63 years later, local church still focused on serving Jesus and loving people

A thriving Barbourville congregation seeks to make its table bigger to welcome more people inside its doors by constructing a new sanctuary and refurbishing its remaining facility.

Over the past couple of weeks, crews have carefully removed elements of the older portions of East Barbourville Baptist Church. Heavy equipment took the structure to the ground on Friday, leaving only the existing sanctuary. The sanctuary opened for services in 2000, and now, 25 years later, will be repurposed into classroom space and accommodate 12 new classrooms.

A new 510-seat sanctuary will replace the old fellowship hall, classrooms, and offices. The new structure will cover the previous facility’s footprint, not including the family life center, which was completed in 2016.

The new sanctuary will feature comfortable, padded, individual stacking chairs already in use in the family life center. A makeshift sanctuary was set up to serve as a meeting place until the new building is ready.

With the sanctuary consistently seeing capacity crowds on Sunday mornings, the necessity for a new meeting place was obvious. What was not so apparent to most was the structural issues that plagued the old facility. So, in conjunction with the need for more space, the congregation had a mission of making the space safe for all who would enter its doors.

The church was established in what was once an old dry cleaner store in 1962 as a mission of Barbourville’s First Baptist Church. That original mission was called the Highway Chapel Mission of First Baptist Church. What was originally just a series of Sunday School class meetings in a borrowed building has flourished over 60 years into the body we see today, known for its mission efforts at home and abroad.

The congregation was challenged to participate in the Chest of Joash Offering, following a message from Pastor Joshua K. Smith, who has led the congregation since 2012, on 2 Chronicles 24:1-14. In summary, Israel was challenged by Joash in four ways, to which Pastor Smith echoed to his congregation: 

• He challenged them to consider the evaluation

• He challenged them to embrace the vision.

• He challenged them to support the collection.

• He challenged them to complete the restoration.

“If we are saved then we should want to ensure that East Barbourville Baptist Church is strategically positioned to be a continued blessing in the community where she was planted more than sixty years ago,” Pastor Smith wrote on the church’s blog.

In addition to new classrooms and increased seating capacity in the sanctuary, a nursery, conference room, kitchen, restrooms, office spaces, and a new Kingdom Kidz area will further enhance the church’s operations.