An old fashioned, week-long tent meeting will be held next week as Bible Baptist Church celebrates its 30th anniversary.

The big tent will be pitched July 25 to 30 on the church grounds, located just off HIghway 20 three miles south of Oak Harbor.

Pastor Gary Prisk, who founded the church in 1974, said the community is invited to the tent gathering. Expect “hard preaching — old fashioned Bible preaching,” he said, mixed with a variety of music.

Evangelist David Sommerdorf will be preaching Sunday, July 25, and each weeknight at 7 p.m. His six children will be singing.

The Daybreak Quartet (with Jason and Nathan Prisk) from Atlanta, Georgia, will be singing Sunday night through Tuesday night.

Bible Baptist Church began in Coupeville Recreation Hall with one family Aug. 18, 1974. Four years later, church members dedicated their first building — debt-free on 8.5 acres three miles south of Oak Harbor, on Highway 20, across from Rolling Hills.

Prisk said he and his wife Cheryl and first child, Jason, moved to Coupeville from Sacramento, Calif., to start a church. A Coupeville couple, Dan and Darlene Evans, had written to his college asking for a young pastor to start a church on Whidbey Island, and the Prisks responded.

The Prisks went on to raise a family here while building the church and, from time to time, traveling to many places throughout the world on church missions. Even now, Pastor Prisk doesn’t rule out leaving the island some day. “We’re always open to whatever the Lord’s leaning is,” he said.

Bible Baptist is an independent church, not related to any other large group. “We’re not Southern Baptist,” Prisk said. “We have no headquarters other than heaven.”

The church has managed to use most of its buildable acreage over the years.

Christian school (K-12) began in 1979 using Accelerated Christian Education curriculum.

The main sanctuary was built and dedicated in 1980.

Since then, a fellowship and office complex have been completed in the same manner. All construction has been done with the goal of pay-as-we-build.

The church has, at present, an annual missions budget of over $125,000, given to support both foreign and stateside evangelism and church planting.

In the past 30 years more than $1.5 million dollars have been given to missions by the congregation.

Pastor Prisk said church attendance ranges from 185 to 200 people each week. From its earliest days, the church was dedicated to training men for the ministry.

Prisk developed a Bible Institute curriculum which he said has been effective in training pastors and missionaries here and in several hundred Baptist churches in the United States and on foreign field church institutes. It is presently being translated into Spanish, Russian, Tagalog, French, Czech, and a number of other languages.

On the church grounds is a print shop and storage area for books and other curriculum materials written by Prisk and others. UPS trucks stop regularly to deliver the materials throughout the country and world.

The Prisks have four married children: Jason, Luke, and Nathan all live in the Atlanta, Ga., area with their families. Meleah, recently married to a Canadian youth pastor, lives in Trail, B.C.

The church has had Pastor Robert Sargent, and his wife, Vicki, from Australia, ministering since 1988.

The island community is invited to attend these tent services in the unique atmosphere of what, in days gone by, was called a camp meeting. For information call the church office at 675-8311.