“The best surprise is no surprise.” This was the promise of the Holiday Inn hotel chain in the 1970’s and 80’s. During the early decades of nationwide travel in the post-war era, an evening spent at a hotel felt like a roll of the dice. Good expectations were often met with a miserable experience. The Holiday Inn promised a consistent, pleasant night’s stay. No surprises.
But today, a visit to the hotel chain’s downtown Rock Island location might leave a traveler surprised to find a thriving church meeting on its first floor.
“It was definitely different. When you think, Oh, it’s at the Holiday Inn. Is it in a room or is it in a small office? But when you go there, we have plenty of space. I have to explain to people when I tell them, come to my church, it’s at the hotel,” Amanda Dominguez, a member of six years, said.
A Holiday Inn doesn’t immediately bring to mind preaching, or worship, or life change. Memories of a sleepy late night desk attendant or a continental breakfast are more likely. However, for residents living near downtown Rock Island, Destiny Baptist Church has seen lives changed at the Holiday Inn for fifteen years. But it didn’t begin there.
God called a planter
Donald Johnson is a fixture in the Quad Cities Baptist Association. The genial pastor in his mid-seventies is a whirlwind. He exudes boundless energy and optimism. No one stays a stranger with him for long. When his magnetism draws others into his orbit, he’s quick to share about the vision God has given him for Destiny Baptist Church and for reaching people of all walks of life in Rock Island.
Johnson spent his teen years in the city, just a few blocks from his present home. He left to attend Bible college in Nashville and eventually seminary in Louisville with no plans to come back. His involvement in the civil rights movement during those early years, along with his easy going, dynamic personality, garnered the sincere young pastor opportunities to work with the Home Mission Board, now called the North American Mission Board.
Recruited to help Bill Hogue and Emmanuel McCall with efforts to increase Southern Baptist work among African Americans in northern Illinois, Johnson spent years working to connect pastors and plant churches in Chicago, Joliet, and Rockford. Eventually, he found himself temporarily without a pastorate and in need of work to support his wife and seven children. The promise of a job connection through a relative in Rock Island brought him back to the city, but the job never materialized.
With his whole family living with an uncle, an opportunity to preach in view of a pastoral call clarified in Johnson’s heart what God really wanted. This church was someone else’s church, he knew. God had something different in store for him in Rock Island.
With only about 15% of Rock Island claiming an evangelical faith, the need for a new church was there. The Illinois side of the Quad Cities is one of the least reached areas of the state, especially for Southern Baptists. Church planting efforts still struggle to gain a foothold in Illinois’ northwest sector.
So, Johnson stayed and began to pray and plan to start an intentionally multi-ethnic church. This would become Destiny Baptist Church.
Moving, moving, moving
In 1993, at the invitation of a member of the dwindling Christian Science church, Johnson and his wife, Rhonda, looked at shared space in a mammoth domed limestone building, now on the National Register of Historic Places for its Palladian architecture. The fledgling church made a verbal agreement, but shortly after Destiny’s first few gatherings, an investor struck a “better” deal. Soon the new church was in search of their next meeting place. This story would be repeated many times over the next 15 years.
“Once we got the church going,” Johnson said, “we’ve been in nine different locations.”
The YWCA, community rooms, and a former Walgreens have all been homes for Destiny through the years. “Rick Warren said when he was starting Saddleback that sometimes it was Sunday morning before they knew where they were going to meet. Well, we lived that,” Johnson said.
Each move was different and difficult in its own way. Some were limiting and spawned immediate prayers for a next new location. Others had space and possibilities, leading to hopes it might be the last move. But with each shift in location, people were lost due to a new distance from existing members’ homes. It would have been easy for discouragement to set in.
Finding room at the Inn
In summer 1993, Johnson was looking for the church’s next location. The expansive Holiday Inn, three blocks off the Mississippi River, had unused conference facilities. What initially sounded like a longshot resulted in real possibilities.
The church could lease room for worship as well as office space. It could be their own, dedicated solely for church use. This would allow them to decorate and use it for ministry seven days a week. And it was just a few blocks from residential neighborhoods. The long-established “Hill” community was less than a mile to the south. Johnson’s own home sat just a few blocks to the west.
That was the last move.
The last decade and a half were not without challenges, but the consistent location and proximity to a diverse neighborhood has allowed the church to grow into the vision that Johnson had years earlier. His dream of a multi-ethnic church has been realized here.
“We are a mix of about 45% white, 45% black, and 10% Hispanic,” Johnson said. This is reflective of the make-up of their downtown community. Their closeness to Augustana College, less than two miles east, has also meant that a mix of global college students have called Destiny home for a season.
“We’ve had Nigerians, Kenyans, Ghanaians, Liberians, a woman from Benin, a young man from Sweden,” Johnson recalled.
He is quick to credit the people of the church for its growth and its cultural mix. “They did that. They’re reaching their families and their friends.”
People reach people
And they continue to reach them. Through the first four months of 2023 the church has baptized six new believers from the neighborhood. Baptisms take place at the hotel pool, with the congregation singing songs of celebration as robed converts are dunked under the blue tinted chlorinated water.
This passion to help people new to the church reach their own family and friends has created a church body that feels like real family. Dominguez, and her husband, Silver, came to the church at the invitation of her sister. Despite the church’s location in a hotel, they have found a home there.
“Our church has definitely become like a family to us, and that’s one of the reasons why we stayed. They kind of drew us in and made us feel so welcome that we couldn’t leave,” she said with a laugh.
She explained that the time church members spent getting to know her and her husband, checking on them, and investing in them were things she had never experienced at any other church. “I thought we just went (to church), heard the message and went home. But when we went to Destiny, we found out it was a lot more than that.”
For Dominguez, finding family at Destiny Baptist Church has also led to an unexpected extended family through IBSA. “I had no idea that this would be a part of our lives, spending weekends away with our church and just learning things,” she said. Dominguez has attended Priority Women’s Conference and, with Silver, the Illinois Leadership Summit. I had no idea that things went on like this.
“For the pastor to get us involved, at first, I felt nervous about it,” she said. “But when I realized what I would get from it and what our church would benefit from (training events), I want to go every time. And I’m so thankful.”