Among evangelical churches, the picture was more complex. Large congregations, particularly those with regional or digital reach, remained stable. Some even grew. However, many small evangelical churches closed. These closures reflected demographic shifts, changing patterns of participation, and the long shadow of the pandemic.
Some churches sold property and relocated; others gave birth to new churches before disbanding. Some created community spaces, partnered with other ministries, or repurposed facilities to serve broader needs. It was a year of honest questions about mission, stewardship, and presence.
Baptist Temple remained, committed to presence over numbers and content to be smaller if it meant staying rooted. Old memories—revivals, full choirs, packed Sunday schools—no longer defined the present reality. Yet they remained witnesses, reminding the congregation that faithfulness is measured in obedience rather than numbers. BT’s story is about a sanctuary that remained open, a congregation that refused to surrender its calling, and ministries that adapted rather than disappeared—a story of resilience.
The neighborhood changed, attendance dipped, and the pandemic disrupted familiar rhythms. What emerged was not retreat but resolve. The church learned new ways to serve the community, simplified programs, leaned into relationships, and reclaimed the basics of worship, teaching, and care. BT learned that strength is not measured in size but in presence.
Attendance did not return to former highs, but engagement deepened and baptisms followed. New leaders emerged. The church remembered that it did not exist to preserve a building or a legacy but to bear witness to the gospel in this place and time.
BT remained faithful in a neighborhood shaped by poverty, transition, and displacement. Success came to be measured in food served, prayers offered, and doors kept open—a place of continuity in a continually changing neighborhood. Victory looked like persistence: a church still gathering, a pastor still preaching, a congregation still praying for its neighborhood.
Baptist Temple’s story is not one of decline but of survival shaped by faith—a church that weathered cultural change, economic pressure, and seasons of uncertainty and still remains. Still worshiping. Still serving. Still standing.
Melissa Baxter added, “It brought the young and the old together on a project, working together as a church body for a family who was there working alongside us.”
“The first family in particular was so engaged and so appreciative. I still maintain contact with the homeowner and drive by the home often when in San Antonio,” said Newton.
BT raised some of the funds, but the money came primarily from a grant from Wells Fargo Bank, where church member, Carol Gray, worked. Church members provided the labor.
Shad Purcell, youth Minister at the time, remembers that the experience shaped his understanding of ministry. Working side-by-side with church members, sharing physical labor and common purpose, embodied the kind of communal faith he valued.
Prior to the laborers’ arrival, the site would have a slab poured, utilities connected, and a pile of prefabricated walls ready to be assembled. For several weeks a work crew would be on the site hammering, roofing, drywalling, painting; lunch would be prepared in the church kitchen and brought to the site. Robert Persky said that a group of retirees were there every day. “I remember Aurelia Newton on the roof nailing in shingles,” said Robert’s wife, Muriel, who was also at the work site daily.
“I will never forget standing in the yard and glancing at the home on that final Saturday afternoon... children were hauling grass, women who had been on the roof and hanging Sheetrock were now inside cleaning. Eighty plus year old men were finishing up the wooden fence and I'm almost certain I heard God proclaim, ‘Well done my good and faithful servants!’” said Newton.
Leeth’s parents were pillars of Baptist Temple. Morgan and Lynn were deeply involved in teaching, music, and community ministry. But Jarrett was drifting in the opposite direction. “I was getting out of the church scene and going my own ways. Not good ways, doing bar scenes and such and going the wrong way,” he said. What began as casual drinking hardened into habit, and habit into dependence. He would later describe those years plainly: hurting other people, hurting himself, using friends and even his parents for money, and watching alcohol quietly dismantle both his work and his integrity.
He was a licensed journeyman plumber who learned his trade in the Navy as a Seabee. Plumbing was the one steady thing in his life. But even that began to erode. After a diabetes diagnosis, he refused to change his lifestyle. Medication came; the drinking continued. He let his plumbing license lapse and tried to begin again at Home Depot, imagining a steady career until retirement. Instead, he found himself working part-time at night stocking for modest wages, barely covering fuel costs.
He pivoted again, this time into sprinkler fitting. The work suited him. The drinking did not stop.
Then came the physical consequences. Diabetes advanced. Sores appeared on his feet and would not heal. A toe was amputated and still he drank. His nights blurred into mornings as he drank himself into brief unconsciousness only to begin again. Finally, it got so bad he was hospitalized for liver failure.
That was three years ago. “I don't even have the slightest thought of alcohol in my mind anymore,” he said.
Leeth quit cold turkey. No gradual taper. No negotiated compromise. March 14 will mark three years without a drop of alcohol. The early weeks were difficult, but the cravings eventually fell silent. Sobriety did more than restore clarity; it restored memory. With painful vividness he began to see the damage he had done—to himself, to others, to the life he might have lived.
Then he began to pray. He began to feel the Holy Spirit working in his life; a quiet conversation between him and God. He had been thinking about baptism for months before he spoke it aloud. He even considered marking the occasion on the third anniversary of his sobriety. Yet his deeper questions were not about ceremony but about direction. About following the way of Jesus.
He was baptized on February ninth, not just as a testimony of what he left behind but, also, a declaration of where he hopes to go. At fifty-five, Leeth describes himself as “wide awake.” Plumbing was his identity, the one thing he stuck to. But now, sober and alert, he feels the weight of larger questions: Where am I headed? What is the purpose of the years that remain?
He reads Scripture and seeks deeper understanding. He searches the stories for answers about life and eternity. He is seeking a way to make a difference. “Serving others, that’s probably what I'm looking for right there,” he said.
And the questions that once haunted him—about death, about direction, about meaning—are gradually giving way to something quieter and more enduring: the desire to belong to Christ and to spend what remains of his life serving others.
