the search for a new pastor. Mr. Pettit served as chairman and Mr. Earle held the post of secretary. They found the going rough. The committee started out by sending out 'feelers' to various individuals asking for their suggestions. They then pursued a number of leads and invited prospective candidates to preach at the church. After the congregation heard a number of these preachers, the committee began to hear a consensus as to the one most generally favorable to the church, and the committee then called for an election with several names placed in nomination. Among those recommended to the church was Andrew R. Bird, a Johns Hopkins graduate studying at Union Theological Seminary, whose credentials included a fourteen months trip to the Holy Land as the personal secretary of the Rev. Dr. W.W. Moore, President of Union Seminary and a leading PCUS churchman. Bird's pastor at the Franklin Street Church recommended him as '...an exceedingly bright and promising young man.' While pursuing Bird and other candidates, the committee experienced considerable friction within its number and some tension with the congregation. The inner friction had to do with the fact that giving dropped so dramatically after Baker left that the church couldn't pay its regular supply preacher, the Rev. E.N. Kirby, Mr. Pettit ended the fight about what to do by undertaking to pay Kirby out of his own pocket. Meanwhile, the congregation criticized the committee for moving so slowly.

In time, the committee did present four names to the congregation, and on Sunday, April 2, 1905, it elected Bird as pastor. He received eighteen of the 24 votes cast, and church records called this election 'controversial,' for reasons not stated. Another problem arose after the election of Bird. He responded to this call slowly and had not yet made his thoughts known to the church even after presbytery approved the call, pending his passing the presbytery exams for licensure. He did finally accept the call, passed his exams in June 1905, and preached his first sermon as pastor at the end of that month. The Laurel Presbyterian Church stood at the threshold of one of the most impressive periods in its history, one which exceeded even the achievements of Baker's ministry.

Bird, a handsome, square-jawed young man, took hold swiftly. He instigated a religious survey of Laurel conducted by the young people of the Christian Endeavor Society, the purpose of which was to identify potential new members for the church. He also urged that the older girls of the church form a 'society' called the 'Miriams' which they did in September 1905. Bird pressed the congregation to make a significant contribution to foreign missions and the Session to involve itself in 'colored evangelism' in Laurel . When one of the poorer members of the church approached Bird for financial assistance, he referred her case to the Ladies Aid Society. The women assisted this needy woman so effectively that the Session asked them to take charge of the Deacon's Fund and responsibility for aiding other needy members, since the church again had no resident deacons.

By October 1905, change reached a new pitch of enthusiasm. On Sunday, October 16, Bird appealed to a congregational meeting to pledge $400 to foreign missions for the coming year. The church responded to the plea of their youthful pastor with pledges totaling $556, a commentary on how well the church received his leadership. A week later, Elder Orr, chairman of the Committee on Work Among Colored People, reported that he and Bird had established a Sunday School with four teachers and 28 students at the Industrial and Agricultural Institute for Colored People (located some two miles north of Laurel ). Bird initiated a Friday evening sewing class for young girls at this same time. At this same time, the addition of Mr. Emmett L. Pettit to the Session strengthened its capacity to lead the church. In the midst of all of this activity, Maryland Presbytery ordained and installed Bird on Tuesday, October 31, 1905, in a well-attended service that included Dr. Moore of Union Seminary and Bird's uncle, the Rev, Henry Van Dyke, a prominent Northern Presbyterian figure who taught at Princeton University .

In the last two months of 1905, Bird maintained this hectic pace of program expansion by revamping the poorly-attended Wednesday evening service, reorganizing the Board of Trustees, and laying plans for a deeper ecumenical relationship with other Laurel churches. In December, he organized a 'Covenanter Company' of boys as a parallel to the Miriams in youth work. Bird then started the new year in equally fine style by his involvement in initiating and carrying out a series of ecumenical services with the Baptist and two Methodist churches. These services again displayed the temperance sentiment that had been a mark of Baker's ministry, and they now became an annual January event in Laurel .

A positive spirit permeated the 1906 annual reports. They show that the Ladies Aid Society had carefully organized itself to care for the poorer members of the church, while also conducting church socials every other month and a program of visitation of newcomers to Laurel , encouraging them to attend the Presbyterian Church. The Women's Missionary Society actively promoted the study of missions in the congregation. Bird formed a Junior Miriam's group in March, and the Covenanter Company of boys grew from eight to nineteen members, It helped to cut and haul wood for several needy Laurel families. Bird led all four of the youth groups including the Christian Endeavor Society which, with its 59 members, acted as an umbrella group. All of the youth groups engaged in significant amounts of mission study. Meanwhile, the black Sunday School grew to forty students and its leaders planned to make it self-supporting and to have it collect funds for African missions.

Comparison with the other churches of Maryland Presbytery underscores the impressive quality of all of these achievements under Bird. The Laurel Church reported 78 members, which moved it up into the number six slot for size. Given that size, it was amazing that the church sponsored four of the eleven youth groups found in the presbytery. The membership of those four groups totaled 94 young people, 36% of all of the young people in youth groups in the presbytery! Only three large Baltimore churches reported more children in Sunday School than the Laurel Church.

While Bird deserved full credit for the increased level of activity the church achieved beginning in 1905, at least three other churches in Laurel showed growth in this same period. The rector of St. Philip's Episcopal Church saw his church grow sufficiently by 1906 to ask for a substantial increase in salary. In 1907, Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, South, started construction of a new building. Centenary Methodist Episcopal Church, meanwhile, called a pastor in 1906 who displayed something of the same dynamic leadership as Bird and built up an impressively large and active men's organization for which the church built a special addition to its building. Thus, the Presbyterian Church thrived in a general climate of religious growth in Laurel , and, significantly, under Bird it more than held its own.

As the church entered a new church year in April 1906, the nature of Bird's ministry changed. From that point on, he proposed very few program changes and directed his efforts primarily to maintaining the very active program already in place. Both Bird and the church began to experience the limits of their reach. That church year also began on a very positive note for Bird personally. In late May, he married Lisette Fries Moore, daughter of Dr. Moore whom we have already mentioned as President of Union Seminary and a very influential voice in the Southern Presbyterian Church. After their marriage, the Birds were away from Laurel for some eight weeks as Bird extended their honeymoon into a health leave for himself.

A few setbacks soon tinged the excitement of Bird's ministry. Although Elder Orr struggled diligently to maintain the black Sunday School, the Institute it served suffered serious financial trouble, and mention of the Sunday School disappears from the church's records after July 1907. In May 1906, the Trustees created another Sunday School Building Committee, the second of a succession of such committees, and within six months Bird had plans prepared and collected $1400 in pledges for the proposed building. But the momentum dwindled and that building went unbuilt. Furthermore, a potentially worrisome split appeared in the Session as Elder Earle displayed uneasiness over how the heavy benevolence giving of the church seemed to limit giving to the general fund. Earle argued that the church should meet its own financial obligations before giving large sums to foreign missions, and he especially objected to any plans to add more special collections. By April 1907, the church, in fact, owed Bird two months' salary. Over against Earle, Elders Pettit and Orr wanted to maintain as high a level of mission giving as possible,

Yet, on the basis of past years, 1906-1907 could not be judged as other than one of the best in Laurel Presbyterian Church history, even if it did not match up to the fast pace of the previous year. The church sustained the gains of 1905-1906, maintained a high level of congregational giving, and grew even more in size so that it became the fifth largest church in the presbytery. Its record in mission giving was little short of astounding as only the very large Franklin Street Church gave more to missions in actual dollars in the presbytery. But Laurel gave an amazing $5.95 per member to foreign missions, far more than Franklin Street 's $3.22 per member. The congregation's own records claim that it gave more per capita to benevolences that any other church in the entire Southern Presbyterian denomination,

During the next church year, 1907-1908, Bird took a ten-week, expenses-paid trip to Norway in a year otherwise marked primarily by the continuation of the programs already begun and commitments already made. The often troublesome financial situation of the church improved temporarily, and the church not only kept up its benevolence giving but also paid off its debts and met its other commitments. In the months after April 1908, however, the financial picture of the church became more problematic. The church habitually owed Bird back pay, anywhere from $14 to over $200, and the Trustees directed more and more appeals to the church to increase congregational giving. By October 1909, the situation was becoming more critical as the church fell further and further behind.

At the end of 1907, on November 3, Bird preached what may be the earliest sermon preached at the Laurel Church for which the manuscript still exists. Preaching from Jonah 3:10, Bird presented the historical background of the passage in vivid images and contrasted the wealth and power of Nineveh with the lowly state of God's prophet, Jonah. After expounding on the meaning of the scriptural passage, Bird sought a contemporary application and urged, in effect, that the young men of the church needed to consider becoming ordained ministers and guide people religiously as did Jonah. The manuscript of this sermon indicates that, at the very least, Bird prepared competent and interesting sermons.

Two changes in the Session took place during the 1908-1909 church year. In April, Earle moved to Rockville . The Session appointed Elder Orr as Clerk of Session in his place. In December, Pettit moved to Baltimore and transferred his letter to a church there. The church then elected Mr. Jullien Winnemore to cover the vacancies so left. In May 1909, Winnemore took over the clerk's duties when Orr asked to be relieved of then, The statistics for 1908-1909 again showed that the Laurel Church compared favorably with the other churches in the presbytery. In April 1908, It reached a peak membership of 98.

In November 1909, George Earle returned to Laurel , thus causing the church to plan yet another change in leadership. An entirely unexpected event, however, interrupted his scheduled reelection to the Session. On October 21, 1909, Bird was stricken with 'nervous prostration' and left Laurel , unable to work. After a brief spell in Baltimore , the Birds went to South Carolina so that he could have a complete rest. But as the months dragged by, his condition did not improve sufficiently for Bird to return to Laurel , and, in a letter dated March 31, 1910, Andrew Bird resigned his position. Maryland Presbytery made that resignation effective May 1.

More than any previous pastor, including the very capable Baker, Bird had communicated to the Laurel congregation his own understanding of Christian spirituality. Throughout his years, the church's program emphasized mission study and giving, assisting people in need, individual and corporate Bible study, and prayer, He took the church to new levels of growth and activity in pursuit of those spiritual goals. He even sacrificed the security of a dependable salary and his own health to reach high levels of mission giving and congregational activity. Thus, Bird's ministry at Laurel showed the marks of an unusually capable and dedicated young man, one who, nonetheless, was a young man and who in his inexperience overextended himself. He started too fast and reached out too high. He nevertheless gave the church some of the best pastoral leadership it would ever have, and he apparently learned from his experience in Laurel . In his next pastorate, beginning in January 1911, Bird took charge of Second Presbyterian Church in Washington . In that church, later renamed Church of the Pilgrims, Bird became one of the most successful and widely respected pastors in the Southern Presbyterian Church.

Many years later, Bird's son, himself a retired pastor, remembered that his father's success at that church and in Laurel grew out of three important elements in his ministry. First of all, Bird paid close attention to his pastoral duties. Secondly, he saw opportunities and made the most of them. Finally, he depended upon prayer rather than personal confrontation to solve difficult problems. Although not hinted at directly in the records of the church, Bird also reflected in his youth, his activism, and his bearing the 'manly' virtues so highly prized in the era of President Teddy Roosevelt. In those exciting years of reform, national growth, and idealism, many Americans sensed new purpose and strove to attain new goals. Bird must have embodied something of the best of the Progressive Era for his congregation.

On the surface, the decade of 1900 to 1910 appeared to be considerably different from the previous four decades. Yet, the only obvious difference in those ten years was the quality of pastoral leadership the church received. Baker began to make an obvious difference in the church even before Elder Snowden, representative of the 'old' lay leadership, stepped aside and then died. Pastors after Bird, as we shall see, could not sustain the direction and momentum of his ministry. Indeed, the church in the thirty years after Bird resembled the church in the forty years before Baker with an almost amazing fidelity to its image as a small, drifting, insignificant church on the geographical and cultural fringes of its denomination. The 'magic' of the Baker-Bird decade resided in the personalities and skills of two better-than-the-average pastors.

The Laurel Church followed Baker into temperance and Bird into missions and study because it respected and trusted their leadership. Still, behind the church's willingness to follow the lead of these men lies another pattern, namely, its inability to set directions for itself apart from pastoral leadership. The ups and the downs of the church reflected a remarkable sensitivity to the personalities, interests, and abilities of each succeeding pastor. In its first fifty years, the church showed no evidence of having a sense of its own particular mission or a sense of its own direction, It embodied no obvious ministry beyond the fact of its own passive existence. Of itself it did not prod its members to spiritual growth or biblical-theological study. Of itself it did not seek a social ministry in its community. Of itself it did not even carry out its nuts-and-bolts administrative tasks very well.

If the Laurel Presbyterian Church had called a succession of capable pastors over the years, the church's nearly total programmatic dependence on pastoral leadership might not have been an important pattern. The weakness of the pattern was that in its first fifty years only Baker come to and left the church in a 'normal' manner, Nicols entered his ministry without prior training and during a difficult period, He died in the office after a ministry circumscribed by illness. Bird's health gave way. Baskerville and Shipley left under clouds, Reese stayed only nineteen months, The realities of human frailties made such singular dependence upon pastoral leadership a questionable proposition at best. As the next chapter will show, the years after 1910 only confirmed the generally dismal experience of the church with pastoral leadership.

Still, the other side of the coin should be noted as well: given competent pastoral leadership, the church could and did respond with a level of commitment and giving equal to that of any church in its denomination. It could, and did, develop a program that would have been impressive in a church much larger than itself, The Laurel Presbyterian Church had considerable potential, Unfortunately, except for this decade, that potential remained mostly just that...potential.