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HISTORY OF TALLOWOOD BAPTIST CHURCH IN HOUSTON, TEXAS

Tallowood Baptist Church was initially a mission of [[[Baptist Temple]]] in Houston’s Heights. The initial group answered the need for a centrally located, mission-minded Baptist church on the Bayou City’s thriving western suburbs in the early 1960s. The world’s only Baptist church known as “Tallowood” was the fast-growing church in the Southern Baptist Convention throughout its first decade.

In 2005, the church voted to undertake an expansion plan that calls for a much larger worship center with a 150-foot-tall steeple that will be seen from the sprawling Katy Freeway, a quarter mile to the north. This way, Tallowood will remain a neighborhood church with mission efforts that stretch all around Houston and the world. The first service in the new worship center took place on Sunday, October 5, 2008.

Throughout almost 50 years of ministry, Tallowood has stood true to its bedrock New Testament values which emphasize Bible study, worship, strong local and worldwide mission efforts and evangelism, and also prayer ministry, children’s ministry and a music ministry for ages 3 to adult.

The church gives special attention to Chinese and Hispanic congregations. Its Korean congregation grew large enough to go out on its own as [[[Tallowood Korean Baptist Church]]], located in the Spring Branch section of Houston. Tallowood continues to mirror the ethnic blend of Houston and become an international congregation. The church reflects that trend today but ultimately wants to take the Gospel message to every Houstonian.

In 1977, Tallowood served as the “mother church” to [Kingsland Baptist Church] in Katy. In 2004, the church “mothered” another Katy area mission, [Trinity Baptist Church.
] Tallowood’s pastor, [Dr. Duane Brooks], uses the acronym WISE to communicate the church’s role in God’s New Testament ministry: Worship. Instruction. Service. Evangelism. The message is communicated appropriately to Houston neighborhoods with all different ethnicities. It is not skewed toward just one type of income or education level. The church is often described as “a place where anyone feels at home.”

The church has both traditional and contemporary services, the latter offered on Saturday night in the Tallowood Center, a former Circuit City on the Katy Freeway, as well as on Sunday morning on the Tallowood campus proper, located at 555 Tallowood Drive, midway between Gessner Road and the Sam Houston Tollway. Tallowood’s contemporary services featuring a more informal worship experience with drums and guitars. The church also has one of the strongest traditional Sunday morning worship services in Houston.

The opening of the church's new worship center resulted in a change in the worship schedule. Pastor Brooks delivers a sermon in a 9 a.m. Contemporary Worship Service and follows up with sermons in two Traditional Worship Services at 10:15 and 11:30 a.m.

In recent years, the increasing number of worshipers at Tallowood prompted church leaders to present a $27 million building expansion plan, a “WISE” decision that provided a much larger worship center on the 10-acre campus. There will be much-needed space for the church’s growing ministries that emphasize Bible study, evangelism and multicultural mission efforts.

The congregation overwhelmingly supported the plan, which includes a simple-to-follow shuttle parking system, made extremely efficient via the short commute from Tallowood Center down a neighborhood street to the campus. The program was near completion in October 2008 with only a few finishing touches needed. Tallowood wants to mirror the ethnic blend of Houston and be an international congregation in a new and improved campus geared to serve this growing diversity.

EARLY HISTORY
Tallowood – once known as “the Chapel on the Prairie” before the unprecedented Memorial area development – grew into a congregation that now numbers more than 5,000. While the first chapel could be seen across the prairie from Katy Highway in 1960, residential growth tucked Tallowood deeper into neighborhoods as it constructed its first Worship Center in 1969.

The same emphasis was present when a small but determined group of working professionals who were Baptist Christians in Houston in the late 1950s moved their young families to western suburbs when there were no major freeways, shopping malls or other major amenities. Their numbers grew as they met in an elementary school as a mission of Baptist Temple. When finally constituted as a full-fledged Baptist Church in 1962, Tallowood offered three Sunday morning traditional worship services to accommodate the increasing number of Christians wanting a church home in West Houston.

In 1958, far west Houston consisted of scarcely more than a series of horse trails and prairies. The area known as “Memorial” was then “out in the country” with The Galleria and even[ Memorial City Mall] still years away from development. A group of young urban professionals – many of them businessmen and engineers in the field of oil and gas – had been active in Baptist churches across Texas and other parts of the nation.

These professional men and their wives sought to raise their young families in new schools located in quasi-rural environs. They also wanted a church that offered worship and Bible study with a mission orientation. They initially took turns meeting in one another’s homes. Their numbers grew enough to ask for sponsorship from a mother church. That church proved to be Baptist Temple in Houston’s Heights, a mission-minded congregation that readily provided the monetary support.

This support helped the growing group to engage the use of [Woodview Elementary School] in the Spring Branch Independent School District for Sunday services. Every member was a worker in Sunday school, the worship service or in the vitally important outreach program. Resourceful members became part of a Welcome Wagon program and made sure every newcomer knew where to find Woodview, where the growing membership of Memorial Baptist Temple met every Sunday.

During the week, practically every member of the mission visited prospects, often asking them into their homes for desert and fellowship. The numbers grew on the same scale as the construction plans for Memorial area neighborhoods so that by 1959 mission members called their group’s first pastor, [[Dr. Russell H. Dilday Jr.
]] The first of his 10 years at what would become Tallowood Baptist Church saw the church become America’s fastest-growing Southern Baptist congregation in the 1960s. As the Memorial area grew, so did Tallowood. Members broke ground for the chapel of Memorial Baptist Temple in March 1960. These men and women literally dug into their pockets to find enough money to pay for the $217,700 construction tab, funding assistance from Baptist Temple and [Union Baptist Association] notwithstanding.

Once opened by the end of the year, membership was growing at an unbelievable pace. By 1962, Baptist Temple and the UBA officially constituted Memorial Baptist Temple as Tallowood Baptist Church. The mission had grown from 80 charter members and an operating budget of $21,600 to a fully formed church with 374 charter members and a budget of $78,600. Sunday school enrollment began with 108 and grew to 506 by 1962.

Dr. Dilday spent 10 years as Tallowood’s pastor, shepherding growth years dramatic enough to see the campus grow by adding children’s Sunday school and nursery space, a gym/activities center and today’s Worship Center. The center opened after Dilday left to pastor another church when [Dr. Lester B. Collins Jr.] was selected as Tallowood’s second called pastor.

The son of an inner city missionary, Collins led the church in its continuing growth period and expansion of its youth ministry, music ministry and support of foreign missions. The well-known Tallowood support of missionaries everywhere was made evident by the growing number of them who spent their time away from overseas assignments in service to the church. Collins spent 20 years at Tallowood, the longest-tenured of the church’s four called pastors.

Each of these four is a graduate of [Baylor University], the world’s largest Baptist institution of higher learning, in Waco, Texas. Tallowood’s interim pastors, [Dr. Robert B. Sloan] (1990-91) and [Dr. Randall O’Brien] (1997-98) are not only Baylor graduates but also served as religion professors there. Sloan served 10 years as Baylor president. He is currently the president of [Houston Baptist University]. Dr. Collins serves as one of the SBC’s most active interim and substitute pastors despite being in his mid-80s. Russell Dilday became one of the most widely respected and influential Baptist denominational leaders in America. He served as president of the [Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary] in Fort Worth, Texas, and as dean of the [Truett Seminary on the Baylor campus.]

[Dr. Daniel Vestal], yet another mission-minded pastor, succeeded Dr. Collins in 1991 and served for a five-year period in which Tallowood emphasized inner-city missions in Houston, especially in the West End neighborhoods.

Under Dilday’s leadership, Tallowood added the facilities necessary to provide space for Sunday school classes for the growing number of children in the church, an emphasis that continues to this day. Before the decade of the sixties ended, Tallowood members approved building fund drives that paid for a new Worship Center and a new gymnasium and workout facility.

When a church in Atlanta called Russell Dilday as its new minister in 1969, Tallowood’s pastoral search committee chose Lester Collins, pastor of a Dallas church, to be his successor. Collins was the second called pastor. He served 20 years, establishing Tallowood as a leading supporter of missions in the [Southern Baptist Convention] and [Cooperative Baptist Fellowship]. During his tenure, an unusually high number of retired missionaries chose Tallowood as their church home, a clear indicator that the church.

Under Vestal’s leadership, the church participated in an unprecedented number of foreign mission trips, helping small but growing groups of new Christians build the facilities needed to flourish. In 1996, Dr. Vestal left to become the coordinator for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) in Atlanta.

Two years later, the Pastor Search Committee selected Dr. Duane Brooks, one of the brightest young pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention, to serve as Tallowood’s fourth called pastor. Dr. Brooks’ leadership, humbleness and pastoral talents, as well as sermons that have attracted a growing number of new members to both traditional and contemporary services, has served to inspire the church membership to expand the campus to meet these exciting demands. His leadership played a key role in the construction and October 5, 2008 opening of the new Tallowood Worship Center.

PASTORS OF TALLOWOOD BAPTIST CHURCH 1958-1959 – Dr. Howard Linton (Interim) 1959-1969 – Dr. Russell H. Dilday Jr. 1969-1989 – Dr. Lester B. Collins Jr. 1990-1991 – Dr. Robert B. Sloan (Interim) 1991-1996 – Dr. Daniel Vestal 1997-1998 – Dr. Randall O’Brien (Interim) 1998 – Present – Dr. Duane Brooks