In 50 years of existence, Grace Community Church has grown in number, campuses and ministries.

But despite the many changes two key aspects of the ministry have remained the same — a focus on the Bible and a desire to reach out to the community.

“I really want to be a church who thinks more about those who are not yet a part of us than are,” Senior Pastor Doug Clark said during a recent interview in his Tyler office.

This month, Grace celebrated 50 years of existence, and while leaders acknowledged it, they said the credit belongs to God for what he has accomplished through this community of believers in that time.

Getting started

Grace Community Church got its start in the house of Bill and Rickey Fisher, according to the church’s website.

Roby Hadden, 85, was among the core founding group. Hadden, who was in his mid 30s at the time, said the group started out as a Bible study.

There was a common feeling among the participants that they wanted to study the scriptures more than they were on Sunday mornings at their respective churches.

So they decided to form a Bible study group that met in the members’ homes. It was unaffiliated with any church or denomination, but the members shared the same desires.

So for more than a year they met each Wednesday until one night a participant suggested they form their own church.

They started thinking about the idea in the summer of 1964 and on Nov. 4 of that year, the participants unanimously agreed to become The Evangelical Methodist Church of Tyler, which, in 1974, became Grace Community Church.

“We firmly felt the Holy Spirit moving in our midst and felt like this is what we want to continue doing,” Hadden said.

The Fisher’s house served as the initial location for church services, but soon the group moved to the YMCA of Tyler.

In 1965, though, the church completed construction on its first building on donated property on Old Jacksonville Highway, according to the church’s website.

From there, the church grew in size and added buildings and campuses as needed.

In 1973, it started a Christian school, which continues today. By 1984, an auditorium was completed on the Old Jacksonville Road campus and, in 1993, a nursery and youth building was added.

In August, a 325-seat chapel was completed on the Old Jacksonville campus. It will be used for primarily for the traditional worship service and weddings, Clark said.

Outward focus

When Clark arrived at the church 10 years ago, Grace had just started its fourth campus in Lindale. It already had campuses on Old Jacksonville Highway, University Boulevard and in Athens. Today, it no longer operates an Athens campus, but has the other three.

Clark, who is the church’s fifth pastor, said the church always had had a strong foundation in preaching the word of God, but the present leadership team is emphatic about pairing that with an outward focus on an individual level.

“As a Christian, my responsibility is to minister to people where God has me, where I live, work and play,” he said.

This mindset led to the church partnering with Green Acres Baptist Church in a ministry called Gospel Village, which pairs adults with children in the community in mentoring relationships. That program has since moved under the leadership of the Boys and Girls Clubs of East Texas, but Grace Community Church members remain involved, Clark said.

Although it can be difficult to measure the church’s effectiveness at realizing its outward focus, Clark said anecdotally it appears more members of the church community are involved and have friendships beyond the church walls.

One of the congregants who has served consistently in ministry is Clyde Powell, 79. The Tyler retiree has been a part of the church since 1967, almost its entire existence.

Powell is an elder in the church and he and his late wife, Doris, taught a young married couples class for many years. Apart from that, Powell has been intentional about investing in the lives of other men.

Almost every day he meets with a different young man and studies the Bible with him. Typically they both read the same chapter ahead of time, then talk about it over a meal. They also memorize Scripture.

He said he is motivated by seeing young men grow spiritually and develop an appetite for God’s word and how it can be applied to their lives. For him personally, that appetite has continued to grow.

“Basically I’m just so much in love with Jesus, I want to get to know him better,” said Powell, who leads training workshops through Shamgar Discipleship.

Matt Edwards, 50, Pine Cove’s chief operating officer, has been a part of Grace Community for 17 years, since he and his family moved to Tyler from Michigan.

“Really, the thing that I just loved was just the whole concept of grace,” he said.

Having not grown up in the church, then experiencing a legalistic church, hearing about God’s grace was appealing, he said.

Furthermore, he and his family got to spend time with some of the foundational members of the church, which helped them get settled in East Texas.

Today, Edwards is on the church’s elder board and he and his family dedicated four years to helping launch the Athens campus, when that was a part of Grace. He also mentors a young man through the Gospel Village program.

He sees Grace as a “re-entry church for a lot of people,” a place where people who have been burned or frustrated by the church can find a home.

“The community aspect is so comforting, I guess from what I can tell from the people involved,” he said. “Community is hard, and it’s messy and it’s really tough sometimes, but it’s so worth it.”

Future growth

Moving forward, the church plans to launch a Spanish campus next year. Clark said they plan to hire a pastor/church planter to lead this campus and already have a group of more than 60 people who are interested in helping out with this new venture.

Clark said this opportunity really fell into their lap and is a logical step given the growing Hispanic population in Tyler.

The church landscape for Hispanics, particularly those who are seeking a conservative contemporary evangelical church, is underserved, Clark said.

So this is an opportunity for Grace to provide for this group within the church. The Spanish service will take place on the Old Jacksonville campus.

Clark said despite what people might think, there are still people in Tyler and East Texas who haven’t heard or experienced the Gospel. Those are the people Grace wants to minister to.

“My hope is that we would be just continually externally focused,” Edwards said, “that we would care less and less about our buildings and more and more about being the church in the community.”