THE REV. RANDLE R. (RICK) MIXON, PH.D.

Wearing the steepleInterim Senior Pastor, Old Cambridge Baptist Church
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Rev. Dr. Randle (Rick) Mixon began serving as Interim Senior Minister of Old Cambridge Baptist Church on August 1st, 2023. Rick is an ordained American Baptist minister with over 50 years of experience in pastoral ministry, church leadership, and social justice advocacy. He served as the Pastor of First Baptist Church of Palo Alto, California from 2006-2020 and has served as Interim Minister for three congregations over his career – Dolores Street Baptist Church, San Francisco, CA; First Baptist (now United) Church of Granville, OH; and Fairview Community Church, Costa Mesa, CA. He is a long time member of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, Oakland, CA, the church that ordained him in 1996 as the first openly lgbtqia+ Baptist to be ordained.

He has also been involved in various regional and national organizations, such as the

Alliance of Baptists, the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, the American Baptist Minister’s Council, and the Santa Clara County Council of Christian Churches. Currently he serves as Affiliate Professor of Pastoral Care at Berkeley School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, and emeritus board member of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists.

Rick brings to Old Cambridge Baptist Church a passion for preaching the gospel of love, grace, and liberation, a commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive community of faith, and a vision for engaging in prophetic witness and service in the world. He shares our church’s mission to be “an inclusive Christian community in the American Baptist Tradition that seeks to offer God’s radical hospitality to everyone, answering God’s call to hold fast to love and justice for the earth and all its peoples...striving to follow the example of Jesus and to work, through active nonviolence, for social, racial, economic and ecological justice and for peace.”


Education:

·       Ph.D., Religion and Personality, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA

·       M.Div., The American Baptist Seminary of the West, Berkeley, CA

·       M.S., Marriage and Family Therapy, California State University-East Bay, Hayward, CA

·       B.A., English, Columbia College of Columbia University, New York, NY

Contact

1151 Massachusetts Avenue 

Cambridge, MA 02138

Tel:  617-864-9275

Fax: 617-864-9378

Beth Barefoot - Pianist and Organist

Beth Barefoot headshotBeth Barefoot brings energy, enthusiasm, and a love for all styles of music to the sanctuary, moving our hearts and thoughts closer to God. She has held instrumentalist and music- ministry staff positions in the United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, and Episcopal Church, but her earlier evangelical roots may shine through in her unique style of playing, all to help usher in the Spirit to our worship. A vocalist and classically trained pianist, she studied with Walter Noona (Norfolk) and Julius Chajes (Detroit), as well as with voice teachers Richard Dorr (NYC) and Ellen Chickering (Portland). She moved to Boston in 2014 after a successful music career primarily in church music ministry and musical theater music direction in the Portland, Maine, area.

A proud member of Actors’ Equity, Beth has conducted/musically directed/accompanied/ performed at or with Maine State Music Theatre, Portland’s Good Theater, the University of Southern Maine, community theaters and high school drama programs all over Southern Maine. In addition, she was vocal coach/rehearsal pianist to guest artists with the Portland Symphony Orchestra Pops, and Music Director for several years of the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital “Best of Broadway” benefit held annually at Portland’s Merrill Auditorium.

Also in Maine, she accompanied All-State Choruses and numerous Honors Choirs and was much in demand as accompanist for vocalists and instrumentalists alike in concert, recital and recording settings.

Beth was Chair of Fine Arts, including general music classroom teacher, choral director and voice instructor at Maine’s Hebron Academy, but also has considerable experience in the business world. Having received her Master’s in Arts Administration at BU, she is Business Manager of BU’s College of Fine Arts School of Theatre.

Naro Pongen - Associate Minister for Children & Families (2)

NaroTemjennaro Pongen is from Nagaland, India. She goes by Naro. She was born and raised in a Baptist family together with five older siblings. Growing up, Naro was very active in youth ministry and she loves music. She finished her Bachelor of Arts from Patkai Christian College in 2007, after which she went on to pursue the Bachelor of Divinity and Master of Theology at Clark Theological College and Union Theological College respectively. Naro recently graduated with the Master of Arts in Feminist Liberation Theologies from Episcopal Divinity School in May 2017. At OCBC, Naro serves as Associate Minister, cultivating the spiritual life of the congregation alongside the Pastor and laity, giving specific attention to the pastoral care and spiritual development of OCBC's children and their families.

The Rev. Betsy J. Sowers – Minister for Earth Justice

SowersBetsy represents OCBC outside the church through involvement in both faith-based and secular climate justice organizations and actions. These range from fossil fuel divestment, to energy policy at the State House and Federal level, to working with opponents of new fracked gas infrastructure in the Commonwealth.

Inside the church, Betsy serves as a resource person to our Pastor and Teams to help interpret the climate crisis and sustainability issues within of a context of worship, prayer, education and action, both personal and public. She also helps members and friends of the congregation connect the dots between Earth justice and the other justice concerns that are intimately intertwined with it, especially racial, economic, gender, and immigration/refugee justice, and the possibility of just peace and redemptive community in a climate-stressed world.

Betsy came to her lifelong call to peace and justice ministry via her first post-college job as a flight attendant for Pan American World Airways, which gave her the gift of global awareness and brought her to Cambridge, where she found OCBC, a congregation that confirmed and encouraged her call. After earning an MSW at Boston College Graduate School of Social Work, and the M.Div. at Harvard Divinity School, she was called as a staff person, and later Director in The Department of Church and Society of The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts, serving as educator and advocate on peace and justice matters to Baptist churches in the Commonwealth. She also served the Massachusetts Council of Churches as Adjunct Associate Director. A clear call out of retirement to climate justice service has both surprised and energized her for another chapter of activist ministry.

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