Kansas Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists (KNCSB)

Lenexa Baptist Church dedicates new building

Members of Lenexa Baptist Church, Lenexa, Kan., celebrated the dedication of their new worship center on Sunday, April 26.

“I’m so grateful and overwhelmed at what God has done,” Pastor Steve Dighton said. Dighton is the church’s founding pastor and has served there for 19 years. He is the KNCSB immediate past president.

“Our church is not a building. We are the building,” Dighton reminded the crowd filling the 1,200-seat sanctuary. He used I Corinthians 3:9-17 as the text for his dedication message.

The dedication service paid tribute to the contractors, the church building committee and the church staff.

LifeWay Church Architects, Nashville, Tenn., designed the building after developing the master plan on the property in the 1990s. Pearce Construction Company of Kansas City, Mo., was the general contractor.

The church relocated in 2001 from a former office building at 8865 Bourgade its present location on 87th Street Parkway about a mile east of Interstate 435.

Lenexa Baptist’s story was featured in a special advertising supplement in the Kansas City Star on Sunday, April 26.

“Since Lenexa Baptist moved to its present location, the average worship attendance has increased from about 500 to 2,200,” an article in the supplement said.

(The church moved into the new worship center on March 1. Worship attendance on Easter was nearly 3,500 people.)

“In 2005, Thom Rainer (now president of LifeWay Christian Resources) named Lenexa Baptist one of just 13 `breakout churches’ in America in his book ‘Breakout Churches’,” the article continued.

“Two years later the church was recognized by LifeWay Research as one of 19 Standout Churches in the Southern Baptist Convention. The award was the result of a 10-year study on effective evangelistic churches.”

In 2011, Lenexa Baptist Church will play host to the KNCSB annual meeting. The 2009 annual meeting will be held Oct. 12-13 at Country Acres Baptist Church, Wichita, Kan. In 2010, the meeting will be held in Kearney, Neb., with the site to be announced.

• Visit the church’s Web site