J Magazine Winter 2018

Republican Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence spoke to the First Baptist Church congregation during a visit
to Jacksonville in September 2016, prior to the presidential election.
TIMES-UNION
initially called Tabernacle Baptist and later
First Baptist; the black congregation today
is known as Bethel Baptist Institutional
Church.
First Baptist’s sanctuary, like most of
Downtown, was destroyed in the Great Fire
of 1901, and though the church rebuilt, it
was hard-hit by the Depression and heavily
in debt when the Rev. Homer G. Lindsay Sr.
became pastor in 1940. The senior Lindsay
got the church back on financial high
ground, and the congregation grew. In 1969,
his son and namesake became co-pastor
and took over when the elder Lindsay retired
in 1973.
In 1976, to accommodate the growing
congregation, Lindsay Jr. built a 3,500-
seat sanctuary, named the Ruth Lindsay
Auditorium for his mother. He also erected
the iconic lighthouse at Pearl and Union
streets. Its beacon was turned off after
complaints from Springfield residents, but
the structure remains a landmark.
In 1982, the church hired the Rev.
Jerry Vines as co-pastor to help oversee
the congregation that had grown from
2,600 to 14,000. First Baptist had become a
megachurch.
A megachurch is defined as a
congregation with at least 2,000 members in
attendance. While many churches struggle
to keep body and soul with a few hundred
members, a megachurch has a large budget,
a sizable staff and a variety of programs
and ministries that most churches can only
dream about.
It is a magnet, attracting people from all
over a region with powerful preaching by
a pastor and services often broadcast on
television and more recently the internet.
Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston
is the largest megachurch in the United
States with 52,000 in attendance.
Their influence isn’t lost on political and
government officials, who come to call. Vice
President Mike Pence, for instance, visited
First Baptist during the 2016 campaign.
Vines, who succeeded Lindsay,
continued the church’s expansion, with an
$8 million preschool building, four parking
garages and the 10,000-seat $16 million
sanctuary that was often full for its two
Sunday morning services. (The sanctuary
was downsized in 2011 to 7,800 to allow for
expansion of its audio-visual section.)
The church also grew in stature in the
Southern Baptist Convention. Vines served
two terms (1988-90) as its president. Though
an honorary position, the president is the
face and the voice of the largest evangelical
denomination in the country. In the 1980s,
Vines helped solidify a fundamentalist
takeover of the denomination that resulted
in 1,900 moderate churches leaving the
Southern Baptist Convention to form the
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
Vines also founded First Baptist’s Pastors’
Conference, an influential annual meeting
designed to groom the next generation of
leadership. Thousands of ministers from
around the country come to hear the big
names of the day, like Jerry Falwell. Vines will
be one of the speakers at the next conference
in January.
Under Vines’ charismatic leadership,
First Baptist developed an evangelical
panache. When Vines retired in 2006, he
noted proudly that during his tenure he had
baptized 18,177 people (yes, he kept count).
The Mac
Brunson era
Not just anyone could succeed Vines
at First Baptist Jacksonville. The church
wooed Mac Brunson, the pastor of the
denomination’s premiere pulpit, First
Baptist of Dallas, which for over 50 years
WINTER 2018-19 | J MAGAZINE 69