Sent but Not Forgotten: The Baddeleys

When leaders are trained up at Faith Bible Church, there’s no telling where God will take them. It could be thousands of miles away or just around the corner.

Princeton Avenue Church was planted in 2024 in a quiet neighborhood on the northwest side of Spokane, exactly 2.7 miles away from Faith. That’s where Aaron Baddeley serves as the pastor of a church of about 50 people.

It’s not a position in which he had planned to find himself. Not only did he have a fear of public speaking, he was a pastor’s kid who had watched his dad go through a “horrendous dynamic” where he was asked to resign.

“I watched that as a young adult, and there’s a lot of fear and anxiety,” he reflects. “So even though I went to seminary, I still wasn’t committed to being a pastor. It felt very Jonah-esque.”

While in seminary in Oregon, Aaron made many visits to Spokane. His now-wife Katelyn was going to Whitworth University and attending Faith. After Aaron graduated, they married and settled down in Spokane in 2017. Over the years, they’ve been blessed with two daughters and a son: Penelope, Juniper, and Aurelius.

“In hindsight, I can’t believe the time [Faith pastors] set aside for some random guy dating one of their college students,” Aaron says. “They had a really robust culture of discipleship.”

After moving to Spokane, Aaron reached out to Faith’s then-college pastor Jerod Gilcher to help confirm his calling. “I was like, ‘Dude, do you have a place where I can just kind of lay low, have guys have eyes on me, train me, and see if I even have the chops,’” he recalls.

Shortly after this, Aaron took an administrative staff position for The Master’s Seminary campus at Faith, which had just started. That naturally morphed into being a pastoral assistant, and then for a brief time he became operations manager at Faith.

“I learned so much both pastorally and administratively,” he says. “But what I kind of learned at the end was that I did really want to pursue eldership and pastoral ministry. Then I heard about the residency at Indian Trail Church.”

A Neighborhood Church

Aaron began his residency at ITC in 2022. After that, it wasn’t long before God plucked him up and moved him down the road to Princeton Avenue, where Indian Trail Church had purchased a building for a church plant.

Built in 1922, it boasts an old-fashioned, bright red brick construction. A sloped sanctuary and ceilings mean the acoustics make preaching more powerful. “You could just preach without a mic, because that’s what those churches had to do 100 years ago,” Aaron says.

The building came with a lot of history, and the previously occupying church wasn’t popular.

“They left a bad taste in this neighborhood,” Aaron says. “Everyone here has no soliciting signs and stuff. We have a lot of trust to earn. A perfect symbolic measure of that is a house that’s right behind us.”

When Princeton Avenue Church was founded, the outside of that house was decorated in a manner that seemed particularly directed at the church. Tibetan prayer flags adorned the lawn, and a giant gay alliance flag hung on the wall facing Princeton’s building. But the posture toward them has since softened.

“We’re on good terms with them. We let them use our dumpster, and we’ve invited them to things,” Aaron says. “One of our core values is being a neighborhood church.”

This means that a lot of their outreach tends to be more community-oriented than church-oriented, like exercise classes that take advantage of a gymnasium in the back of the church, or GriefShare, a group meeting with videos and other resources that walk people through the grieving process using Scripture. It’s designed to accommodate non-Christians without compromising its spiritual truth.

But sometimes, ministry is much simpler.

“We’ve done a lot of leaf raking,” Aaron explains. “Just kind of walk up to people’s houses, like, ‘Hey, we’re not trying to solicit. Would you care if we rake your leaves, shoveled your driveway?’ A lot of stuff like that.”

Building the plane mid-air

Even though the church’s impact in the neighborhood has been encouraging, Aaron describes their first year and a half as “building the plane in mid-air.” God aligned all the factors in such a way that Indian Trail Church had to act fast on the opportunity to plant a church in that building.

“On our first Sunday morning, we had a lot of people learning each other’s names. That was a brave thing for them to do...but however hodge-podgey we were, they were very invested, and very engaged. It’s really fun to shepherd that.”

“When hard things come up, when you’re discouraged, just remember: you’re their servant... not for their sake, but for Christ’s sake. And it’s really hard to complain after that.” Aaron Baddeley

They’re beginning to see the fruits. They’re ramping up children’s Sunday school, Aaron is going to start teaching a monthly youth discipleship night, and they onboarded their first deacon, with plans for more. They also just celebrated their first baptism, a young man about 13 years old.

From the beginning, Aaron says, “These people knew what it meant to covenant together and achieve something together.”

As the church has grown into its mission, they’ve also developed a culture of their own. Specifically, old-school liturgy has helped them get a concrete sense of their place in church history.

“I’ve started leaning pastorally and culturally into formal catechism, credal commitments, and the memorization and recitation of creeds. To anchor yourself in a storyline and distinguish yourself in a storyline is a safer place to be than untethered.”

Tethering himself to practical reality is also something Aaron has found necessary, especially given the responsibilities he juggles as the only pastor on payroll: lead pastor, secretary, IT guy, accountant, the Microsoft Office guy, even human resources. You name it, he does it.

Alongside one lay elder, “It’s just me, man,” he says with a big smile. “It might have killed a different guy. But I learned those skills at Faith. [It’s] saved me incalculable hours because I’m proficient instead of stumbling my way through a tool, you know? I [even] had experience writing and editing policy.”

Something new

When you enter Princeton Avenue Church, it feels unassuming, old-fashioned, and small. But down in the basement, a world of meandering hallways, dead ends, and renovated rooms awaits. Every turn of a corner seems to open up another space.

The feeling is both cozy and expansive, almost like it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside. But when the church first moved in, the entire basement needed to be gutted.

“Everything was all trash. Literally. Tons of it,” Aaron says. “Now the building is kind of vacant. [So] we’ve been able to accommodate a lot of people’s ministry endeavors without any overlap. You need a room? We’ve got like 40. We have more room in the building than we know what to do with.”

God has been faithful, and there is still plenty of work ahead.

“That’s part of the brainstorm,” Aaron says. “Let’s get some deacons under our belt, some elders, so we can start thinking the big thinky thoughts. Right now, we’re kind of strapped, just trying to keep the lights on and grind out our basic member needs, but we’re getting there.”

He ponders God’s divine orchestration. “When you’re faithful in those [everyday] things, the Lord tends to providentially synchronize a lot of growth. I have a liturgy structure for Sunday morning, and it’s not spontaneous. It’s just a rotation. But more often than not, it will match up with the sermon theme and Sunday school and sometimes evening prayer.”

He laughs. “It’s nuts, because it’s conspiratorial. The amount of times I’ve heard someone say, ‘It felt like you were talking to me’ or ‘It was supremely awkward when you said that, because I thought you actually heard our conversation.’ And it’s not just me. I’m not a great preacher. I never preached three sermons in my life until I planted.”

‘Big boy pastor’

A series and a half later, every sermon gives Aaron a deeper appreciation of Scripture. His latest series is in Mark, but the passage he keeps coming back to is 2 Corinthians 4:5–6:

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

“When hard things come up, when you’re discouraged, just remember: you’re their servant,” Aaron says. “You’re their servant first and you’re their servant not for their sake, but for Christ’s sake. And it’s really hard to complain after that.”

Aaron remembers a moment during an especially challenging season where these verses truly hit home. Katelyn looked at him and said, “Yeah, you’re a big boy pastor now. You feel it?”

He nodded in response. “I do now.”

Thinking back on his time at Faith, Aaron makes it clear: “It’s important to say just how fondly we think of Faith Bible Church, how blessed we are by their resource. For a church of 50 to be near top of mind for a church of 700, that’s very kind. It’s very Christian. And we’re very thankful.”