FRUIT HEIGHTS, Utah – It’s getting increasingly difficult for church plants across the nation to find a suitable, low-cost place to meet on Sunday mornings. But King’s Cross Church had one handed to it in Davis County, a growing northern suburb of Salt Lake City.
The building belonged to a dying church and came complete with a congregation, one of two that have joined with the three-year-old church plant that plans to plant two additional churches over the next two years.
“God’s grace. It’s humbling,” Pastor Austin Glenn told Baptist Press. “It’s crazy to think of God’s kindness towards us.”
What the Glenn couple – and now the church – have done could be called “relationship-building on steroids.”
Sent in 2021 by Church at the Cross in Grapevine, Texas, the Glenn family (that today includes five homeschooled youngsters between 2 and 10) went through Send Network’s assessment process after spending a year at a church previously started by Church at the Cross in Grapevine. Send Network is the North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) church planting arm.
Then they moved to Farmington, in Davis County, Utah, north of Salt Lake City, and started First Friday Grill and Chill at their home. They built a launch team that met for Bible study and became involved in various service projects to become known in the community: backpack drive, park cleanups, gift bags for the 1,000 teachers and staff members in Farmington, and free water bottles during the town’s Festival Days.
“We adopted LifePoint Church, another small Southern Baptist church in Farmington,” Glenn recounted. “It was basically five families. The church had been going about eight years and hadn’t gotten a lot of traction. After a year of semi-regular lunches, the pastor [Brent Van Sickle] asked me, ‘What do you think about us joining you?’ Brent now serves as pastor for outreach and missions at King’s Cross.”
LifePoint, which closed in December 2022, had participated in pre-launch meetings for Kings Cross, which launched on March 5, 2023, with 25 adults and 24 youngsters. The new church plant met Sundays at Ascent Academy charter school.
“We wanted to do youth activities, women’s groups, men’s breakfasts and the like when the Academy wasn’t available. We reached out to Mountain Road Church – it was about seven minutes away – to ask if we could rent their building,” Glenn said. “They said, ‘It’s not for rent, but you can borrow it.’ We started including them in the different things we were doing.”
Mountain Road Church, which had started in 1982, gave its property and joined Kings Cross Church in December 2024. Then came fundraising for the renovations Kings Cross wanted to make, including expanding the 150-seat worship center to its current 280-seat capacity. About $750,000 was quickly pledged “by internal and external sources,” Glenn said.
“We gave the whole place a facelift,” the pastor said. “Literally everything was touched. A big expense was fire sprinklers: $250,000 for that alone.”
Josh Gardner, King’s Cross Church’s director of discipleship and development, also is a NAMB-endorsed church planting apprentice who anticipates planting a church in North Salt Lake in February 2027. At this time, he is developing a launch team and raising support. King’s Cross anticipates being the sending church.
King’s Cross also plans to launch Ukrainian Living Hope Church in August 2026 with Oleh Kamanov serving as the planter. He recently completed the NAMB assessment process. The Ukrainian group moved their Bible studies from people’s homes to the church once renovations were completed in early March. One man who recently started attending the weekly Bible study is an experienced worship leader.
On the Saturday before Easter, April 4, about 50 children and their parents heard a clear Gospel message by Pastor Oleh, along with a puppet show in Ukrainian that told the story of two pirates who are moved by the true story of Easter. A family Easter egg hunt came next. At least 60 Ukrainians participated in the event.
“We talk a lot about being a people sent on mission, and I think our people really embody that culture of evangelism,” Glenn said. “We’re pretty traditional. We have communion every Sunday. We don’t have a rock band.
“We do have a commitment to Gospel centrality in preaching and preach 40- to 60-minute sermons,” the pastor continued. “We dive deeply into the text. Our folks seem to like it. They really want to know what the Bible says.”
March 1, the first service in the renovated 13,000-square-foot building on four acres of land a bit northeast of Farmington, drew a near-maximum 252 people. Easter Sunday five weeks later drew 347 people total to two services and included three baptisms, all recent believers who left Mormonism and are being discipled through ministries at King’s Cross Church.
“As Henry Blackaby told Southern Baptists, ‘Find out where God is moving and join Him in the work,’” Glenn said. “That’s Utah. In ways like never before, God is drawing people unto Himself here, and it is a joy to partner with Him in the work.”