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First Baptist moving forward

• First Baptist Church of Albany's first meeting in its new building will be May 4.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — Albany’s First Baptist Church congregation will have its first worship service in the church’s new Lee County facility next Sunday, the church’s pastor said this week.

The 37,000-square-foot building on Oakland Parkway off Highway 82 should be ready for the congregation to conduct worship services by May 4, Pastor Butch Knight said Thursday while taking a visitor on a tour of the facility.

Services will be held in a 12,500-square-foot “multipurpose room” until a sanctuary can be built, which will be at some point in the future, Knight said, though he didn’t have a time frame.

The construction of the new building reflects a desire to update “weak areas” the old building on Pine Avenue had, such as the children’s area, Knight said.

“We looked at areas in our current facility that we felt were weakness areas,” he said. “The emphasis (of the new facility) is on students and children and younger families.”

The multipurpose room — the main purpose for which will be worship — will have collapsible walls that can form 14 Sunday school rooms, seven on each side, and will also function as the dining hall and recreation room until a sanctuary can be built, Knight said.

A portable building containing the other three Sunday school classes will be installed until more Sunday school rooms can be built, he said.

The new facility is laid out in a giant V. As a person enters the main doors, the multipurpose room sits immediately to the left. Atlanta architect Jerry Fountain designed the building, reminiscent of the old Pine Avenue building’s classic architecture, Knight said.

Two crossbeams stretch across a vaulted ceiling inside the multipurpose room, similar to the Pine Avenue sanctuary’s design. Windows in the room are modeled after antiquated windows at the Pine Avenue building.

Capable of comfortably fitting 900-1,000 people, the room will initially be furnished with about 700 chairs. Once the adults’ 9 a.m. Sunday school classes are over, the front several Sunday school rooms will be rolled back to give more space for the worship service, Knight said.

The church’s “blended-style” worship service begins at 10:30 a.m.

Across the church’s entryway lies the youth and children’s wings. The youth Sunday school rooms have angled walls, while the children’s rooms and hallway are square, painted various colors and complete with colored light covers.

The new facility sits on seven of the church’s 30 acres, Knight said, but there are potential plans for the rest of the property as well.

“One of my hopes is in the future we will begin to build a road to the back and put some recreation fields there,” he said after pointing out the property’s boundaries.

The initial idea of relocating came about a decade ago, he said, but it took several years to get to the point of construction on the multimillion- dollar project, which began on April 30, 2007. The entire project to this point will probably total about $6.8 million to $7 million, he said.

The First Korean Church, which rents a room at the Pine Avenue location, will also move with First Baptist, Knight said.

As for the old facility on Pine, the plan is to sell the building built in the 1960s, which includes the gym and several children’s Sunday school and nursery rooms. The church will retain the older building, which includes the sanctuary, for the “foreseeable future,” he said.

The church will continue to run its Father’s Kitchen ministry, which feeds many impoverished members of the community, from that location, he said.

The project’s master plan can be viewed at http:// www.firstbaptistalbany.org

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