WS Chronicle

About 18 months ago, Rev. Ronald E. Speas decided to follow his heart and leave the church home he had known for over a decade, to start fresh. With help from his wife, Dr. Soncerey Speas, and about 50 members, Rev. Speas started to lay the groundwork for his vision. And last weekend that vision came to life when Fresh Wind Fellowship Baptist Church had service for the first time in their new home. 

Speas said he initially got the vision for Fresh Wind about 12 years ago but the time wasn’t right. “God gave me the vision but he said it’s not time yet,” Speas said. While taking a walk in 2022, Speas said God told him it was time. 

The next day Speas started putting his plan in motion. “We started accumulating all the things we needed, starting getting things in order, and people in order, because we still had lives to oversee. We didn’t have a building but we had lives,” he said. 

For over a year, Fresh Wind held Sunday service at the Enterprise Center located on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, but their goal was to one day have a church of their own. After several failed attempts to get a loan, late last year their prayers were answered when they came to terms with a local bank, Piedmont Federal Savings Bank, on a loan and shortly after that they closed on a building. 

“It’s a grand day for us and a grand day for our congregation. Being together only 18 months yet and still being able to achieve the goals that we had already set so we’re grateful,” Speas said. “We thank God for being able to administer people’s needs and understand that if you invest in people they’ll invest back. And once you invest in people, it becomes a journey that we all walk together.”

On the morning of the first service in their new home, more than 150 people filled the pews inside the church. Just before the service was scheduled to start, Mary Crank, who is one of the original members who helped form the church and serves as the church historian, said she was overjoyed to see the vision come to fruition. Crank said although they’ve only been together 18 months, the entire congregation has grown to become a family, and as the old saying goes, the family that prays together stays together. 

“I’m just like a kid on Christmas and I think the whole congregation feels the same way,” Crank said. “We’ve been in anticipation for this for so long. We prayed for it, we put it in God’s hands and he delivered.”

Fresh Wind Fellowship Baptist Church is located at 2900 Old Salisbury Road. For more information visit “Fresh Wind Fellowship Baptist Church, Inc.” on Facebook or call 336-546-7014.