DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, every great church has to start somewhere, and this one started small — real small. A Sunday school, tucked into a development sitting outside the city limits, in the year 1908.
No grand building, no congregation of hundreds. Just folks gathering, doing what folks do when they want something to take root. That little Sunday school attached itself to the College Avenue Baptist Church — an established congregation, about three miles north, founded back in 1905 — and became its Mission.
By 1910, seventy-two Mission participants were meeting together in the Prairie Chapel School. Seventy-two souls finding their way to the same room. You have to appreciate that.
Then comes 1911, and here's where things get interesting. Eighteen members stepped forward and formally organized as the Southside Baptist Church. Eighteen.
Not seventy-two — eighteen. The kind of number that makes you wonder what kind of determination it takes to say, we are ready to stand on our own. Two years later, in 1913, they moved a building right here to this very spot.
And whatever they were doing, it was working — because by 1915, that membership had climbed to two hundred and thirty-one. From eighteen to two hundred and thirty-one in four years. The name changed again in 1920, this time to Travis Avenue Baptist Church, the name that stuck.
And in 1925, a new sanctuary was completed — a proper house of worship to match a congregation that had earned it. What started as a Sunday school in a development outside the city limits grew into a church that now serves a large area of Fort Worth, sponsoring several outreach ministries along the way. Eighteen people made a decision in 1911, and the thing they built is still standing.
What the marker says
A Sunday school was started in 1908 in this development outside the city limits. The group became a Mission of the College Avenue Baptist Church, established in 1905 (about 3 Mi. N). By 1910 72 Mission participants were meeting in the Prairie Chapel School. In 1911 18 members formed the Southside Baptist Church and moved a building here in 1913. By 1915 the membership had grown to 231. The Church name changed to Travis Avenue Baptist in 1920 and a new sanctuary was completed in 1925. The church now serves a large area of Fort Worth, and sponsors several outreach ministries. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.