Media Kit - Paradise Baptist Church 160th Church Anniversary
Leadership
Reverend Doctor Charles A. Harper III - Lead Pastor
Reverend S. Tarnace Watkins, Sr. - Executive Pastor
Key Programs
Outreach Ministry: The Paradise Outreach Ministry began in YEAR. Each year, we serve the residents of Grove Park by providing.... Outreach is open each Thursday from 10:00 am - 1:00 pm.
Demographics
Small, intergenerational congregation
Family and Friends Day
Auburn Avenue Exhibit
Paradise Anniversary Banquet
Historical Articles
Atlanta Magazine, August 30, 2022, by Josh Green
"For 18 years, the Reverend Charles Harper has been pastor of Paradise Baptist Church, the largest congregation in Grove Park. Harper, 69 years old and a lifelong Atlantan, has seen the area swing from prosperity to blighted abandonment. But these days, the church’s location on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway feels like a front-row seat to explosive gentrification, with the BeltLine, Microsoft’s future campus, the sprawling Westside Park, and now $800,000-plus new townhomes nearby. Harper doesn’t necessarily perceive the sea change as negative—at least not for property owners who play their cards right. As a seasoned real estate agent, and one of the city’s foremost authorities on selling churches, the pastor knows his stately brick sanctuary and surrounding property could fetch up to $12 million..."
Grove Park Renewal, March 21, 2020
"In fact, the PAW in PAWKids stands for Paradise Atlanta Westside, in homage to the two churches who helped make PAWKids a reality. “PAWKids started as a Bible study I held in Chuck Johnston’s backyard in 2012,” said LaTonya. “But we knew early on that we needed dedicated space for the kids. A safe place. At the time I was living in Edgewood, but I knew I’d end up living in Grove Park.”
The Covington News, July 19, 2012, by Michelle Kim
"There's this picture painted at the church that she was this eloquent lady who was already grown" when she started the Sunday school, said Dr. Charles Harper III, present day pastor of Paradise Missionary Baptist Church, as he gazed at an undated photocopy of a daguerreotype labeled "Sister Dinah Pace." The image, which hangs on the wall next to portraits of the church founders, shows an adult woman elegantly dressed in the Victorian fashion of the day with pleated rows of buttons and puffy wrist-length sleeves. A woman so light she could have nearly passed as white. "But no, she was a young girl in a neighborhood that gathered together the children in the neighborhood," he said. "It seemed she was really calling the shots and her brothers were supporting her in her mission."
The Paradise Missionary Baptist Church Collection dates from 1947 to 2013 and it consists of Church Anniversaries, Special Events, Social Clubs, Correspondences and a Photograph collection.
Church History
Paradise Baptist Church evolved from a community Sunday school. When the Civil War ended in 1865, Mrs. Dinah Watts Pace, a woman possessed with keen insight and zeal, saw a need to establish a religious presence in the Summerhill community. She was born in Athens, Georgia on January 9, 1853, a slave of the Alexander family. After moving to Atlanta, she trained to become a teacher by attending and graduating from Atlanta University Normal School. However, “it was the children that touched Dinah Watts the most. She loved the homeless, hungry children of her time and she did something about it” (Atlanta Journal, February 8, 1974.) She gathered the neighborhood children of Summerhill and founded the first Sunday school class at the corner of Richmond and Martin Streets. The Sunday school was formally organized and named The Pleasant Grove Sunday School. Mr. Arthur Casey became the first Superintendent. Mrs. Pace along with Mr. Casey and her two brothers, Lewis (who financially supported her efforts from his earnings as a Pullman Porter) and Albert Watts worked faithfully and earnestly to sow the seeds of Christianity for many years. Parenthetically, upon leaving Atlanta Mrs. Pace moved to Covington, Georgia where she continued to teach “colored children” in churches and private schools. In 1890 she founded the Covington Colored Orphans Home (later known as The Reed Home and Industrial School) where many boys and girls grew up under her tender care. She was supported in this endeavor by her husband, James Pace, and her two brothers. At the home/school, Mrs. Pace subscribed to high ideals and strict standards of deportment. At the time of her death in 1933, Dinah Watts Pace had almost single-handedly educated 700 children. She had taken in 465 girls and 235 boys off the streets; out of the clutches of hunger, cold and ignorance and molded them into well-educated respectable citizens. The buildings of the orphanage and school no longer exist. In Covington, a street named Dinah Pace Road is the memorial for this outstanding visionary and Christian woman of courage. The Pleasant Grove/Reed Street/ Paradise Missionary Baptist Church enjoys a rich and diverse history. This is due in part to the fact that from 1870 through the present, the church was blessed with eleven pastors, one interim pastor and one associate pastor of leadership, mission and vision.