History

Founding
In the summer of 1938 Beechmont Baptist Church started a neighborhood Sunday School class on Bruce Avenue. The next year Carlisle Avenue Baptist Church hosted a revival in the Auburndale community and held a Sunday School class at Auburndale Elementary School. By 1943, the Sunday School class, along with the help of Carlisle Avenue Baptist purchased land on the corner of Bruce Avenue and Third Street Road just east of the elementary school to build an auditorium. The church was located below the southeast corner of Iroquois Park and was the southernmost neighborhood in Louisville at the time.

The growth in the Auburndale community coincided with growth in the south side’s manufacturing stations used during World War II, when Louisville became “the biggest, busiest industrial community” the south end had ever experienced. To ensure a pastor on location, a parsonage was erected in 1947. The church officially chartered in 1951, leaving behind the assistance of Carlisle Avenue Baptist Church. Its statement of faith was The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Abstract of Principles (1859).  In the latter half of the 1950’s the church campus expanded with the addition of its present buildings and three more parsonages.

Growth and Decline
The church peak in membership under its third pastor, Charles Mitchiner, in the 1970’s coincided with the peak of the city’s manufacturing jobs, which were forty-five percent of the city’s jobs in 1974. Local workers sought to find a local church in their neighborhood to gather for worship. Living original members still remember when the sanctuary was filled with over 600 members. Though Pastor Mitchiner served for twenty years, from 1952 to 1972, membership slowly declined after Mitchiner’s departure. 

The church painfully split in the mid-1980’s, resulting in the formation of New Heights Baptist Church half a mile down the street. That was the beginning of the end.  For the next twenty-five years, the average stay of a pastor was two to three years as Auburndale Baptist Church experienced a slow, but steady decline. At the church’s lowest moment, there remained only thirty elderly members in the summer of 2003 when Brian Croft was called as the next Senior Pastor.  Pastor Croft found the church to be in a very difficult financial position, fractured leadership, a neglected building, and a very present fear of the future by the few faithful members who remained. Most agreed that if nothing changed, the church would not survive.

A Renewed Vision
The early years of Pastor Brian Croft’s ministry saw some amazing highs and some terrible lows.  There were three different movements to remove him as pastor within the first five years. Paying the bills was a constant struggle.  New life, young gifted leaders, and encouraging numeric growth with multiple generations was also met with conflict, distrust, financial crisis, and the relational challenges that often accompany a church experiencing renewed growth for the first time in thirty years. (The video above is a 10-minute account from Pastor Croft of the first five years). 

By the seventh year of Pastor Croft’s ministry many of those early conflicts had been resolved and new patterns of health began to emerge.  Expository preaching through books of the Bible had become the regular steady diet from the pulpit. Our church had moved to a plurality of pastors and deacons in our leadership structure.  An intentional church membership process had been established and a church covenant had been adopted that created a meaningful standard for membership within the church. The church saw conversions from the community and baptisms to follow.  The church saw church members tested, trained, affirmed and sent out to the mission field, or into pastoral ministry for the first time in its history.

A New Day
Pastor Brian Croft served for 17 years as Senior Pastor of Auburndale Baptist Church.  He had one of the longest tenures of any Auburndale pastor, second only to Charles Mitchiner (1952 – 1972).  After his departure to serve full-time at Practical Shepherding, Brian was succeeded by Stephen Iden, a pastor who had been trained and mentored for more than five years by Brian. The current membership has multiple generations present and an ethnic and social economic diversity that did not exist two decades ago.  There remains only four living members of the thirty members from 2003—all in their eighties and nineties.  

In the last fifteen years, the church has sent out thirty-one former members who currently serve on the mission field or in pastoral ministry around the world.  The painful church split in the mid-1980’s that produced New Heights Baptist Church slowly dwindled and eventually dissolved as a church and merged with a vibrant multi-ethnic church plant in 2013—The Antioch Church.  To this day, Auburndale Baptist Church and Antioch Church are closely aligned and are working together to reach the Auburndale community.  

New Challenges
The south end of Louisville does not remotely resemble the predominantly white, thriving industrial-driven job market of the 1970’s.  Our church exists in one of the most diverse zip codes in the city. Thousands of international refugees with great needs move into the city and settle in our area every year.  Poverty, crime, and drug abuse also pose great challenges in our very dense, urban community. The need is great, but we are committed to stay and press on in this mission that God has given us to reach people with the gospel in our community as well as do our part to take that gospel to the nations for the glory of God. As Pastor Stephen often says, “We do not desire to just be a church that meets in the Auburndale community, but a church that makes every effort to meet the Auburndale community, that we might share the hope of Christ to the glory of God.”