COMPASSION & JUSTICE
We do not separate love from action.
At First Baptist DC, compassion and justice are not programs we run — they are the grammar of our faith. We are a community shaped by the Hebrew prophets, by Jesus who preached good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed, and by two centuries of witness in the heart of the nation's capital.
We believe the gospel is always both personal and political, both tender and demanding. It calls us to bind wounds and to dismantle the systems that cause them. It moves us to give generously, to lament honestly, to learn from history, and to act with courage.
To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly — this is not a program. It is a way of being in the world.
— Micah 6:8 | Matthew 22:36–40 | Luke 4:18
Ongoing
The Benevolent Fund
For as long as First Baptist has gathered, we have cared for those in need within and beyond our congregation. The Benevolent Fund is one of the most direct expressions of that care — a resource held in trust by the church and administered with discretion, dignity, and compassion.
The fund supports individuals and families in moments of crisis: unexpected hardship, medical need, housing instability, or emergency circumstances that require immediate help. We do not ask people to prove their worthiness. We ask only how we can help.
To contribute to the Benevolent Fund, visit our Give page and select "Benevolent Fund" from the dropdown menu. If you or someone you know is in need of assistance, please reach out to our pastoral staff in confidence.
Annual Partnership
Rise Against Hunger
Each year, First Baptist DC gathers as a congregation — and alongside friends and neighbors — to package meals through Rise Against Hunger, a global hunger relief organization that distributes nutritious food to communities facing severe food insecurity around the world.
In a single afternoon of working together, our congregation can package thousands of meals that reach people in some of the world's most vulnerable places. It is a practice of solidarity: we meet a practical need while naming aloud the injustice of a world in which enough food exists for every person, but not every person has enough.
Our annual Rise Against Hunger meal-packaging event is open to the full congregation and community. Watch for announcements about our next gathering.
Global Partnerships
Partner Organizations: Giving Locally and Globally
First Baptist channels a meaningful portion of our giving to organizations whose work we believe in — in Washington, DC, and around the world. We look for partners who work with integrity and proximity, who are rooted in the communities they serve, and whose values align with our own commitment to human dignity and justice.
Our local partnerships keep us connected to the city we call home — to its unhoused neighbors, its immigrant communities, its young people, and its most vulnerable residents. Our global partnerships extend that care across borders, affirming that our neighborhood is the world.
Information about our current partner organizations and how to give in their support is available through the church office. We regularly share updates about partner work in our weekly newsletter and worship gatherings.
Cuba: Partnership with the Fraternity of Baptist Churches
For years, First Baptist DC has maintained a living relationship with the Fraternity of Baptist Churches in Cuba — and especially with William Carey Baptist Church in Havana. This is not a mission trip in the traditional sense. It is a friendship: a mutual exchange between two congregations that have discovered in each other a shared faith, a shared commitment to the poor, and a shared belief that the church is called to be a sign of God's coming kin-dom.
Each year, a delegation from First Baptist makes the journey to Havana — to worship together, to break bread, to hear one another's stories, and to learn what the church looks like when it is shaped by a very different kind of scarcity and resilience. We return changed. Our Cuban brothers and sisters give us gifts we cannot manufacture ourselves: a theology of abundance in the face of poverty, a joy that is hard-won and unshakeable, and a reminder that the Body of Christ is far larger than any one national imagination.
We are grateful for every year this partnership continues, and we invite those who feel called to deeper engagement to ask about the next pilgrimage.
Active Initiative
Reckoning and Renewal
First Baptist DC is one of the oldest Baptist congregations in America — and like many institutions of our age, we carry a history that includes complicity in the sin of slavery. We were a slaveholding congregation. That fact is not a footnote. It is part of who we are, and we believe that faithful communities do not bury their histories — they face them.
The Reckoning and Renewal Project is our commitment to that work. It is a sustained, congregational process of truth-telling, lamentation, and repair — guided by scholarship, pastoral care, and our deepening relationship with Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, the congregation founded in 1839 by the formerly enslaved members and free Black worshipers who were once part of our own community.
This work is not primarily about institutional image. It is about repentance in the fullest sense of that word: turning, together, toward what is true and toward the people and communities that have carried the weight of our collective failures. It is ongoing, and it is among the most important things we are doing as a congregation.
We are walking this road with Nineteenth Street Baptist Church, with historians, with descendants, and with one another. Updates on the Reckoning and Renewal Project are shared in worship and in the weekly newsletter. We welcome your engagement, your questions, and your presence in this process.
Advocacy
Ongoing Justice and Advocacy
We live and worship in Washington, DC — a city that is simultaneously the seat of national power and home to communities that have long been overlooked by it. We do not take that proximity lightly. First Baptist has always believed that faith and public life are not separate spheres, and that the church has both the right and the responsibility to speak when human dignity is at stake.
Our advocacy work takes many forms: raising our voices on behalf of the vulnerable, equipping our congregation to engage civic life as people of faith, standing with our neighbors when they are threatened, and refusing the silence that can so easily look like neutrality but functions as complicity.
We are not a partisan congregation. We are a prophetic one. We take our cues from the tradition of the Hebrew prophets and from the life of Jesus, who consistently stood with those pushed to the margins. We believe the call to love our neighbors as ourselves is not a private sentiment — it is a public commitment.
Watch our newsletter and worship for current justice initiatives, opportunities to act, and ways to join your voice with ours.
Get involved
Every person who walks through our doors brings gifts the work needs. Whether you give financially, show up to serve, or simply begin to pray — there is a place for you in this work.
Give to and through First Baptist