We’ve all heard the saying: Waco has a Baptist church on every corner.

“Jerusalem on the Brazos,” said Matt Snowden, new pastor of Waco’s First Baptist Church.

He hails from Mississippi and that moniker for Waco reached him there.

Maddee Schrader lifts her hands in praise during a morning worship service at Columbus Avenue Baptist Church, the largest Baptist church in the city limits of Waco.
Jerry Larson / Tribune-Herald

The fact is, a Baptist church got here before the city did.

In 1849, when the first lots were sold in Waco Village, the town counted Baptists and Methodist among its citizenry. FBC opened its doors in 1851. Five years later, the village incorporated as Waco.

Waco is home to the world’s largest Baptist university, Baylor. And for decades many considered FBC the flagship congregation for Baptists all over the state.

But how Baptist is Waco today? The answer might surprise you.

“When you see a Baptist church on every street corner, it gives the perception that Waco is overrun with Baptists,” said Alan LeFever, who teaches church history at Baylor’s Truett Seminary. “But buildings don’t mean people in the pews. Years ago, Baptists probably had more influence on the community than they do today.”

“Many, many of our churches have seen their attendance plateau,” said Tim Randolph, director of the Waco Regional Baptist Association, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary this week.

In 2009, McLennan County had 137 churches affiliated with the regional group. Those churches had 30,616 resident members and 46,058 total members.

Resident members “are people churches can identify. You have an address for them, and you know who they are,” Randolph said. Total members include people who remain on church rolls but their status is unknown. Randolph said some churches are more diligent about “cleaning up” their membership rolls than others.

In 1999, 143 churches were affiliated with the regional Baptist association. They had a resident membership of 30,393 and a total membership of 50,125, more than 4,000 more than 10 years later.

These figures show that membership stagnated, or even dropped, between 1999 and 2009 — a time when the county’s population increased from about 213,000 to an estimated 233,000.

“That is an issue we will make a point of addressing,” Randolph said. “We need to revitalize our churches.”

Baptists do have their success stories. First Baptist Church of Woodway is among them. It has prospered from the growth in Hewitt, Woodway and the subdivisions in far West Waco.

It has 3,441 resident members, making it the area’s largest Baptist church. Pastor Michael Toby said the congregation has seen a growth spurt and is averaging 160 more people in Sunday services this year than last.

“Our focus is to be faithful to the opportunity God has given us,” Toby said. “We have been blessed with a campus that allows us to grow on a side of town that continues to grow.”

But the fact remains — Waco is not as Baptist as it once was. Even Baylor is seeing a shift.

In the fall of 2003, 43.4 percent of the students enrolled identified themselves as “Baptist.” By fall of last year, that percentage had dropped to 37.3 percent — or 5,396 of 14,448 to be exact.

Baylor sociologist Larry Lyon said the decline in the percentage of Baptist students attending Baylor is easy to explain. More students prefer to call themselves nondenominational.

The congregation leaves Columbus Avenue Baptist Church after Sunday services last week. The church has 2,037 resident members, according to the Waco Regional Baptist Association.
Jerry Larson / Tribune-Herald

“Years ago, the churches these students attend would have been Baptist,” Lyon said. “The way the worship service is administered is quite similar to a Baptist church, as is the theology. But all of the internal battles that Baptists have fought over the last 40 years don’t seem particularly Christlike to some. It’s part of a generational thing, as well. This is a new generation of seekers who don’t take their parents’ religion as gospel, so to speak.”

Antioch Community Church has exploded with growth as a nondenominational church, though it was founded in 1999 by historic Highland Baptist Church. Located in a long-vacant shopping strip on North 20th Street near Waco Drive, it has changed the face of a neighborhood and spread its influence to cities around the country. It started with about 500 members, many of them transfers from Highland, and now draws nearly 3,000 to Sunday services.

“My background is totally Baptist, as is that of several others on the staff,” said associate pastor Danny Mulkey. “But when we were praying through things, we thought the church might be more effective without a denominational affiliation. We thought we might have a better shot at folks who are church-resistant if we didn’t have a tag.”

Mulkey said Antioch has no secrets to success. It offers an upbeat song service that includes a worship band with drums, guitars and keyboard. It concentrates on discipleship and witnessing to others about Christ.

“We focus on the great commandment: ‘Love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ And the great commission: ‘Go into all the world and make disciples,’ ” Mulkey said.

Antioch forms “life groups” of eight or more believers who meet in homes to study Scripture and pray. It has formed a discipleship training school to teach members how to start new churches.

Graduates of the Antioch program have started churches in Belton and Dallas; Seattle, Wash.; San Diego, Calif.; Boston, Mass.; Wheaton, Ill.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Fort Collins, Colo.; and Norman, Okla.

Rachel and Bill Gorman, who have six children, spent 10 years in Germany as missionaries from Antioch.

“We attended Highland, but joined the move to Antioch,” Rachel Gorman said. “Since an early age, I had felt called to be a missionary, and Antioch equipped us to go. The people there have a passion for Jesus and missions.”

Antioch Community Church has become a magnet for Baylor students, which could explain why the number of students identifying themselves as nondenominational rose from 567 in fall 2003 to 2,110 in fall 2009.

Young worshippers don’t want labels. They want an intimate relationship with their creator that can change their lives, said Joe Carbajal, pastor of Mighty Wind Worship Center, which has grown from 13 to 450 in two decades.

“There is a trend of Baptist churches not including Baptist in their name, and that is particularly true of newer church starts,” said Ken Camp, managing editor of the Baptist Standard magazine.

“In some cases, they feel the Baptist name has too much baggage and is attached to controversy. For others, excluding the name is market-driven. They say, ‘What would the larger audience be?’ as opposed to identifying themselves as Baptist up front.”

Worshipers attend Sunday morning service at Columbus Avenue Baptist Church.
Jerry Larson / Tribune-Herald

Controversy indeed has colored the history of Baptists in Waco and at Baylor.

In 1991, the relationship between Baylor and the Baptist General Convention of Texas reached a boiling point, with a record 11,159 BGCT messengers attending the annual convention at Baylor’s Ferrell Center.

As longtime Baptist leader Paul Stripling writes in his book, “Turning Points in the History of the Waco Regional Baptist Association,” Texas Baptists were torn about the issue of what to do with Baylor.

Baylor trustees feared a “fundamentalist” takeover of the BGCT and changed the school’s charter to end the BGCT’s governance of the school. After much debate, the messengers approved a new relationship whereby the convention would elect 25 percent of the Baylor board of regents and could make suggestions on the other 75 percent.

So heavy was the turnout of messengers that Waco ran out of hotel rooms and the BGCT put out an appeal for people to host messengers in their homes. About 1,100 found lodging in private homes, not all of them belonging to Baptists. People of the Catholic and Jewish faith also reportedly opened their residences to messengers.

Ramiro Pena proudly includes the word Baptist in the name of his congregation, Christ the King Baptist Church.

“I am Baptist because Baptists brought the gospel to my grandparents in Laredo,” said Pena, who said he preaches to between 180 and 200 people at a Spanish service and a multiracial service on Sunday mornings.

Pena’s messages can be seen on KXXV, Channel 25, and on Telemundo. He said his church has planted 15 mission churches in Texas, Mexico, Cuba and India since Christ The King’s founding in 1991.

Jimmy Hunter, pastor of 115-year-old Toliver Chapel Baptist Church, said, “Your name defines what your teaching is,” and he wonders why anyone would want to remove Baptist from the sign out front.

Besides denominational identity, inner-city Baptist churches face other challenges. FBC, for example, saw its attendance decline from about 1,200 for two Sunday services in the 1970s to about 400 in recent years. This year, its leadership hired the 33-year-old Snowden to appeal to a younger crowd.

“I see First Baptist making a good comeback with its new pastor,” said LeFever, who directs the Texas Baptist Historical Collection for the BGCT in addition to his teaching duties at Truett Seminary.

LeFever said Columbus Avenue Baptist Church “is thriving,” with a resident membership of 2,037, making it the largest Baptist church actually within the Waco city limits. He said University Baptist Church, with its contemporary music led by popular Christian recording artist David Crowder, also is doing well.

mcopeland@wacotrib.com

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