Irving Baptist Fellowship

The Life of Our Church

The beginning of a new church happens in many ways. The birth of our church happened when the pastor of another church in Irving wanted to lead the church in a different direction. When the church didn’t want to follow that pastor, Dr. Hendrix resigned, that was in May of 1991. A group of people that voted for Dr. Hendrix’s motion for change called a meeting at Donnelly’s Colonial Funeral home and voted to begin a new work. The new work called Colonial Baptist Church was established in June of of 1991 and Dr. Hendrix was called as their pastor.  The church worshipped in the chapel and Sunday school classes met in the viewing rooms. The folks laugh as they remember the children running to their teachers and saying, “we can’t meet in our room today we’ve got a visitor!”  Dr. Hendrix led the church until he resigned on April 4, 1993 to accept another Texas church.  On June 20th, 1993 the church called Rev. Hamp Linehan as pastor. By now the church had moved to a shopping center up on Rochelle and even expanded within the shopping center.  The first baptism inside Colonial was on March 12, 1995. Rev. Linehan posted until his resignation in July of 1995, his last sermon was on July 30th.  In December of 1995 the church called it’s Youth Minister, Ryan Williams as pastor. Ryan served as the church pastor until April 12th, 1998. The church used interim ministers for a time and in September of 1998 the current pastor, David Fortenbury came as the interim pastor. The people of Colonial Baptist wanted a more permanent site and on March 12, 1999 the trustees closed on the building where the church now meets at 2201 W. Shady Grove Road. The decision was made to change the name from Colonial Baptist Church to Irving Baptist Fellowship. Our first worship in the new building was March 24th, 1999. On April 18, 1999 the church officially called David Fortenbury to be its pastor. Irving Baptist Fellowship has been actively involved in helping start churches, in providing preaching points, and by sponsoring churches to join the Dallas Baptist Association and the Baptist General Convention of Texas for the past 10 years. We have helped Latino, Korean, Indian and seeker churches by providing a place of worship within our building. IBF has also sponsored Nigerian and seeker churches in irving and Cedar Hill. Irving Baptist Fellowship has for a number of years now, helped Rev. John Shelton with Church on the Lot, in ministering to the homeless. We are actively involved with the Baptist Benevolent Ministries of Irving. Our church is affiliated with the Dallas Baptist Association, the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Southern Baptist Convention. IBF partners with the Allied Baptist Churches of Dallas, a networking group of strong small churches who synergize the gospel together. We look forward to the future and welcome those that God sends our way to join this family of faith.