Fairhaven Baptist Church has grown in leaps and bounds from its original beginnings in 1957. While Revered Allen Atkins has only been the pastor of the church for three years, he’s led the church in many new projects to increase the overall atmosphere.

The newest project that Fairhaven has just completed is a total remodeling of one of the older buildings in the complex. Atkins said there have been so many new additions to our church families in the past few years that the church decided to totally renovate this building into a preschool children building and nursery.

“This building is over 20 years old, but walking around in it now and it looks brand new inside thanks to the efforts of the church members,” Atkins said.

All of the newly redesigned rooms feature a splash of color in the form of five squares in the center of the rooms each a different color featuring orange, red, blue, yellow, and green. In the main nursery, there are many cribs, rocking chairs, and walkers to keep the children occupied during church hours.

“We just wanted to make this new building as colorful as we could strictly for the children of the church,” Atkins said.

There is a yellow stripe that runs down the hallways in the new buildings that reminds the children to follow the yellow brick road just like in ‘The Wizard of Oz.” The stripe ends at the beginning of one of the best features in the new building, which is the staircase.

The multi-colored staircase is a child’s dream. Each step features a different color just like the squares in the rooms; the staircase was designed just for the children.

“The staircase is one of my favorite things in the building. We’ve taken just some ordinary steps and turned them into works of art,” Atkins said.

While on the second floor make sure to look at the best two additions to the building period. In two of the classrooms, there are murals that were hand painted by one of the church members that depicts Jesus talking to five children as well as walking on water.

“These two murals are truly works of art and we are truly blessed to have these marvelous paintings,” Atkins said.

He said the current total membership at Fairhaven is over 1,000, but there are about 850 members solely in Demopolis. He also said thanks to our continuing growth there are also plans in the works to expand the gym as well as the fellowship hall.

“We are just very blessed to have the means to continue to expand our facilities for our church families,” Atkins said.

He said that the membership growth has made the church start having two services on Sunday mornings now. He also said that they have plans in the future to build a brand new 900-seat sanctuary.

“The new sanctuary is a couple of years off, but with the continuing support of our church family there is nothing we can’t accomplish,” Atkins said.