Baptist College of Florida's air force taking off

A handful of new jobs will come along with the beginning of a new aviation training block at Baptist College of Florida, according to BCF President Dr. Tom Kinchen.

Two hangars, capable of housing five or six planes each, have been built at Tri-County Airport about 10 miles from Graceville to accommodate the BCF program.

Training will be tailored to students at the school who plan careers in missions that could take them into remote U.S. and international locations.

The program must be accredited before it can begin, and Kinchen said that milestone should be accomplished within several weeks’ time.

A pair of Cessna 172s will likely be used for initial training, Kinchen said, with a donated and fully rebuilt Beachcraft Bonanza six-seater A36 on tap for advanced training in cross-country flights aboard more complex aircraft. The Bonanza is expected to fly in for duty next Thursday, and the others at a later date.

An office for a developing BCF charitable foundation has been buil t alongside the hangars at Tri-County, Kinchen said. That’s where about a half-dozen jobs will be created, the positions needed to work with donors and manage accounting for the foundation. Affiliated with a private Christian foundation, the office should be fully staffed and functioning in the next several weeks.

Another five or six part time jobs, for flight instructors, maintenance work and other duties, would be necessary for the aviation aspect, he said.

Kinchen said establishing the aviation program had its difficulties, but that BCF saw it as a necessity for its students and the world they will serve on graduation.

“It has been a long, involved process to get this done, but we came to the absolute conclusion that there are people out in places where they need to hear the Word but where access is difficult. We have a program in Brazil with 110 students there, for instance, who need more freedom of movement. There are areas within the northwestern United States where maybe a pastor in the plains would serve a couple of churches that sit 200 miles apart. An aviation-trained minister could fly back and forth between them on the same day.”

Kinchen said BCF and its students will also use the planes for disaster relief work through the Florida Baptist Convention of the Southern Baptist Association, with which it is affiliated.

Kinchen said he wants to learn how to fly, himself, and plans to take training through the program.

He said a decision has not yet been made as to whether flight training would be offered to individuals not affiliated with the college.

BCF is also star t ing a big on-campus project as the aviation center gets off the ground at Tri-County. The other project is geared to providing students a place to work on their health and wellness.

The college just broke ground on its wellness center, to be built alongside the existing gymnasium.

“For years we’ve been turning out people who are sharp mentally and spiritually, but we’ve been really convinced that we needed to help them sharpen their physical health, as well,” Kinchen said. “We’ve got a state-of-the-art facility coming that will have equipment that tends to cardio-vascular health and overall wellness. We’ll have weights, indoor elevated walking tracks, handball and racquetball courts and all the things we hope will make our students very fit for the field.”

Use of the wellness center will be open to all students as part of what they are entitled to when the y pay their built-in activities fee. He said he doesn’t know yet whether the activities fee will be raised from its current price to take the addition resource into account.

Kinchen said he anticipates offering the public a chance to use the facility for a fee, as well, but said the particulars of those arrangements are still being worked out. Kinchen said a private donor is supplying the wellness equipment.

He hopes the wellness center will be ready when students’ arrive for the fall semester in August, but said it might take a little longer. At the latest, he said, it should be open by the end of this calendar year.

In building the wellness and aviation training centers, he added, the school had set aside money to pay for the facilities up-front so that no financing was involved.