Two More Articles From The Dallas Morning News on the Prestonwood Behemoth
by Rev. Jack Cascione

 

The opening of giant Prestonwood Baptist Church has captured the attention of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The Dallas Morning News had two articles on Prestonwood on Saturday May 1, another on Sunday, and yet another on Monday. The reporters search for adjectives to describe its size and impact. It makes great clergy bedtime reading. How big did you say that church is? Just think, it seats 2000 more people than Willow Creek and they ran out of space in the late service. After just one opening they have decided that two Sunday services will not be enough. Move over Bill Hybles. I love the second title, "Fort God."


Testament to faith
Prestonwood Baptist congregation moves into big new home

By Jeffrey Weiss / The Dallas Morning News
Sunday, May 2, 1999

 

The throngs won't fill Prestonwood Baptist Church's enormous new home until Sunday morning, when the church holds its inaugural services there. But the building - or what it stands for - has already changed lives.

For Kimberly "Kimbo" Pearson, it was more important than a new car.

Her dad had promised her the car if she did well during her freshman year of college. After Prestonwood called for pledges several years ago, she started praying about her response.

"It took me a few months to realize that God wanted me to give up my dream car," she said.

Not only did she have her father give the church the money that would have paid for her car, but she also added her own contribution. And God took notice, she said.

"He didn't bless me with wealth or material possessions, but with the virtues that can only come from him," she said.

People driving by the huge new structure on Midway Road in Plano may marvel at its size and splendor. But church members who, like Ms. Pearson, have sacrificed uncounted hours and more than $30 million toward its construction say the visible bricks and mortar are the least important manifestations of a three-year project.

"The thrill has not been in the building," said Bob Hoebeke, chairman of the relocation committee. "The thrill for all of us has been in the journey."

Members and staffers have put in a lot of hours during the last few weeks to make the move happen. Sondra Saunders, in charge of the preschool ministry, was positively joyous as she settled items into her new kiddie empire. After 36 years in children's ministry, she said, "I'd have to say this is my dream building" - three stories and 93,000 square feet.

"If she was a wide receiver, she'd be spiking the ball in the end zone," said the Rev. Steve Smith, pastor for ministry development.

About 250 members volunteered in the weeks leading up to the opening. But sacrifice for others started more than three years ago, when church leaders asked for pledges to prove the church could afford the new facility.

About 6,000 families pledged to contribute around $36 million over three years.

John Ferguson, owner of a computer software company, made a pledge large enough to shift his priorities, he said. But the size of individual pledges wasn't the point.

"God's not worried about our money," he said. "He's worried about our hearts."

Growing pains

A few dozen families created Prestonwood Baptist Church in 1977. In 1980, the church moved to the seemingly spacious corner of Arapaho and Hillcrest roads in Far North Dallas. By the early 1990s, it had become a megachurch without room to grow.

With more than 15,000 members, Prestonwood has been more than a little pressed for space. Worshipers at two Sunday morning services had to park at nearby schools and malls and be shuttled in by bus. Off-duty police officers helped with traffic. Worshipers parked deep into the increasingly irritated nearby neighborhood.

Space for kids was at such a premium - too few cribs and rooms - that volunteers had to hold some babies. Other toddlers were pushed around the church in buggies.

"Everything we were trying to do was overbuilding our neighborhood or underbuilding our needs," said Dr. Jack Graham, Prestonwood's senior pastor. "Do you put up a sign and say, 'No vacancy'?"

In 1994, Dr. Graham called together a committee to come up with a solution. Buying surrounding property - covered by homes and businesses - drew resistance from neighbors. And members resisted creating satellite churches. The only alternative was to move.

Church leaders looked about 15 minutes northwest, where the population was growing fastest and where wide-open tracts of land were available. Three years ago, they settled on 140 acres at Midway Road and West Park Boulevard - the highest spot in that part of the county and a site more than three times bigger than the property bought by Dallas for a new downtown arena.

But before construction could begin, the church had to know it could pay for it. The $36 million pledged represented gifts beyond what members usually give.

This was not a case of a few big donors carrying the load, Dr. Graham said. Only three pledges were for $1 million, and none was larger.

What is bigger than a megachurch? Prestonwood will start answering that question Sunday.

Then and now

Material that the old church had to transport filled 110 moving vans. The new church has room to spare.

The old sanctuary had room for 4,000. The new one seats 7,000.

Dozens of small rooms will be used for small Bible-study groups.

"The larger we get, the smaller we want to feel," Mr. Smith said.

What the church doesn't offer, as least to the casual observer, is much that says "church." From the outside, it looks as secular as Reunion Arena. But that may change. Plans to put up a 199-foot bell tower topped by a cross were halted by the Federal Aviation Administration. A smaller tower will eventually be built, church officials said.

Inside, a series of 70 stained-glass windows seems small, high above the bowling alley-size atrium. The sanctuary has only one permanent traditional religious image: a picture in stained glass of a cross and crown above the baptistery behind the pulpit and choir loft.

The lack of obvious religious imagery is not an attempt to disguise the church's conservative Baptist theology, Dr. Graham said.

"What we do inside, that is what will make it a church," he said.

Reprinted by permission of The Dallas Morning News, copyright 1999.


'Fort God'
New Prestonwood location attracts flock of worshipers

By Steve Miller / The Dallas Morning News
Monday, May 3, 1999

 

PLANO - Rising like a mountain from the suburban prairie, the new Prestonwood Baptist Church opened its doors Sunday to thousands of worshipers.

The three-story church, a 460,000-square-foot brick-and-glass behemoth perched on 140 acres on Midway Road looks and feels like an athletic stadium, some members acknowledged.

Prestonwood finished moving in last week from older quarters at Arapaho Road and Hillcrest Avenue in Dallas.

"We went from a place that felt like a mall to a place that feels like a sports arena," said church member Tommy Bastian, relaxing in the large entrance atrium after the 8:30 a.m. service, which drew 5,800 people. He smoothed his feet over the stucco floor and looked at the 70 panes of stained-glass art that rimmed the top of the lobby.

"Somebody called this place 'Fort God' this morning," he said, noting that each block of stained glass bears the name of a book of the Bible. "That could be about right."

The church had struggled for years to accommodate a membership that has doubled since 1989 to nearly 16,000. The 11 a.m. service Sunday drew 7,129 people to the 7,000-capacity sanctuary.

"This is quite humbling," said senior pastor Jack Graham, who preached his first sermon years ago to a congregation of 50 or so in Cross Plains, Texas. "I think we'll probably have to add some more services."

With its concert hall ambience and soft lighting, the new sanctuary is a sound engineer's dream and a worshiper's heaven.

"We get them in here and they can find lots of places to sit because every place in here has a great view," noted usher Rudy Dixon.

The service was not only easier to see, it was easier to get to. The parking lot has 3,000 spaces, more than enough to handle the throngs.

"This is so much easier than where we were," Mr. Dixon said. At the former site, he helped coordinate shuttle buses, which were needed because of limited parking on the grounds.

"This lot emptied in 20 minutes after the first service," added Craig Berry, co-chairman of the church's parking committee.

About a dozen parking attendants directed worshipers to spaces before services. "I think we might be able to have people self-park somewhere down the line," Mr. Berry said. "This has made things much easier."

Traffic is also simpler to negotiate than back in Dallas, where some neighbors were less than joyous when worshipers parked in their neighborhoods.

"I'm sure glad they're gone," said Richard Stastny, who lives in a neighborhood across the street from the former church. He said his street used to be a Sunday-morning parking lot.

"It was really a mess for the people who lived on this street and had to get out," Mr. Stastny said. "They parked all up and down the street."

But for the Wendy's restaurant on Arapaho, just 300 feet from the former Prestonwood location, the move means a loss of business.

"It's going to cost us," said co-manager Terry Bryant. "I'd say it's slowed us down 30 to 40 percent today because we used to get all those people coming over here when church got out."

Reprinted by permission of The Dallas Morning News, copyright 1999.


Rev. Jack Cascione is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS - MI) in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He has written numerous articles for Christian News and is the author of Reclaiming the Gospel in the LCMS: How to Keep Your Congregation Lutheran. He has also written a study on the Book of Revelation called In Search of the Biblical Order.
He can be reached by email at pastorcascione@juno.com.

May 4, 1999