FBC CELEBRATES 140 YEARS

By Marc Robertson - Editor | November 15, 2023

Congregation members of the First Baptist Church in Cotulla have celebrated an anniversary this year, marking the foundation of their church and publishing pictures of the buildings in which they have worshipped for generations.

A special commemorative ceremony was held at the end of October in which the Cotulla – La Salle County Chamber of Commerce presented a plaque to the congregation in recognition of the church’s 140^th anniversary.

Records indicate the First Baptist Church of Cotulla was organized on January 28, 1883, the year from which present parishioners have marked their anniversary. The organizing minister for the church at the time was Rev. WD Johnson, a missionary of the Rio Grande Baptist Association.

Church members had been worshipping in Cotulla prior to the church’s organization, however, as town founder Joseph Cotulla had given land for the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and Catholic churches the previous year. The Methodist Church had become the first to be built in the town, and all Protestant congregations would take turns worshipping in that building from 1881.

The system of alternating services for the three Protestant congregations involved the Methodists worshipping on the first Sunday of each month, the Baptists on the second and the Presbyterians on the third. On the fourth Sunday of each month, the three congregations would hold a united song service.

“The deed for the Baptist Church was not filed and recorded until February 6, 1890,” today’s church members note in their commemorative brochure for the anniversary. “There is no recorded date when the church building was erected,” although state historical records have indicated that a wood-frame structure stood at the site by 1889.

Much as all early structures in Cotulla at the time, the church that would be built for the Baptists in the center of Cotulla was a wooden building in the traditional style, with a single apex roof and a short steeple over the entry door.

Services continued once a month, but after 1904, the congregation began meeting on the first and third Sundays.

With the congregation growing and Cotulla itself rapidly expanding in the early years of the 20^th century, the First Baptist Church built a wing onto its sanctuary, “between 1909 and 1912,” according to church officials, and annexes were added in the 1920s to house Sunday School classes and social activities.

The following decades saw the community’s growth and the church’s expansion into the establishment that it is today. The wooden structure was earmarked for replacement as early as 1941, but construction was delayed through World War II. The congregation’s hopes for a new church building were not realized until 1947, under the leadership of Rev. Jesse Cooke.

Designed in a similar rectilinear style to its predecessor, the new church of pale yellow brick was formally dedicated on November 7, 1948, and its indebtedness was paid in full by November 1950.

Further additions followed, with purchase of the adjoining Gilmer property in 1954 for Sunday School, and the addition of a steeple to the church in 1971. The wooden steeple on the portico tower is built in a style echoing that of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, designed in stone by James Gibbs in 1722 and used in simpler form to this day in the architecture of most Baptist churches in North America and many other Protestant churches around the world.

The church congregation celebrated a groundbreaking for its modern fellowship hall in 1976 and completed the building the same year. All debts on that construction were paid in full by 1980. Six years later, the church remodeled its auditorium. Windows have also been upgraded in the church, with replacements in the education building in 2007 and new faceted-glass windows installed at the front of the church. A stained-glass window was installed in the front door transom and a stained-glass dove in the round portico window in 2008.

The church has also added to its property over the years, buying the corner lot at Main and Tilden streets – the site of a former gas station and garage – in 2003, and the former DuBose house on a property facing Stewart Street. That building was used for Sunday School and as a clothes closet until its demolition earlier this year. Other upgrades have included remodeling the church kitchen in 2007 and installing a metal roof on the church in 2022.

The property acquisitions have meant that the First Baptist Church now owns the entire city block on Main Street in downtown Cotulla.

A marker by the Texas Historical Commission was placed on the church lawn in 1979 and records celebrated minister and educator Rev. John Van Epps Covey as having been the first to preach in the Baptist Church’s original structure and then continuing to serve as pastor at times until his death in 1898.

Today, the church is under the leadership of Pastor Moises Rodriguez and holds worship services at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. every Sunday, with Sunday School classes from 9:45 a.m. onwards and youth services at 6 p.m. Sundays and 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays.

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