Airway Heights Baptist Church plans expansion

In spring 1955 on a square mile of land inhabited by about 400 newly minted residents, Airway Heights became an incorporated city.

Four years later, with the help of retired airmen from nearby Fairchild Air Force Base, the Airway Heights Baptist Church put down roots in a remodeled military surplus building a mile east of the town center. A second building was later added for a sanctuary, then a classroom addition a few years after that.

Fifty years later, the church is still at the same location on Sunset Highway. With 500 members, its congregation now outnumbers the city’s first population, and a number of those initial residents fill the pews on Sunday mornings.

The Rev. Dale Jenkins is the seventh senior pastor in the church’s half-century history, and he has been with the church for about 11 years. Jenkins, who is also chaplain for the city’s Police Department, is joined in the ministry by his son Brian, the church’s youth pastor, and his wife, Penny, who acts as the women’s ministry coordinator.

He said that these days, with about 280 people showing up each week to two Sunday worship services, the pews are getting pretty full. “We’re growing all the time,” said Jenkins. “It’s getting a little crowded some mornings.”

His church seems to be bucking a national trend for the Southern Baptist denomination. The Annual Church Profile, released by the Southern Baptist Convention in April, shows a recent dip in Baptist church membership as well as a decline in the number of baptisms for the fourth year in a row.

But with more than 16 million members, Southern Baptists still make up the largest Protestant denomination in the country, and Jenkins doesn’t see his own church’s growth wavering. Through the city’s continual development and new arrivals at Fairchild, fresh faces are appearing all the time. “We have a big variety of people,” said Jenkins. “We really represent the demographics of Airway Heights – about 35 percent seniors, 40 percent young families.”

To deal with growth, Jenkins said blueprints are being drawn for a new worship center and groundbreaking is expected within the year. The plans would replace the current structure with a bigger space that could house classrooms, a fellowship hall and additional space for the church’s many programs.

The most widely utilized program is the food distribution center, which is open the first and third Saturday of each month. Most of the food, more than 180,000 pounds in the last year alone, is provided by Second Harvest Inland Northwest and about 30 volunteers with the church distribute the goods.

Many of the volunteers are teens who need to complete community service for a high school course or because of a misdemeanor. “It’s good for them to have a chance to get in touch with the community and to see what they’ve got here,” said Andy Austin, coordinator of the program since it began in 2006.

Austin said the church took over food charity for the area after Second Harvest canceled its contract with the Airway Heights Food Bank. “It sort of happened on us,” he said. “We thought it would be an effective outreach – a way to get our name out into the community while doing a good service.”

Like the congregation, new people are showing up at the distribution center all the time, Austin said.

“We serve more than a hundred families every Saturday we’re open and I see about 13 to 20 new families each time,” he said.

In addition to the food bank, the church has also reached out to the city by fixing up homes in need of repair. In 2005 and 2006, Jenkins was instrumental in bringing hundreds of young volunteers to the city of Airway Heights through World Changers, a national Southern Baptist mission work program. The crews provided a labor force for dozens of home-improvement projects over a week each summer.

Jenkins said Airway Heights Baptist has an active youth ministry with connections to four area high schools and three junior highs, which bodes well for the future of the church.

At a celebration early this month, hundreds of people came out to mark its 50th anniversary. The church seems destined to mirror the city’s growth, although there will always be setbacks.

Jenkins said one of the tougher issues is saying goodbye to Fairchild families who are reassigned to other areas. “There have sometimes been big groups leaving all at once. We miss them when they leave, but all we can do is keep praying,” he said.