Dear Editor,
As I write this, they are demolishing the First Baptist Church of Evans building on the corner of Belair and Washington roads. What happened that this Evans landmark will be gone?
Let me tell you a little about where the First Baptist Church of Evans had been over the past 93 years, and some things that contributed to the church’s end.
Evans Baptist Church was formed in 1930 in the small ruralcommunity of Evans, Georgia. The members quickly acquired property on the corner of Belair and Washington Roads and built a place of worship. A few decades later, in 1969, as Evans and Columbia County were beginning a growth surge, the church built a new sanctuary. They had drawings made for an even larger building, anticipating further growth. During the next couple of decades their regular worship attendance peaked at around 250 people. In 1986 they changed their name to the First Baptist Church of Evans.
They passed up an opportunity to buy adjacent property (where Evans Cinemas is now). And when Belair Road was widened from 2-lane to 4-lane, all the expansion happened on the church’s side of the road, taking a hefty swath of the church’s front yard. Both of those circumstances would limit the size of the campus for future growth.
Two things happened in the 1970s that set FBCE apart from other Baptist churches in the area. One was that in a period of school integration and racial unrest, many White churches barred Black people from attending their worship services. The pastor of Evans Baptist Church, however, instructed ushers to welcome anyone who came to worship, regardless of their race. The church began a ministry with a small Black church nearby, loaning them their bus and providing space on their campus for their Vacation Bible School. Several members of the church left because of that, and some local pastors and residents derided the Evans church for its stance.
Also in the 1970s the church did a biblical study of the role of deacons. In Evans, as in most Southern Baptist churches, deacons were overseers/administrators of the church. After their Bible study, the church changed their deacons from overseers to servant leaders who helped meet a variety of needs among the church membership. Soon after, they began ordaining women to serve as deacons, an uncommon practice among Southern Baptist churches.
By the 1990s a small, but growing number of Southern Baptist Churches were calling women to ministerial roles. Because of friction about this and other issues within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a number of those churches formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) to offer mutual support among like-minded churches. Most of those churches remained aligned with both the SBC and the new CBF, as FBC Evans did,but for many traditional Southern Baptists, a church associated with the CBF was to be avoided.
Other local events contributed to the numerical decline of FBC Evans. In 1975 FBC Augusta moved from downtown to their current location at the west end of Walton Way. It made the drive more convenient for Evans-area folks who preferred a larger “First Baptist” experience. A number of leading FBCE families moved their membership there.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, as the Evans community grew more rapidly, FBCE had a season of leadership that was ineffective at maintaining or growing the church. Over a period of 16 years, the church dismissed three pastors in succession. During that period, the church continued to gain new members but a greater number left for nearby churches that were growingfaster.
By this time Belair and Washington roads had become major thoroughfares, with more than 50,000 vehicles passing FBCE’s corner daily.
By 2015 the church had only one family with a child living at home. We didn’t have the personnel to provide ministries that would attract families. Aging members were losing their capacity to lead the ministries they had done for many years. Financially, we could afford maintenance and administrationcosts, but there was little else for meaningful ministry.
We recognized that it would be almost impossible to turn things around by ourselves. We were hearing reports that thousands of churches in America were closing their doors every year. We decided to proactively explore options rather than just wait to die. One of our priorities was to try to keep a Christian ministry there on the prominent corner of Belair and Washington Roads.
For six years we looked for partners. We talked first with FBC Augusta, our most compatible neighboring church, about merging and making FBCE a satellite campus, but that was not possible. Other established churches advised that the property was too small and/or the needed renovations were too costly for their use.
We explored the possibility of enlisting a church planter to start a brand new church alongside us in our building. We talked extensively with the leaders of five new or small-sized churches about merging with us and moving into our building. We rented our building to a new school with the possibility of turning the building over to them. We also approached some well-established nonprofit organizations about using our property, without success.
We came to realize that most of those who needed a building were new and/or small, not yet well-established, and we knew one of two things was probable. Either they wouldn’t prosper and couldn’t afford to keep the property, or they would soon outgrow it. In either case, the property would end up being solddespite FBCE’s attempts to save it. With that in mind, the congregation that had stewarded the property for 93 years reluctantly decided they would sell the property. With the proceeds they could fund ministry and mission work that would reach beyond the boundaries of that campus.
We felt all along that, if we had to sell, FBC Augusta was the church most likely to continue ministry and missions with our assets like we would if we could. So in May 2023 the decision was made to merge with FBC Augusta. That gave FBC Evans’ members a church home, and it empowered FBC Augusta to sell the property and create the endowments we envisioned.
FBC Evans’ last service in our building was on July 30, 2023. The team assigned to pursue the property sale took offers, and in choosing a buyer they considered not just the sale price offered, but also what the bidder planned to do with the property. The property sold for $3.25 million on August 8, 2024, to Phillips Edison & Company for development and use by commercial business.
With the money from the sale, we set up two equally-funded endowments overseen by FBC Augusta to carry on FBC Evans’ legacy. One endowment will be used to fund Christian ministry and mission work in the Evans community. The other endowment will be used by FBC Augusta for ministry and missions “from Augusta to the ends of the earth.”
FBC Evans is no longer on that corner. Something else will be built there. But the ministry of the people of FBC Evans over 93 years still stands and bears fruit. And the value of their property, freed for new use, will continue to expand that legacy for many years to come.
Philip Hedgecoth
Last pastor, First Baptist Church of Evans
