About Us

Baxter Avenue Baptist Church began in 1936 through a zealous seminary student, Albert Hopkins, and his eagerness to be a part of active church work. As a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, he wanted to start a mission (a church plant reaching its community). Mr. Hopkins and his wife looked to the communities around Baxter Avenue and discovered a group of Baptist families who also longed for Christian ministry in their community. In seeking a church to aid his efforts, Mr. Hopkins was generously served by Highland Baptist Church

with financial support and workers in 1937. HBC sent a group of women––Asehath Brewster, Eva Dawson, Jeanette Wiggenton, Emily Rhen, and others––to help organize classes, ministries, and departments.

The first location of the mission was an empty building located in the northeast corner of Baxter Ave and Payne St. In this location on March 3, 1937, the first Sunday School was held with 36 children in attendance and 25 adults in their first service. As the mission began to grow, they moved

a few times before settling at our current location and erected a building

in 1948 where a brewery once stood. Baxter Avenue congregation

was officially constituted as a church in 1952.

To this day, Baxter continues to love and serve the Phoenix Hill and Irish Hill neighborhoods of Louisville. The surrounding community has changed since Baxter’s beginnings with the urbanized connection of the Highlands and the Market District (NuLu). Regardless of the changes that come to our neighborhood, our desire is to love and serve our community by meeting needs and proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.

Our church family, often referred to as "Baxter," is a family of sinners saved by the grace of God--a people who have "tasted and seen that the LORD is good" (Psalm 34:8). We long to see people from every nation worship God forever and know the one whom they were made for (John 17:3).

We are a people who have been humbled by the reality that God, the Creator

of all things, sent Jesus Christ, His only Son, to dwell with mankind, to live

a perfect life, and to die a cruel death on a cross in order to forgive our sins

and give us eternal life by bringing us to God (1 Peter 3:18).

OUR STORY

MEMBERSHIP AT BAXTER

Membership at Baxter Avenue Baptist Church

is based upon a confession of personal faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, and the testimony

of believer’s baptism. It is also based on an expressed desire to accept the responsibility

of living a holy life, actively participate in ministry, commit to faithful giving, and to live an evangelistic lifestyle. Members commit to solemnly covenant with the Baxter community

to uphold the faith with a clear conscience,

and to submit to the order of the church.

All members of Baxter Avenue Baptist Church should aspire to the ideals

of the following statement:

We the people of Baxter Avenue Baptist Church, having personally received

Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, been baptized, and led by the Holy Spirit

to unite with one another in church community, commit ourselves to God

and to each other, relying on God’s grace, to do the following:

· We will protect the unity of our church by acting in Christian love

toward other members, by refusing to gossip, and by following the

pastoral leadership within Scriptural limits.

· We will exercise a loving care and watchfulness over each other

and gently correct one another as occasion may require.

· We will quickly work to mend any strained or broken relationships

within the church.

· We will not neglect to pray for our church family and will be willing to

rejoice with those who rejoice and bear each other’s burdens and sorrows.

· We will share the responsibility of our church by developing relationships

with unbelievers, by being hospitable, by praying for its growth, by inviting

the unchurched to attend and by extending warmth to those who visit.

· We will participate in the ministry of the church by discovering our

gifts and talents and using them with a servant’s heart.

· We will seek, by God’s grace, to live carefully in the world,

forsaking all our rebellion against God and His Word.

· We will let our baptism remind us of our union with Christ’s death and

resurrection by which we have died to sin and been raised to live a new life.

· We will faithfully attend services and seek to sustain the church’s worship,

ordinances, discipline, and doctrine.

· We will contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry,

the expenses of the church, the relief of the poor, and the spread of

the Gospel through all nations.

May the love of God, and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.