Baptist and Reflector
— Photos by Corinne Williams
FRANKLIN — The Tennessee Baptist Mission Board (TBMB) has relocated to Franklin and will cut a ribbon in the front of the Church Support Center June 3, marking the beginning of a new era in the organization’s long history.
TBMB employees officially moved into the building May 23, and guests are invited to the June 3 ribbon cutting and open house at 10:30 am. A number of special guests will participate in the program and the building will be open for tours after the ceremony.
After renting office space for three years, TBMB offices will permanently be located on 2.3 acres in the Berry Farms mixed-use development adjacent to I-65 in Franklin. The 32,533-square-foot building is the first corporate office building to open in the development and was designed by Smith Gee Studio. The total cost of the project was $8.6 million and was built by Hardaway Construction. Wood Caldwell, of Southeast Venture, was the project manager. The physical address of the building is: 4017 Rural Plains Circle, Franklin, TN, 37064. The Post Office Box address is: P.O. Box 682789, Franklin, TN, 37068.
The toll free number will continue to be 800-558-2090 and all direct-dial numbers will remain the same. Office hours will be 7:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. CST Monday through Friday.
The new Church Support Center of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board was opened on Monday, May 23, when staff gathered for the first time to celebrate its opening. They have been working from rented space in Brentwood for three years.
The building also houses the offices of the Tennessee Baptist Foundation and Tennessee Baptist Adult Homes.
“We are extremely excited about this next chapter in Tennessee Baptist history,” said Randy C. Davis, president and executive director of the TBMB. “We were able to complete this project on time and on budget and we will move into the new space debt free. That is a testimony to God’s grace in what we were able to receive from the sale of our previous property and the foresight of those Baptist leaders who came before us and located the office in Brentwood to begin with.”
The Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, which was previously named the Executive Board of the Tennessee Baptist Convention, was housed for decades in the “Baptist Center,” an 88,000-square-foot building formerly located at the corner of Maryland Way and Franklin Road in Brentwood. That building opened in 1969 and that property sold in November 2013 for approximately $8.75 million dollars. The TBMB then leased space for three years in the LifePoint office building located at Seven Springs Way adjacent to Old Hickory Blvd in Brentwood.
“We named the new building the ‘Church Support Center’ to let Tennessee Baptists know that this is their building, and the activities that take place here are to serve them,” Davis said. “We want people to know they are welcome any time, and we’d love for them to stop in whenever they are passing through.”
