Our Story

History. Background. With a purpose.

Our story goes perhaps something like your parents’ or grandparents’ wedding story. If not your parents or grandparents, at some point you have probably known a married couple who grew up in the same town, went to the same schools, were a part of the same community for years and years, but each never thought twice about the other until one day when all the right pieces fell into place. And the rest, as they say…was history.

Similarly, in the mid-1980’s the church planting department at the Kentucky Baptist Convention began to take notice of an area just southeast of the Louisville Metro area called Spencer County. In particular, what caught their eye was the rapid growth but a corresponding lack of churches. The KBC decided it was time to act. So they purchased a 15-acre plot of land on Taylorsville Lake Road and planted a Baptist church called Green Hills Baptist Church. When this church came on hard times, in 2001, the KBC approached Parkland Baptist Church in Louisville about taking this church on as a mission. It was then that Green Hills Baptist Church began to be known as Parkland Hills Baptist mission.

A few years later, in 2006, the Lord began doing a similar work in the life of a sister church in Louisville called Highview Baptist Church. Through the visionary leadership of pastor Kevin Ezell, Highview was committed to launching a series of multi-site campuses across the Louisville Metro area and beyond. One of the areas for which God provided a ready and eager core group for a campus was Spencer County. So on Easter Sunday of 2006, the Spencer County Campus of Highview Baptist Church was launched and began meeting in the gymnasium of the Spencer County Elementary School. After a year of progress and growth, the Lord allowed for them to move to the Spencer County Middle School where they would make their home for the next 5 years to do outreach and discipleship ministries.

Throughout this time, the Parkland Hills Baptist mission and the Spencer County Campus of Highview Baptist Church were doing ministry in the same community, preaching the same message, under the leadership of sister churches from the same denomination, with the same goal in mind—reaching Spencer County with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One of these ministries had a phenomenal location, a great piece of land, and a highly utilizable building, yet they needed a pastor and an influx of young life. The other ministry had a pastor and staff already in place, vibrant children and student ministries, and a host of young families who were charged, trained, and ready for community outreach, yet they did not have a permanent location or a building in which to meet.

In God’s good providence, much like a romantic comedy (or a good country song) the paths of these two ministries crossed at just the right time. The leadership of Highview Baptist and Parkland Baptist began to investigate the possibility of a “joint-venture” between these two churches, already so heavily invested in Spencer County, to continue pursuing ministry there in a more effective way—together. Both churches agreed that the most effective and timely decision for the further advancement of the Gospel in Spencer County would be a cooperative effort in which these two churches would combine their resources and plant a new autonomous Baptist church in Spencer County. So on June 3, 2012, the pastors of Highview Baptist and Parkland Baptist met and signed a covenant together, which officially launched our church, Redemption Hill Baptist Church.