First Baptist church starts work on long-awaited gymnasium
When Jim Rooks planted a shovel into the ground next to First Baptist Christian Church in Butler Sunday afternoon, July 28, he was digging into a project that had been the seed of an idea since the 1970s.
The church and Christian school is building a new “family life center” at its campus on New Castle Street, which will allow the church to provide more programs and activities for its members and students on-site.
Rooks, a longtime member of the church and former trustee, said the gymnasium will be the hub for school and church programs, which previously have taken place in other venues like the Butler Cubs hall.
“Over 40 years that we’ve been talking about and working toward the point that we could reach this day,” Rooks said. “We’ve had to go and rent many places around the community for many years. This will allow us to not only have it for our people, but for it to be available for others.”
The gymnasium will have three full basketball courts, and equipment for other sports like pickleball and archery, as well as be a space for youths to have activities in during the school year. Dave Maitland, pastor of First Baptist Christian Church in Butler, said the church has had plans to build a gymnasium since he got on staff in the 1970s. The project was held up by other church needs and costs, which delayed work on designing and constructing the gymnasium.
After so many years of waiting, however, Maitland said the trustees decided this was the year to build, because the church had enough money to fund the project.
“We're not borrowing, we have the money,” Maitland said. “We've waited a long time for this.”
Congregation members flowed to the construction zone after Sunday morning’s church service, to hear speeches from the trustees and break ground on the project. Bill Broman, chairman of the trustees for First Baptist Christian Church, led the ceremony, and recognized the trustees and other church members who made the project a possibility.
Broman said he remembers his grandfather talking about his hopes to build a gymnasium for the church when he was a trustee in the early 2000s. His other grandfather was also a member of the church. Broman’s children attended school at the church, so seeing the project finally begin was a full-circle moment.
“Part of it in doing this is just fulfilling what they have started,” Broman said. “Trying to pick up and carry that to the end.”
Maitland said the construction contractor for the project is WK Thomas, and the company should have the project done by the end of this year.
