Our Story

West Evangelical Free Church (WEFC) began in 1978, the first church planted by Wichita's First Evangelical Free Church, when a core group of west-side residents attending First Free began a Wednesday night Bible study. By September of 1978, the Bible study had grown into WEFC, and Sunday morning services began at Peterson Elementary School.

In July of 1979, the church was formally established with a charter membership of 23. In September of that year, First Free purchased the present six-acre building site for WEFC. One year later, Dick High was called as pastor; incorporation was officially completed that December with the property deeded to WEFC in early 1981.

Our initial facility was constructed in 1982. Steady growth prompted two worship services and two sessions of Sunday School by September of 1986. In 1990 a new addition, including an auditorium with a baptistery and sound room, foyer, nursery, and Sunday School rooms, was built. Easter Sunday, 1991, brought our first service in the new auditorium.

After serving as WEFC's Senior Pastor for 18 years, Dick High took a position at First Free in Wichita, and God brought Ken Cooper to be our Senior Pastor in 1999.

By 2002, WEFC had once again outgrown its facilities. Adult Sunday School classes met in members' homes and nearby businesses. Another building committee began work and a stewardship campaign was launched. Groundbreaking on our west wing (which added a gymnasium with two Awana circles, 24 classrooms and a large kitchen) took place in February 2003, and we moved into the addition that October. This phase of construction also included opening up an auditorium balcony (giving an additional 200 seats), remodeling our office wing, and turning our basement into a youth center.

God continued to grow and evolve the staff of our church. Joel Kornegay, who had been Youth Pastor from 1996-2000, spent the next five years as our Adult Ministries Pastor before being called to active duty as an Air Force Chaplain in December 2005. He was replaced by Greg Smith the following April. In August 2006, Student Ministries Pastor Shawn Ammons accepted the call to train and equip youth pastors/leaders throughout the EFCA Midwest District, prompting us to hire Chris Rollman as our Student Ministries Pastor in June, 2007. God has also led us to move from a part-time Worship Director to a fulltime Worship Pastor/Director and a search committee is in place to fill this position.

In addition to full-time pastoral staff Ken Cooper, Greg Smith, and Chris Rollman, we have been blessed for the past nine years to have Karen Unruh as our part-time Children's Ministries Director. Additionally, since June 2007, we've had a part-time Director of Marriage, and we have a full contingent of part-time support staff.

As WEFC looks to the future, we feel God's leading to plant churches. Our current dream is to daughter churches, leaving WEFC and the "daughters" healthy enough to daughter again and again. Our first church plant is in the community of Goddard, a few miles west of Wichita. In late 2007, we hired a daughter church pastor, and the first service at Beacon Community Church was on March 23, Easter Sunday, with 170 in attendance.