First Baptist Church of Hutchins

Duane's take

The official marker for the First Baptist Church of Hutchins tells it this way, and I'm just here to pass it along. Now, the town of Hutchins got its start around 1860, and if you know anything about small Texas towns in those early decades, you know that faith tends to travel right alongside the families that settle the land. Baptist families were no exception.

For a good long while, they worshiped where they could, alongside other denominations, sometimes privately, doing what folks do when the church building hasn't caught up to the congregation yet. That changed in September of 1904, when Hutchins Baptist Church was formally established. And the very first pastor to stand at its head was Dr.

George Wharton. Now, where did those early parishioners meet? The Methodist church.

That's right; the Baptists borrowed the Methodists' pews while they figured out their next move. There's something quietly beautiful about that, neighbor lending to neighbor in the name of something bigger than either of them. By 1911, the congregation had completed their own wooden sanctuary, standing at the corner of Mills and Athens streets.

A place of their own at last. Over the century that followed, the church kept growing. Membership climbed.

Facilities expanded. At one point they ran a Baptist school that operated for nearly thirty years. Nearly thirty years of young minds shaped within those walls.

Generations came and went, each one adding something through education, through music, through mission programs that reached beyond Hutchins, beyond Dallas County, beyond Texas itself, out to regional and worldwide communities. A congregation that started with families worshiping in borrowed spaces in 1904 had, by its first hundred years, woven itself into the fabric of something much larger than one town on a Texas map. That's not a small thing.

That's the whole story, right there.

What the marker says

The town of Hutchins began around 1860. Baptist families worshiped with other denominations and privately until establishing Hutchins Baptist Church in September 1904. Dr. George Wharton became the first pastor. Parishioners met at the Methodist church before completing a wooden sanctuary at Mills and Athens streets in 1911. Throughout its first century, the congregation grew in membership and in facilities, including a Baptist school that operated for nearly thirty years. Generations of dedicated, generous members have used education, music and mission programs to strengthen ties within the congregation and beyond in service to local, regional and worldwide communities. (2004)