Heritage

 

Mobberly Baptist Church began as a mission of First Baptist Longview, a bridge launched to the south side of Longview in September, 1938. In these days following the Great Depression and before anyone recognized another World War was on the horizon. After holding a tent revival for the newly formed church, Reverend C.L. Porter was called as pastor in October of 1938. Meeting first in a one-room frame building at Highland and Hawthorne Streets, the congregation quickly grew and rooms were added to the building. In 1942, the church purchased property at Mobberly Avenue and Owings Street to expand their ministry and voted at that time to change the name of the church to from South Side Baptist Church to Mobberly Avenue Baptist Church.

 

As the Second World War came to a close, the church built its first sanctuary at a cost of approximately, $30,000. The present sanctuary at 1400 Mobberly Avenue was built to accommodate even more growth and completed in1957. Reverend Porter, forced to resign due to ill health, turned the leadership of Mobberly Avenue Baptist Church over to Reverend Barney Walker as pastor. By 1963 a children’s building was added and as the summer of 1964 came to a close, the church had grown to accommodate 36 adult Sunday School classes. The original 80 charter members had grown to 1,882. In 1967, Reverend J. Dalton Havard was called to be pastor and the church continued its remarkable growth, to include developing plans for an activities building that would contain a kitchen, banquet and teaching facilities and a gym.

In 1970, Dr. Laney Johnson was called to become pastor. The church continued its growth and knew it must establish a satellite church to continue its community ministry in the northern part of the city. This dream became a reality when the church purchased undeveloped property at 625 E. Loop 281. The church celebrated a ground breaking ceremony at the new property on October 5, 1980 and soon voted to change its name to Mobberly Baptist Church. This visionary idea for church growth saw reality in April of 1982 when a multi-purpose building was constructed to host services. Mobberly quickly developed the concept of ‘one church meeting in two locations.’ With the addition of a children’s and pre-school education building and portable buildings for adults, growth exploded. With the numbers of people attending morning worship two services were created to accommodate the crowds. In 1993, a permanent 27,000 square foot worship building was built and the entire church moved to the one location on Loop 281.

 

With this inspired vision for ministry, the church continued to multiply. Today, Mobberly occupies 52 acres along the loop and hosts a 38,000 square foot children’s building, elevation, a 18,000 square foot youth building, a senior adult building at just under 15,0000 square feet, and 11,200 square feet of multiple use classroom and meeting space.

 

In the summer of 2007, Dr. Laney Johnson passed the mantle of leadership to Dr. Glynn Stone. Continuing its God-blessed tradition, the church has added 400 new members in the last year. With multiple new avenues for in-reach, out-reach, community ministry, local missions, international missions and church planting, Mobberly Church has reached another pinnacle, needs to cross another bridge, in its esteemed history. The heritage of bridge crossing continues for a new generation.