Immanuel Baptist Church gets ready to relocate
The Immanuel Baptist Church is working to finish up building its new location. The church is moving from South West Avenue to a new center on West Hillsboro Street. The move is the first in over 50 years.
The new building includes a main worship center, a kitchen and social area, a wing of rooms for classrooms, and a wing of offices. The building was also built specifically with the idea of expanding. The building would be able to extend onto the land currently behind it if the church determines more space is needed.
“I hope and pray that this will give us increased ministry opportunities in the city,” Christopher Campbell, associate pastor, said. “Our desire is to be a place where we can make disciples and follow the great commission. It’s a newer facility here, a simpler facility. It’s not quite as big, but we don’t need it to be big because it’s very intentional for what we’re trying to do. We’ve got land that we can take advantage of now. We envision it as a campus of just a variety of ministry opportunities that we weren’t able to do
as much of over there.”
As a whole, the building is the result of over a decade of work. Brian Ricker, chairman of the relocation committee, said he started at the church 11 years ago and people were talking about the move before he got there. Construction itself started about a year ago even though the church had the land for about a decade, Ricker said.
“The whole thing has been about putting us in a better position to make disciples, like it says on on our mission statement,” Ricker said. “So that’s really what we’re
trying to be about is making disciples and getting people in here. Not even just here in El Dorado, but to go anywhere that god calls them to go.”
Ricker said this is the first phase out of three that are currently planned and the next one will start being looked at once the congregation has time to get settled.
The first service in the new building is scheduled for Nov. 18.
Michael Shine may be reached at 870-8626611 or mshine@eldoradonews.com. Follow him on Twitter and like him on Facebook @MichaelAZShine for updates on Union County school news.