Pakenham Baptist Church started as a church plant from Beaconsfield Baptist in May 1996.
Pastor Fred Rudd was Pastoring both Church’s.
We went from a small number of people at Meadowvale Retirement Village to Homegarth Community Center in the first year. Mark and Karen Ray came on board as Pastors in 1998. With having our own pastor we then out grew Homegarth and moved on to the old Anglican Church by the year 1999. At the start of 1999 the opportunity arose to move to the Beaconhills Christian College Year 12 Center.
In 2000, land was bought at the site of the old Army Museum on the corner of Army Road and Princes Highway. In October that year we moved into the building. The church was now able to grow even more because of its own building.
Pakenham Baptist employed a part time Pastor Martin Gillespie in 2002. Mark and Karen Ray then moved onto Adelaide to plant another church and Martin Pastored the church for 2 more years.
When Martin Gillespie resigned in October of 2005, Geoff Sprout and Ross Brightwell stepped in to pastor the church on a temporary basis.
In January 2008 we were joined by Darryl Kilker.
Since 2008 Pakenham Baptist Church has grown to over 250 people a week.
In 2015, we completed our main building project, where we now have a 320 seated auditorium.
In 2016 we employed Steve Messer as our Associate Pastor. Steve moved on in 2019 to pastor another church.
Darryl finished with us on 26th January 2020.
During COVID in 2020 and 2021, our ministry was Live Steamed and led by people within our church as well as visiting speakers
Pastor Garth Nilsen began his ministry as the Senior Pastor in March 2022, but due to family commitments shifted back to Adelaide in April 2023.
In March 2023 David Sollberger was inducted into the ministry of our church as the Children’s and Youth Pastor.
We would love to see you at one of our services and we are excited to see what the Lord has on the horizon for us at Pakenham Baptist Church.