About Us

First Baptist Church of Cape Coral began as a mission church, sponsored by First Baptist Church of Fort Myers, on May 17, 1963, when 17 people met to begin the new church.

The first worship service was held on July 7, 1963 – meeting in a home, with 26 people in attendance. The population of Cape Coral was then 1,500. (Today the population is approaching 200,000.)

The first building was built in 1964 and four years later the church’s status moved from being a “mission” church to becoming a full-fledged Baptist church, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the Florida Baptist Convention, and the Royal Palm Baptist Association. The church has been blessed by a number of pastors, including Dr. Dane Blankenship, Dr. James Wigton, and Jonathan Phillips.

In 1988 the current property was purchased. The church building was built on SE 41st Terrace, which is our current youth/children’s building.  The church saw increasing growth in the old building with two worship services each Sunday. With the need for more space the current Worship Center and Groups space was built and dedicated on June 20, 2004. After several pastoral changes over the next two decades and coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, the church was going through some difficult challenges. 

A partnership with First Naples Church began in the Spring of 2023 as pastors assisted with leading weekend services while our lay leadership prayed over future plans. During the summer both churches pursued the Lord’s leading through much prayer and discussions and in October 2023 First Baptist Church of Cape Coral membership officially voted to merge with First Naples Church and change its name to First Cape Church.  In November of 2023, First Cape Church emerged as a campus of First Naples Church and part of the North American Mission Board’s Send Network.

As a campus of First Naples Church, we have been blessed with many renovations both to the physical building and also our ministries. Kevin Taylor was installed as our Campus Pastor on November 12th, 2023.  God continues to add to our staff and congregation as we prepare for our official relaunch 

 

We look toward the future ministry of First Cape Church, we are excited and expectant that God will do great things as we lock arms together and seek to glorify God by being a multigenerational, multiethnic, multiplying church that raises up the next generation of disciple makers, church planters, missionaries, and world changers, to reach from our neighbors to the nations.