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Dr. James Singleton

Dr. James Singleton was born in Key West, Florida, in 1927. He attended the Methodist Church, both morning and evening services, where his grandfather taught Sunday school. On Sunday afternoons he attended Sunday school lessons at Plymouth Brethren Gospel Hall, where he was saved at the age of 12. With plans of being a weather forecaster, he attended Florida Southern College and became a meteorologist in Washington, D.C. The Lord was working on his heart; by the time he joined the Navy as a weather forecaster in 1945, he had decided to go to a Christian college to study for the ministry. He went to Bob Jones College, finishing in three years by taking a heavy load and summer school. While waiting for his future wife, Mary Westfall, to finish her degree, he began attending Bob Jones Divinity School. While attending college, Jim Singleton preached revival meetings anywhere he could.

The next year Jim Singleton accepted a circuit of six Methodist churches in Fries, Virginia, and immersed all that came for baptism. Then he entered full-time evangelism, after which he received the B.D. and Th.M. degrees from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. A Southern Baptist church ordained him in 1953, and he served Southern Baptist churches in the South for the next 14 years. He then preached revival services in Ohio, which resulted in his accepting a call to Lakeview Baptist Church in Vermilion, Ohio. Later he pastored the First Baptist Church of Albion, Michigan, a Conservative Baptist Association Church, where the Lord seemed to impress upon him the necessity of starting a local church. Pastor Singleton was influenced during this period by the Bible Baptist Fellowship and by such men as Dallas Billington, Harold Henninger and Roy Thompson.

John Tucker, youth pastor of the Albion church, was called to Arizona to serve at the Tucson Baptist Temple pastored by Louis Johnson. After interviewing Pastor Singleton about Mr. Tucker, Pastor Johnson extended an invitation to visit Arizona, where the fields were white already unto harvest. The following Monday, Pastor Singleton flew to Phoenix, and on Tuesday he met with the only Baptist Bible Fellowship pastor he knew in Arizona: Charles Vaden of the Alice Avenue Baptist Church. Pastor Vaden put Pastor Singleton in touch with Vaughn Adams and his wife, who had been saved at Pastor Vaden's church but lived a 40 mile round trip away in Tempe. On Wednesday, Vaughn Adams showed the Tempe area to Pastor Singleton. Pastor Singleton then went to Tucson to visit Louis Johnson, and came back with a pledge of support for a new church in Tempe. Mr. Adams and his family consented to work with Pastor Singleton in beginning an independent fundamental Baptist church and the following week issued a formal call to come and establish a church serving Tempe, Mesa, and Chandler; thus the name Tri-City Baptist Church.

Tri-City Baptist Church had its first constituting service officiated by Pastor James Singleton on August 31, 1969, in the home of Vaughn and Lucy Adams in Tempe, Arizona. After meeting in the Adams' home for two weeks, the church began meeting in the Meyer Elementary School on Dorsey Lane in Tempe until the first building on Price Road was completed in the fall of 1971. Because the school was not available for mid-week services, the Women’s Club on the northwest corner of 13th Street and Mill Avenue, Tempe, was used for mid-week services on Tuesdays until 1971. The church was incorporated on February 15, 1970.

When the church began looking for property to buy, a $78,000 site at Price Road and Southern Avenue became available. In order to secure this property, a $20,000 down payment was necessary, which seemed to be almost impossible with the number of members at the time. Pastor Singleton asked that each family write down on a piece of paper what amount they would be able to give. When totaled, the pledges amounted to $17,300. Previously two men had told Pastor Singleton that they had money to loan for the down payment; one converted bonds to get $1,700 and the other had $1,000--exactly $20,000. This confirmed to the congregation that God worked miracles and was leading them in building a church.

In April of 1971, the church launched a $100,000 bond issue to build what is now the 100 building. On a Saturday just before the four room building was completed, the City of Tempe notified Pastor Singleton that Meyer School could no longer be used. The members were hastily notified that services would be in the new building that Sunday. The pastor had to stand in the hall between two rooms to preach. The next week the church went to two services at 9 am and 11 am. The Sunday school attendance was just under 200 when the church moved into their new building. A closed circuit TV was installed in one of the rooms to help handle the size of the crowd.

In an August 29, 1999, installation service, Dr. Singleton turned the reins of the ministry over to Pastor Michael Sproul, culminating a mentoring process that began in the Summer of 1996.

Dr. Singleton fought cancer for nearly two years and died on July 13, 2001