Three of the Waco Regional Baptist Association’s founding congregations have vanished into the mists of time — Union Spring, Cow Bayou and Caddo — but the rest remain time-honored exemplars to their Central Texas co-religionists, who celebrate a significant birthday this month.

The Waco Regional Baptist Association celebrates its sesquicentennial year this month with prayer, song, preaching and a look back at its eventful past.
Waco Regional Baptist Association photo

First Baptist Church of Waco has been a Central Texas institution since the original congregation organized on May 31, 1851, in a settlement still known as Waco Village. South Carolina-born blacksmith Noah Byars was its first pastor. Since 1908, the congregation has worshipped in this Beaux-Arts sanctuary designed by Roy E. Lane and Milton Scott.
Texas Collection at Baylor University photo

The WRBA, which began as the Waco Baptist Association, started with nine congregations in 1860, on the cusp of the Civil War. These pioneer chapels included Blue Ridge; Bold Springs (later known as First Baptist of West); Bosque (later dubbed Bosqueville Baptist); White Rock (later known as Chalk Bluff); First Baptist, Marlin; and First Baptist Church of Waco.

The churches these days have a lot of company, with more than 135 congregations belonging to the WRBA.

Paul Stripling, executive director emeritus of the association, which he headed for most of the 1980s until his retirement in 2003, has been working on a chronicle of the group’s past.

He calls the work “Turning Points in the History of the Waco Regional Baptist Association, 1860-2010.”

The Waco Baptist Association was formed, he said, on Nov. 10, 1860, at First Baptist Church of Waco, with a membership of more than 500 in the nine churches throughout McLennan County.

On the eve of the Civil War, delegates from the founding churches elected a gun-toting home missionary known as Z.N. Morrell as moderator and accepted the “patronage and care” of the Waco Classical School, founded by Trinity River Association.

Delegates chose former Baylor University president Rufus C. Burleson to head the group, which was to become Waco University.

At the end of the Civil War, the WBA leaders affirmed the independence of newly formed black churches and Waco boasted the largest Sunday School attendance in the state.

The first messengers to the WBA meeting — who called themselves delegates — included 181 from First Baptist Church of Waco alone. The congregation had grown considerably from the days when it shared a humble shanty with the Methodists in town, taking turns on alternate Sundays.

It had many of the city’s most prominent residents in its pews and was led on occasion by Burleson, who brought most of Baylor University with him to Waco from Independence earlier that year.

First Baptist Church of Waco has hosted the group’s annual meeting more than a dozen times in the last 150 years, Stripling said.

His book has a comprehensive list of which church sponsored the meeting each year, who served as moderator and clerk, and who delivered the annual sermon.

For example, it wasn’t until 1984 that the first black preacher, Napoleon Weaver, was asked to give the sermon. The first Hispanic to share the word was Ramiro Pena in 2000. Pena is now pastor of Christ the King Baptist Church.

Stripling is chairman of the association’s Sesquicentennial Celebration, which starts at 5 p.m. Oct. 26 at First Baptist Church of Waco, 500 Webster Ave.

The annual meeting will make history itself with its first female moderator — Kathy Hillman, director of special collections for Baylor University’s central libraries.

Stripling and his book will be feted at a 5:30 p.m. reception, followed by a fellowship banquet at Hoffman Hall, 404 S. Fourth St.

Rufus Columbus Burleson (1823–1901), a native of Alabama, was president of Baylor University from 1851-61, and again from 1886-97. In between those two stints, he was president of Waco University and preached throughout Texas.

At 7 p.m., Baylor University President Ken Starr and Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center President-CEO Glenn Robinson will speak.

A short video, marking the group’s past and narrated by Hillman, will also air. Music by religious composer Kurt Kaiser and medleys of period church hymns by Chris Wommack will lead up to the annual message, shared by Christian humorist Dennis Swanberg, known by many as America’s “Minister of Encouragement.”

For more information on the Sesquicentennial Celebration of the Waco Regional Baptist Association, visit WacoRegionalBaptistAssociation.org or call 753-2408.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

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