HomeMy WebLinkAboutThirtyYearsHistory027The Baptist Student Building was finished noting the summer of
1950 and one of the best BSU centers was completed the following
year.
The Baptists leaders were given much publicity by the press on their
retirement from the work at College Station. Among the many state-
ments by the various papers was a brief statement by the Houston Post,
Sunday, August 20, 1950.
Rev. R. L. Brown retired from the pastorate of the Fiat Baptist
Church, College Station, on September 1, 1950, after having served
thirty years as the Baptist leader in that strategic Situation.
The Baptist work began at Texas- A & M College in the early tall of
1920 with the arrival from Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, of Rev. and Mrs.
R. L. Brown, the first Baptist student secretaries ever elected by the
denomination. He had been graduated from Campbell College and Wake
Forest College in North Carolina, had spent one year at the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, and had received
degrees from Crozer Theological Seminary, Chester, Pennsylvania and
the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. Mrs. Brown, the former
Miss Belle Mitchell of Wake Forest, North Carolina, had received her
degree from the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina
and for a time taught physics and biology in the Ridley Park, Pennsyl-
vania School.
Pastor Brown says of the beginnings of the work: "My wife and I
turned our backs on a busy and pleasant pastorate and came as pioneers
into an unoccupied and untested field to set up a denominational
program in the indifferent and discouraging atmosphere of a great state
institution" In 1920 there were 325 Baptists among Bre 1500 students
enrolled in A & M with no church program of any sort. The services
were begun with an evening preaching service preceded by a BYPU
program. Mrs. Brown organized a Women's Missionary Society in 1921
for she had been interested in mission work since her earliest childhood
as a member of the Sunbeam Band and felt the need of a missionary
organization on the campus. After three years some changes were
brought about and a Sunday School was organized.
On March 18, 1923, a church was organized with 91 charter
members—the only church ever reported anywhere to be organized as
an outgrowth of Baptist Student Union work on a campus. The next
year the land for the erection of a church building was purchased just a
block from the North entrance to the College campus, and in 1928 a
church building was erected. In 1942 an auditorium, with a seating
capacity of 1,000, was built and dedicated. This beautiful church
edifice was made possible through the interest and support of Dr
George W. Truett, the cooperation of the State Executive Board and
the gifts of Texas Baptists. Dr. Truett preached the first sermon in the
new building and held a week's revival in connection with the Religious
Emphasis Week at the College.
The parsonage, which was built in 1924, was given to the pastor and
his wife in 1946, was moved later off the lot to make room for the
erection of a Student -Education building. This bungalow type
pastorium was converted into a two-story Colonial home where the
Browns are now living at 418 College Main.
During the past year this'S95,000 Student Center has been erected
across the street from the church plant. Pastor Brown secured for the
State Executive Board this lot on which the Student Center is located.
It was also through his recommendation that the Baptist Bible Chair
was established, and he was invited to become its fust instructor. He
served without remuneration until a full-time Bible teacher was secured.
One or both of these workers have attended all State Baptist Student
Union Conventions. Southwide Baptist Student Union Conventions and
two international Baptist Youth Conferences -one being in Prague,
Czechoslovakai in 1931 and the other in Zurich, Switurland, in 1937.
In 1934 they attended the Baptist World Alliance in Berlin, saw the
Passion Play at Ob rrammengau and toured the Holy Land. In 1942 Mrs.
Brown went by plane to Cuba and studied the mission work there, in
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