Canaan Baptist Church, 5409 Baumgart-ner Road, this weekend will celebrate the completion of a new addition, the second phase of building that the church has in-corporated.
The 17,000-square-foot Christian Educa-tion Center includes Adult and Youth Edu-cation rooms to house the increasing number of people interested in Sunday morning Bible study. The center also includes a new bookstore, music suite, coffee shop, library and prayer room. In addition, the church kitchen has been enlarged and moved to the new building.
The Christian Education Center will be dedicated at 10:45 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 28, in the memory of the Rev. Ray Shumake during the church service. Church members also invite the public to an open house from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 28.
Canaan Baptist Church had its beginnings in 1992 when two churches, Mattese Baptist Church and Butler Hill Baptist Church, merged. A ceremonial groundbreaking service was conducted Sept. 13, 1992, with a plow guided by both pastors and a rope pulled by the newly blended congregation.
Nearly two years later on May 14, 1994, Pastor Shumake and Pastor Rick Auxier led a parade of banner carrying congregates of Canaan Baptist as they marched down Baumgartner Road to the newly completed church. The next day, May 15, the building was dedicated and the first service was conducted with 600 in attendance.
Three years later, in 1997, Pastor Auxier was called to pastor a church in Illinois.
Later in 1997 and in early 1998 respectively, Canaan Baptist church was saddened by the deaths of both Pastor Shumake and Pastor Auxier. An interim pastor was called.
In July 1998, Dr. Bruce McCoy was in-vited to Canaan Church as senior pastor and later was joined by Minister of Educa-tion Mike Self, Minister of Music Mike Wright and Youth Minister Brad Beckham.
In April 2000, the first phase of the building addition began with the Child Devel-opment Center and playground.
With phase one completed in 2001, ground was broken in August 2004 for the new Christian Education Center. The church plans to conduct a weekday education program in the future.
