After waiting more than a year after purchasing the building, Exit Church, located in Gas City, Indiana, is finally starting construction on their new building.
Exit bought the old Walnut Creek Outdoors building early in 2025, the Echo reported earlier this year. The church has waited for state approval of building plans and a reply to their grant application from the Lilly Foundation.
Exit has grown popular with college students from Indiana Wesleyan University and Taylor University along with community members, Tyler Shirley, Exit co-pastor, said.
“For a couple of years, we've just been full to the gills, especially in the school year … when the fall hits, it's just nuts,” Shirley told parishioners gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony on March 16.
At 80% full, newcomers don’t feel welcome at church, Forrest Brown, co-pastor at Exit, said. Exit has 188 chairs, yet they regularly seat 300 people. The sardine-like quality of the seating makes it difficult to reach others, especially young families.
Shirley and Brown hope the new space will make the church feel more welcoming to members and visitors, they said. This is reflected in the new building’s design. ]
“The idea behind a big foyer and wide hallways is to foster a space for people just to connect and to linger and not feel like rush out the door because the next service is starting, and you're literally in the sanctuary right now if you're in the building,” Brown said.
The pastors hope the new space will allow the church to better minister to the community as well.
Grant County has one of the highest childhood poverty rates in Indiana, Shirley said. A common denominator in adult poverty is a lack of relationships – a lack of people.
Instead of thinking of themselves as “the cool kids in town” because they have a nice new building, they want to be a place that blesses people, he said.
“My prayer is that people can become family here, across socioeconomic lines, and that people can meet with the Lord and be blessed,” Shirley said.
Exit had been searching for a new building without any luck for several years before they found Walnut Creek, Shirley said. When a friend suggested they check out the Walnut Creek building, they weren’t optimistic.
“I thought, ‘Here we go again,’” he said. “Another thing, we're gonna look at it. It's either gonna be too expensive or too far out of the way.”
However, the building is just right. More than that, it was in the right location and Darren Campbell, the founder of Exit and Slingshot, offered to rent space from them for Slingshot, Shirley said. Someone who doesn’t even attend Exit offered to provide a large down payment for the church as well.
Moreover, the members of Exit unanimously agreed to take on the mortgage for the new building, he said.
“It's one of those moments in life where it's like, sometimes I'm not totally sure what the Lord is up to, and I'm like, ‘Lord, I'm just gonna keep operating until you tell me do something different,’” Shirley said. “... So it's this beautiful thing where we're a small community of believers, Jesus followers, and he's called us to inhabit this space, which is just nuts. So what a gift.”
