Ebenezer Baptist Church to celebrate Pastor Ford’s fourth anniversary Sunday

Ebenezer Baptist Church is marking four years under Rev. Dr. Seante Ford and First Lady Mattie Ford with a Sunday morning worship service that puts the church’s recent leadership and long local roots on display at 826 Riley Street in Atchison.

The anniversary service is set for Sunday, May 3, 2026, at 10:45 a.m., giving congregants, relatives, friends and neighbors a chance to gather around a milestone that goes beyond a calendar date. In a city the size of Atchison, where churches often serve as both spiritual anchors and community gathering places, the Fords’ fourth anniversary is being framed as a sign of stability, continuity and the relationships built during their tenure.

That local significance is stronger because Ebenezer Baptist is not a new congregation looking for its place in town. The church celebrated 149 years of service to the Lord on March 29, 2026, underscoring that the Ford family’s four years of leadership are part of a much longer story at one of Atchison’s established houses of worship. A church with that kind of history carries more than tradition: it carries the memory of generations who have used its pews, its fellowship and its public celebrations to mark moments in the life of the city.

For Atchison residents, the milestone also lands in a community where faith institutions remain highly visible. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Atchison’s population at 10,813 in 2024, down slightly from 10,885 in the 2020 Census, a reminder that neighborhood churches can play an outsized role in connecting people across family lines and across generations. A service like Sunday’s gives those connections a public moment and reinforces the church’s place in the city’s civic life.

A local notice described Pastor Ford and his family as a wonderful addition to the church and to the community, and that is the lens through which this anniversary lands: not simply as a pastor’s milestone, but as a measure of how Ebenezer Baptist Church has remained active, recognizable and rooted in Atchison while carrying its history forward.