Preserving Our Church
Mt. Bethel Baptist Church arrived at the corner of South Broad and Dean Street in Ridgewood in 1939. The church by this time had experienced a storefront for worship, a house of worship on Ackerman avenue, a church fire, and temporary worship at the Black YMCA in Ridgewood.
In the 1990s, the church created a vision to expand the building to better serve the community and members with a larger sanctuary, private parking lot, larger fellowship hall, and expanded kitchen. The church raised funds and purchased properties adjacent to the existing building. On April 14, 2001, the church broke ground on its expansion to the current building. Adding an elevator, expanding the sanctuary, including a nursery room, AV room, and expanded fellowship hall, the church maintained 3 walls of the historic building, reoriented the sanctuary, and created a space fit for community to gather and celebrate life together.
Through the years, Mt. Bethel has grown, developed, and evolved. Through trials and challenge we remain to celebrate 121 years as a church family and home for generations of Black families with roots across the diaspora.
Who We Are
Between services and when rain is anticipated, the main entry doors of the church are taped with roofer’s tape, and blocked with sandbags to prevent water entry into the lobby and elevator well. A line of debris shows the most recent accumulation of water in the entry area.
Mount Bethel now faces an increasingly urgent challenge to protect our historic church building. The church’s primary entrance has become increasingly susceptible to stormwater damage and infiltration, an increasing threat due to climate change. The current entrance becomes unusable during extreme weather, and even in good conditions, presents physical and logistical challenges for life’s tender moments, such as homegoing services.
Photo from inside main entry during rain storm in July 2026. The entire main entry of the church is flooded, roughly around 30” of pooling water.
Our goal
Mt. Bethel aims to restore and rehabilitate the exterior front entrance of the church building — the main sanctuary entry and narthex, the front facade entryway, and the immediately surrounding grounds. We intend to redesign the entryway, close off the interior stairs, and create a ramp walkway from the parking lot to the narthex of the church.
The sanctuary's only entrance currently requires ascending a flight and a half of stairs with a complicated turn. The primary accessibility to the narthex is by elevator. Mount Bethel is one of two Black churches in Ridgewood and Glen Rock, and often the preferred church to host funerals. Pallbearers must regularly carry caskets up these stairs; this has caused near-misses, injuries to pallbearers, and distress to grieving families. The small elevator provides access to the narthex for elderly members, wheelchair users, and others with mobility limitations. The elevator often falls into disrepair because of water pooling in the entry level.
Stormwater drainage at the front facade has failed: water collects at the entrance and against the foundation, the primary entrance becomes inaccessible when heavy rain occurs, and water frequently breaches the doors creating flooding in the lobby and into the fellowship hall. Water infiltration is a leading, time-sensitive threat to historic church buildings and will worsen if unaddressed.
Planned solutions
We have begun design work for a code-compliant accessible ramp providing a dignified route into the sanctuary, sized to accommodate caskets as well as wheelchairs and walkers, and designed to be compatible with the character of the original building. The plan includes repair and improvement to address the front-facade drainage concerns— regrading, gutters and leaders, and subsurface drainage as needed — to carry stormwater away from the entrance and foundation. Finally, we will restore landscaping and grading disturbed by construction to stabilize the site, protect the new work and install climate friendly natural solutions and plants.
Partner with us
In 121 years, Mount Bethel has accomplished nothing without the Lord, our members, and neighbors in the Ridgewood and Glen Rock Communities. As we endeavor on this journey to continue to serve God and our neighbors, we invite you to support us as we preserve our church building as a place of refuge in the Village of Ridgewood, New Jersey.