IF YOU GO
WHAT: Helicopter Easter 'Eggstravaganza' (dropping 5,000 Easter eggs)
WHEN: 12:30 p.m. Sunday, April 5, following services, which start at 11 a.m.
WHERE: West Chester Baptist Church, 6856 Dimmick Road, West Chester Twp.
MORE INFO: 513-777-9227
Next Sunday, Brian Claprood returns to the place where he planted his religious roots.
The 33-year-old is set to become pastor at West Chester Baptist Church, taking over for longtime senior pastor Jerry Byrd, who is retiring.
Claprood grew up in Columbus suburb Reynoldsburg as part of a Catholic family, one that fractured due to divorce when he was seven. The emotional turmoil that followed led him to a series of choices that ended up with him being an alcoholic by the time he was a senior in high school.
Heading off to college on a football scholarship, he eventually dropped out.
“It didn’t matter what I tried, whether it was sports, whether it was girls, it just didn’t matter,” he said. “Anything that I tried to fill a void in my life with never filled the void.”
In 2001, about a year after college, Claprood’s sister got married and he walked down the aisle during the ceremony with Janelle, his sister’s husband’s sister.
“And that’s the woman who’s now my wife,” he said. “We actually met at the wedding … and 10 days later we had our first date and have been together ever since.”
Friends the couple met at UC Blue Ash College attended West Chester Baptist Church and inspired them by example to do the same.
“The lady and her husband reached out to us and in doing so, we ended up trusting and following Jesus,” he said. “So when it came time to say ‘OK, where do we go to church?’ we started attending with the people who reached out to us.”
Claprood said West Chester Baptist taught him and his wife the meaning of Christian fellowship.
“A lot of the people who were members of this church were our fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers of faith,” he said. “They really showed us how to love one another beyond ‘what can you do for me?’”
When a youth pastor left the church, Byrd asked Claprood if he would take over the unpaid, part-time position.
“At that point we’re reading the Bible, we’re growing incredibly because we’re spending a lot of time with God’s word,” he said. “But what was really interesting is that I’d never felt so unequipped to do something in my entire life. I was scared to death, really.”
That fear dissipated when, during a faith-based camping trip, fundamentalist Christian and Answers in Genesis president Ken Ham urged youth groups and their leaders to pray about what they learned and how they would apply it to their lives.
“I prayed with the students and I’d never in my life felt so clearly directed that God wanted me to do something,” Claprood said.
That “something” included heading to Virginia to earn a bachelor’s degree at Liberty University and serving 275 teens at Thomas Road Baptist Church as small youth pastor and then, in 2007, as assistant youth pastor.
While working on a master’s degree, Claprood was encouraged to apply for a position as student ministries pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Covington, Ky.
Coming to West Chester Baptist wasn’t something he envisioned. After initially turning down an interview for the position, he offered to help in the selection process. During that time, Claprood filled the pulpit for Byrd on two occasions and congregants got to see his leadership style in action.
“They asked us to candidate, but I wasn’t able to do it … because we were right in the middle of Winter Advance, a huge area retreat for teenagers,” he said. “They actually pushed for a vote of confidence from the (West Chester Baptist) church without us even coming to do it and it was a unanimous vote to ask us to come and be the senior pastor.”
Claprood starts at West Chester Baptist on March 29 and delivers his first official sermon as senior pastor on April 5, Easter Sunday.
Returning to the place where he and his wife started their spiritual journey is “probably one of the most attractive” aspects of taking the new position, he said.
“The idea that we had been here before, that people had seen us grow up in the faith, they saw us make mistakes … first of all is a gracious thing for them,” Claprood said. “And it was really a picture of God’s providence and direction, that these people who had seen as baby Christians were willing to say ‘Yeah, we’ll lay ourselves under your teaching and shepherding.”
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