Several square blocks of Downtown Jacksonville belong to First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, the Baptist megachurch affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. Its main Downtown Campus occupies several square blocks of property connected by above-ground crosswalks, and includes several auditoriums for services, a Sunday school building, and facilities for First Baptist Academy, the private K–12 school on site. As of 2023 the congregation lists about 2,100 members and averages roughly 3,000 people for Sunday services, a measure of how many lives this place touches each week.
The church traces its origins to Bethel Baptist Church, founded in 1838, anchoring it in the city’s earliest Baptist traditions. In the mid-20th century the congregation grew considerably, at one point encompassing eleven square blocks of downtown Jacksonville. That expansion and the scale of this campus reflect both local change and broader influence: former pastors such as Homer G. Lindsay Jr. and Jerry Vines were widely influential in the Southern Baptist Convention, guiding its growth and a shift toward conservatism.
The sweep of buildings and above-ground walkways knits this whole campus together, reaching out to the blocks and streets beyond you.