It’s Mother’s Day and the walls of Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church are rumbling with the thunderous roar of the Reverend Lance B. Bailey Sr.’s passionate sermon. The angelic melodies of the church choir ricochet off the stained glass windows as the audience, dressed in vivid pinks, reds, purples and burgundy sways in time.
Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church was established in 1895, even before the City of Miami was incorporated.
“It was once like the city hall of Coconut Grove for African Americans,” said former Miami Herald columnist Bea Hines. “And it remains really important.”
Today, the church provides an important voice for the Grove. Its membership includes dozens of people from all walks of life including Carolyn Donaldson, a plaintiff in the recently successful effort to overturn gerrymandered districts; Loretta Scippio-Whittle, 86, a veteran of the civil rights movement; and Octavious Barley, 40, a youth football community booster and Florida Memorial University alumnus.
“The church has always been the pulse of the community, but there have been periods of time when it has remained silent,” said Donaldson. “However [the congregation] comes out to the community, particularly in trying times, which is a lot of what we are experiencing today.”
Macedonia Missionary’s history dates back to 1885 when the founders were looking to create a Sunday school to unify everyone in the community, blacks and whites alike, according to Donaldson and church documents. By 1892, it was named Union Chapel and services were held in what is today Plymouth Congregational Church.
In 1895, Rev. S.A. Sampson organized 56 black members from Union Chapel to start a more Afrocentric congregation. That became Fifty-six Baptist Church, which was located in the building where Macedonia Missionary stands today.
By 1922, the building had become St. Agnes Baptist. It was later dubbed First Macedonia Missionary and finally Macedonia Missionary in 1976.

Today, Donaldson is the board secretary and finance officer for Macedonia Missionary.
“I’m a retired executive from pharmaceuticals for 30 years,” Donaldson said, “I volunteer my time to several organizations that came back to the Coconut Grove community.”
Donaldson grew up in the Grove, attending Miami Dade College, Florida International University and the University of Miami.
“I have two adult kids, one grandchild,” Donaldson said “Once I retired, I decided to return to my old community and become a community advocate.”
Donaldson serves as vice chair of Grove Rights and Community Equity Inc. She has worked with United Way, Goodwill, The Children’s Trust Miami and other groups. Donaldson is a silver life member of the NAACP.
Lately, Donaldson has been inundated with requests for interviews. She was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the City of Miami for gerrymandering redistricting boundaries. The case, which was decided for the plaintiffs in October, made national headlines and has kept her busy with interview requests.
She’s been attending Macedonia Missionary since she was a child. The church means service for her.
She says Macedonia Missionary is, “providing the community with education, social services, mentorship, worship and identifying any needs within the community to provide solutions.”

Whittle is a civil rights activist, oral historian and Sunday School superintendent who serves on the church’s board of directors. She is also three generations removed from slavery.
“I’ve traced my history back to a seven-year-old boy who was captured in Africa,” Whittle said, “He was retained in Cape Lopez, a slave dungeon just outside of Angola.”
Whittle’s ancestor, whose slave name was Scipio, was sold then shipped to Cuba and remained there until he was 18 years old. Later, a slave owner from South Carolina would be impressed with Scipio’s work ethic as a coachman and decided to purchase him. Scipio would become a mason in South Carolina who was not afraid to speak out against slavery, even to his owner.
Members of the family were sold from South Carolina to Jasper, Florida, Whittle said.
“They had 15 children,” Whittle continued. “My second great grandfather saw the end of slavery in 1865 and also refused to be a sharecropper.”
Whittle’s great-great-grandfather told the slave masters, “If I am to become a sharecropper, I will be doing the cropping and you will be doing the sharing,” Whittle says. He would eventually become an owner of land in North Florida that the family still owns.
Whittle joined the congregation at Macedonia Missionary in 1962, when she relocated to Coconut Grove after her studies at Morgan State University, an HBCU in Baltimore.
“I’ve been a member of the church for 62 years and serve as the superintendent of Sunday school,” Whittle said. “The church is like a fuel station for my soul. Like a car whenever I run out of gas I come here. This is my fuel station. I absorb the messages in the sermon. Then I go from empty to fully charged up to get to my next stop.”
Barley, 40, is also an active church member at Macedonia Missionary,.
“My favorite church memory is being able to sit next to the church elders and soak up their wisdom,” he said. “The church elders would tell me a proverb ‘Before I was an old fool, I was a young fool’.”
He says the proverb explains that a person’s journey to becoming wise often includes suffering through youthful foolishness,
“My life outside of church,” Barley shared, “consists of supporting the local youth football program in Coconut Grove while working a full-time job.”
Barley played football and basketball when he was five years old, so to support the youth football program means giving back. Macedonia Missionary sits near Frances S. Tucker Elementary School and the Barnyard Community Center, where Barley learned to play tennis. Together they form the moral backbone of the West Grove.
“I was taught at Tucker Elementary,” Barley said, “then went to Barnyard after school followed by church at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church. I would later become the first of five children in my family to attend college.”
Barley is still another example of the significance of this historic church in the neighborhood.
As Macedonia embarks on another 100 years, programs such as their summer youth and Bible study will continue to enrich the youth.
“It’s important that we show support and love back to the generation coming up because it is the helping hand that grows the village,” Barley added.
FIU students Stanley Beaubrun and Allen Galindo wrote this story as part of a cooperative agreement between FIU’s Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media and the Spotlight. Click here to read the original article published in the Spotlight.