This isn’t the first time Harold Newberry has retired, but it will be the last. After 70 years in ministry Newberry recently retired from First Baptist Church, Pleasant Grove, where he served as music minister and later pastoral care minister for more than 40 years.
Newberry also has served at First Baptist Church, Fulton, Mississippi; Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Vestavia Hills; First Baptist Church, Birmingham; and Bluff Park Baptist Church, Hoover (now Church on the Bluff), as well as churches in Georgia and Florida.
Newberry holds a bachelor’s degree in sacred music from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.
Newberry was saved and baptized alongside his mom and dad when he was 8 years old.
In college he began working in music and that’s where he’s been ever since.
“I can’t see myself doing anything else and I would never want to do anything else,” he said.
Although God called Newberry into music ministry, he has had many opportunities to serve the church in other ways.
“God called me to be a pastor’s righthand man. … I’ve preached when the pastor wasn’t there. I’ve preached a revival. I served as the education pastor and church administrator for a while too.”
Newberry, however, gives all the credit to the churches he has served. “The churches are what I think ought to receive the honor and the blessings for my long ministry,” he said. “(They’re) what held my ministry together.”
First, Pleasant Grove, renamed the church’s music suite “The Newberry Music Suite” in honor of Newberry and his wife Quinn. Quinn Newberry has served alongside Newberry for almost all of his ministry. “She has been a mainstay to me,” he said.
Harold Newberry hopes to spend the rest of his earthly life serving God, his church and the community. “I’ll be doing that for the rest of my life as long as I’m able,” he said.
The couple has two children and four grandchildren.
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