About Pastor Blake
Rev. Blake Phillips is married to Melissa and proud dad to Sophia and Judah. He is the pastor at The River Community Church in Douglas, MA and a Navy Chaplain Candidate ordained and endorsed by the Christian Reformed Church. He studied Philosophy with a concentration in Religious Studies at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia and earned a Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary outside Boston, Massachusetts. Before starting pastoral ministry, Pastor Blake completed one extended unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Beverly Hospital and served four years with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as a campus minister at universities in Virginia. His time as a hospital chaplain intern and campus minister awakened a love for ecumenical and interfaith ministry he carries out today through Naval chaplain candidacy. Pastor Blake loves Christ’s Church and looks forward to its future growth in the 21st-century through partnership with institutional ministry and robust, integrative discipleship.
In his free time, Pastor Blake likes to spend time outdoors with his family, exercise at the gym, visit historical sites, and watch Survivor with his friends. He was raised in Virginia Beach and still calls it home even though he’s lived other places for nearly ten years. He hopes to return one day and settle down there after enough adventure.
About Our Services
Your bridge between the sacred and the ordinary
Americans are spending less time in church and more time with family, friends, and traveling. Nevertheless, sacred moments happen all around us. Pastor Blake loves standing in sacred moments with people and highlighting the good things about them. Pastor Blake Ministries achieves this through the following services:
Weddings, Funerals, and Memorial Services: Creating meaningful memories and remembering them well involves a careful inner eye and observations articulated sincerely and vulnerably. Whether it is a wedding ceremony or a eulogy for a loved one, Pastor Blake will deliver a service curtailed for your interests and respects your values. Collaborative efforts are welcome, but not necessary. Pastor Blake will present tasteful aspects of tradition with contemporary flair when it comes to services marking a sacred life change.
Interfaith Chaplaincy: Pulling from interfaith hospital chaplaincy and military chaplaincy training, Pastor Blake is happy to provide spiritual care consults to individuals, families, business teams, and emergency response teams. Consults may involve a spiritual condition assessment and implementation of a spiritual care plan should the recipient(s) desire one.
Speaking Engagements: Pastor Blake preaches regularly at The River Community Church and has trained laypeople in small group Bible study and postmodern evangelism techniques. He’s also delivered talks on multi-ethnic ministry and biblically-informed justice. Speaking engagements can range from one session to multiple sessions depending on the context.
“Pastor Blake did a wonderful job officiating our wedding. He worked with us to ensure the vows we used matched our faith tradition, and the homily he delivered during the ceremony struck the perfect balance of scriptural, insightful, and witty. Blake was also diligent about signing all of the required legal documentation after the marriage ceremony. “— Alexandra & Joshua Stanton
