GREENFIELD — When Pastor Brett Reitenbach first visited Greenfield in 2011, he immediately fell in love with the downtown, which he said struck him as classic Americana.
Now, five years later, he’s opened his own independent Baptist church on Main Street after spending several months holding services at the Hampton Inn on Shelburne Road. Although the storefront between Mattress Outlet and Magical Child isn’t the most traditional place for a church, Reitenbach said when the opportunity to move into the vacant spot presented itself, he considered it a miracle.
The church held its first service there on Easter.
“One of the things that really stuck out to me was the downtown, the main street,” he said. “I just fell in love with Main Street right away, and I think a lot of people do. That was one of the things that impressed me the most at first about Greenfield.”
Reitenbach said he wasn’t sure about the spot at 138 Main St. when he first saw it, because storefront spaces are often small, but once he saw pictures of the interior he realized it had potential.
“Being a new church, sometimes we have to take what’s available, but on top of that, we want to be where the people are,” he said. “This was available and it really stuck out to me, and I thought, ‘I wonder what it would be like to have a Baptist church there?’”
Now, he holds services there on Sunday mornings and evenings, as well as Wednesday evenings, which he said are attended by about 15 regulars — and that number grows each week. The goal of the church, he said, is to provide a clear teaching and preaching of the Bible.
“Our reception has been good. We’ve found that overall, people are very respectful and friendly, and of course there are many beliefs represented in Greenfield, but we’ve still found that overall people are pretty open and respectful,” he said.
Reitenbach was born and raised in a Christian household in central Pennsylvania, and said he accepted Jesus as his savior at the age of 5. It wasn’t until he began attending a Bible college in Iowa that he had the calling to become a pastor. After spending a couple of years in the Midwest, he and his wife decided to move to Connecticut, where he became an assistant pastor at an independent Baptist church with the goal of starting his own eventually.
He and his wife have three children and one on the way.
Although today’s society is a more secular culture than decades ago and many churches are struggling, Reitenbach said that isn’t simply because there’s less of an interest in spiritual things and in church in general. Instead, he said many churches have departed from the belief that the Bible is God’s word, and that leads to their demise.
“When a church gets away from what the roots of the church should be, the ultimate result of that is they have to change to fit the culture or they shrivel up and die,” he said. “Even though it can be difficult to start a church today, I believe it’s possible if we stick with what Jesus says in his word of what the mission of the church is, which is to communicate the Gospel, to baptize believers and to make disciples.”
Reitenbach first heard about Greenfield as a good place to start a church through other pastors in Connecticut, and when he visited the area with his family, he said he was taken with the place. His goal is to bring hope and healing to members of the community through teaching God’s word.
“As I’m around town, I just see so many broken lives. There’s a lot of people who are struggling, whether it be addiction, whether it be difficult times in their lives, and we want to be able to bring some hope that we believe only comes through Jesus Christ and God’s word,” he said. “What I would like to see is a church where people can come any day of the week and have a Bible study or have a place to pray. I would also like to be able to minister to people with addictions, and of course all of that takes a process to be able to do that. We want to be able to first and foremost give the Gospel, but then also use God’s word to be able to minister to people in any way they need.”