History of Parkway
On a Sunday afternoon in June, 1957, a small number of Christians met in the auditorium of the Carroll Lane Elementary School. They identified themselves as the church of Christ on Carroll Lane and met at this location for about ten months.
In 1958, the structure located at the corner of Dalraida and Dankin Place was completed and the congregation began to assemble there, becoming known as the Parkway church of Christ.
In 1973 the building at 3737 Brawner Parkway was constructed and the old building was used for classrooms. This building served the Parkway church well until the late 1990s when it became apparent that this facility was no longer meeting our needs. At that time the Parkway church bought a building directly across Brawner Parkway that was formerly occupied by the Nazarene Church. This building was remodeled and on April 1, 2001, the Parkway church began meeting in its present facility at 4141 Brawner Parkway.
W.E. Coffman, Sr. worked as an evangelist with these brethren from their beginning until the later part of 1961. Other evangelists have been Pat Farish, Elden Givens, Bob Melear, J.M. Gilpatrick, Jay Bowman, Elmer Moore, Charles Boshart and Sakki Pretorius. David Smitherman labored with the church for nearly 30 years, beginning in August of 1990 until the summer of 2019. Marc Hinds joined the work in January of 2019.
Prior to 1997, six men served as elders of this church. The first three were C.J. Folkes, Carl Miller, and Jack Young who began their work in 1965. John Osborne, Joe Henderson and Elmer Moore also served.
For a number of years, the Parkway church functioned without elders, but in 1997 Rob Perkins and David Smitherman agreed to begin serving in this capacity. In June of 2000 two other men, Gus Cargile and Bill Chambers, agreed to work with Rob and David. Ricardo Baca was selected to serve in 2016.
Currently, our church family is blessed with three shepherds: Rob Perkins, Gus Cargile, and Ricardo Baca.