Faithful see hope amid the ashes
Future in doubt for historic church in Texas City after blaze
TEXAS CITY — Through the remains of the arched brick entrance to the main sanctuary of Greater Bell Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Connie Newsome spotted the charred skeleton of the steeple. Its bell, burned and rusted, lay mostly intact among the ash and debris.
“See that old bell there? It used to be a steeple up here and it had a rope on it,” Newsome said. “A guy, every Sunday morning, he would pull the bell.”
A Texas City native, Newsome has been a Bell Zion congregant since 2007 and was married at the church in 1996. He continued reconstructing the church’s features from memory during a visit Tuesday, pointing out the fellowship hall, where rows of foldFriday ing chairs stood with minimal damage, frozen in time. Newsome scanned the dilapidated east wing that housed the office of the lead pastor, the Rev. Jerry Lee Jr., and peered through the main entrance to note a blackened, misshapen handrail in the sanctuary where the pulpit once stood.
Newsome was at home last when he learned that the church had gone up in flames. Church leaders believe the fire started in the attic of the building, which has stood on this plot of land in Texas City since 1885 — one of the oldest African American Baptist churches in the state — and has endured many tragedies.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
“These things happen,” Newsome said. “We don’t have no control over it.”
A burning odor lingered over the remains of the church as Lee surveyed the damage. The site was still roped off by the Texas City
Fire Department, and an insurance agent arrived to ensure nobody tried to enter until a fire marshal investigation had been completed.
Lee was baptized at the church at age 6 and ordained as an associate pastor in 1988 after a 32-year career at BP. He has tried to comfort his roughly 135member congregation while managing donations and good wishes from fellow pastors across the state.
“We have some (members) in their 90s, a couple in their 100s,” Lee said. “You have to hug them. While you want to weep, you can’t do it because you want to stay strong for them.”
Lee said most of the church’s historic artifacts had been destroyed. His wife salvaged some hymnals and photographs that suffered minimal damage.
“We were hoping we could save some stained glass windows, but all of that melted,” Lee said. “It’s just gone.”
While the church building was 134 years old, its roots in the Texas City community date back to 1867, when a group of AfricanAmerican cowboys settled here during Reconstruction.
The Settlement neighborhood, as it would be called, became a thriving AfricanAmerican community for decades. In 1885, the Rev. Israel S. Campbell established the first church in the Settlement. Campbell had led the former slave congregation in Galveston at Avenue L Missionary, Texas’ first African American Baptist Church.
“(Campbell) was kind of like Apostle Paul,” Lee said, referring to one of Jesus Christ’s followers, a missionary who started Christian churches throughout Europe and Asia. “He started churches and other people took them over.”
Campbell’s Texas City church, which would take many names, would eventually become Bell Zion Missionary Baptist Church, named for Gratton Bell, its third minister.
The church endured for over a century through numerous tragedies, including a 1915 hurricane and several fires. After a fire in the 1940s, a new church was built and renamed Greater Bell Zion.
“The church is the history of the resilience of people, that the people get knocked down and then they get back up,” said Sam Collins, a local historian. “This type of fire is catastrophic in that it destroyed so much. If there’s any records and things that had been there in the form of papers, now all you have is the oral history.”
Lee said the prospects and timeline for rebuilding are unclear. The church is accepting donations by mail , and will be holding its Sunday services at Greater St. Matthews Baptist Church in Hitchcock, whose minister, Rev. Dr. William Randall, grew up attending services at Greater Bell Zion.
“We look at it as just another step that we got on our way to glory,” Lee said. “We’re sad in our hearts but guess what, we know it’s materialistic and we know that God will help us build bigger and better.”