It took only four years for The King’s Church to outgrow its building.
The church, which began holding services in 2022 at a historic site in Lakeland’s South Lake Morton neighborhood, will soon shift to a larger sanctuary. In the process, The King’s Church will follow the course of another church that previously occupied its current building at 730 S. Florida Ave.
“This was kind of our dream location,” Lead Pastor Ian Thomas said. “We thought we’d be able to kind of be here for the long haul. We have a heart to plant churches, so we were hoping to do that, but we definitely have grown much faster and bigger than we anticipated in a pretty short period of time.”
Starting in August, The King’s Church will hold Sunday services at 1736 New Jersey Road, on the campus of Geneva Classical Academy. That space was recently vacated by Grace City Church, which moved in May to a newly built, 73,000-square-foot building on the west side of U.S. 98 in South Lakeland.
The King’s Church, a Baptist congregation, formed in 2018 and held services at Dixieland Elementary School and Union Hall before moving into the space on South Florida Avenue. The church paid $2 million in January 2022 to buy the property from Grace City Church, according to county records.
The roughly 6,600-square-foot sanctuary building dates to 1925, originally hosting Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which formed in 1888 at another location. The congregation changed the name to Westminster Presbyterian Church in 1942.
That church’s congregation gradually declined in later decades, and Westminster Presbyterian stopped holding services in 2015. The congregation merged with Church in the Meadows to form Beacon Hill Fellowship.
The sanctuary building, featuring a red-brick exterior, a vaulted roof, square towers and several stained-glass windows, lies within the South Lake Morton Historic District, just outside of the Dixieland Historic District. The property includes a second building constructed decades later.
The sanctuary seats about 350 people, and the church has been forced to hold three services on Sundays, at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., Thomas said. The building on New Jersey Road, formerly home to Lakeside Baptist Church, holds about 750, more than doubling the capacity for services, he said.
The King’s Church will retain the property on South Florida Avenue for its operations as it rents space at Geneva Classical Academy.
Grace City Church moved its services to the building at Geneva Classical Academy in 2018, three years after launching at the Lake Morton site. That church continued using the South Florida Avenue location until selling the site to The King’s Church.
“The joke around here is we’re just following Grace City around,” Thomas said. “That wasn’t the plan. Geneva reached out to us, and we’ve got a lot of members and families that are there. And so, it was kind of a natural fit, and we’re excited to be able to use that space and partner with them.”
The King’s Church, which has 14 employees, including part-timers, is affiliated with Acts 29, a global organization with a mission of “planting” new churches. Thomas described its philosophy as “one church in multiple congregations.”
Church leaders are working toward the opening of an offshoot in South Lakeland in early 2027. That church, likely to begin by renting space at a school, will have its own leadership team, Thomas said.
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: King’s Church outgrows historic Lakeland site, will move its services
Reporting by Gary White, Lakeland Ledger / The Ledger
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By Gary White, Lakeland Ledger | USA TODAY Network
