New Minister Is Welcomed

The Rev. Walter Silva Thompson Jr.

Morgan McGivern

Apr. 23, 2015

Carissa Katz

After being without a permanent pastor for nearly two years, Calvary Baptist Church in East Hampton officially welcomed its new pastor, the Rev. Walter Silva Thompson Jr., with three days of special events culminating with an installation service on Saturday.

Mr. Thompson has been acting minister at the church since December.

According to Saturday’s program, Mr. Thompson has served as pastor at Morning Star Baptist Church in Jamaica, Queens, Calvary Baptist Church of Pittsburgh, and Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Springfield, Mass. He has also studied, lectured, and preached at the Ecumenical Institute at Chateau de Bossey in Switzerland, the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and the Buenos Aires School of Theology in Argentina, and has been a faculty member of the Congress of Christian Education both in the United States and in Germany.

The pastor holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Eastern University in Pennsylvania, and a Master of Divinity in practical theology from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, also in Pennsylvania.

Here in East Hampton, Mr. Thompson may be recognizable to the broader community from Calvary Baptist’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in January, when he delivered a moving address urging those in attendance to remember King’s message and to “join in a cause of transformation in our own community. . . .”

He is a founding member of Empowered Queens United in Action and Leadership, and is a member of the National Association of Black Seminarians, the American Baptist Association, and the National Baptist Convention.

More than a dozen pastors from New York and Long Island joined in the installation service at Calvary Baptist on Saturday. Among them were the Rev. Dr. H.G. McGhee of the First Baptist Church in Bridgehampton, the Rev. Michael Jackson of Triune Baptist Church in Sag Harbor, the Rev. Dr. Connie Jones of Calvary Baptist, and Donald E. Butler of Community Baptist Church in Southampton.