First Baptist Church
Staff & Leaders

  • Joseph Mellett
    Sexton

  • Martha Goodman
    Acting Handbell Director

  • Marilyn Downes
    Director of Music

  • Donna Metcalf
    Administrative Assistant

  • Judith Murray
    Facility Cleaning

  • Janice Randlett
    Acting Organist

  • Stephanie Salinas

    Stephanie Salinas
    Pastor

    The First Baptist Church of Westwood joyfully welcomes the Rev. Dr. Stephanie A. Salinas to serve as its new pastor beginning on January 11, 2015. Born and raised in Milltown, NJ, Salinas received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, PA, and spent the next fifteen years working in banking. In 1999, she accepted a call to the ministry and in 2002, received her Master of Divinity degree from New Brunswick Theological Seminary in New Brunswick, NJ. Ordained at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Ridgewood, NJ, she has been the pastor at the First Baptist Church in Bangor, ME since 2002, and in 2013, she received her Doctorate of Ministry in Preaching through McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, IL. As part of her ministry, Salinas has worked on committees of American Baptist Churches, especially the Ministers’ Council and the Committee on Ministry, and plans to continue that work. About coming to Westwood, she has said, “We live, especially in New England, in a society that is becoming increasingly less attached to church. Still, the spiritual hunger for God’s love and mercy is as great as it always was, if not greater. I am excited to be coming to join a congregation that seeks to find a way to feed those hungers in our society in ways that are both old as time and new every morning.”