For 175 years, Cypress Baptist Church has been a pillar of faith, of perseverance, and of the small community of East Texas. It was founded in 1851, prior to the Civil War and long before any of the modern conveniences we take for granted. The church recently came together to celebrate a very special occasion, looking back over the generations of worship and fellowship and the families who have made Cypress their home.
The anniversary was a day of celebration for the congregation, families, and friends. It was originally envisioned as a grander anniversary event, but the health of several members meant it had to be scaled down considerably. It was still a good opportunity to reflect on the early days of the church and to celebrate the faithfulness that has seen it through all these years.
Cypress Baptist Church was founded on August 28th, 1851, by a small group of settlers in the then rural area. The early church consisted of families from various Christian denominations who simply wanted to get together and worship. They had very little in the way of resources and no building at all in those early days. Worship services were held in the homes and under a brush arbor (a brush arbor being a simple arbor of poles and branches). Services were not held every Sunday, and there was no regular pastor. The original name of the church was the Missionary Baptist Church of Christ, and it was gradually worked into the Southern Baptist fold over the years.
Spencer Shearer was one of the original settlers and donated six acres of land for the church. That land was formally conveyed to the church in 1862 and has since provided a permanent home for worship and a cemetery, which remains a very important feature in the lives of the local families to this day. The cemetery is of course a very significant part of the area's history. The first grave to be marked in the cemetery is that of Jane Willis Huggins, who died in 1854 at the age of 17. In the early days of the church, the cemetery was in fact a community graveyard, and the church bell would be rung to call the neighbors down to dig the graves.
Local tradition holds that Confederate troops trained on the church grounds during the War. The War was a very trying time for the young church, as so many of the men from the surrounding area went off to serve in the army and many never came back. The church went on, and the congregation continued to serve the families that were left. Cypress gradually became more than just a place of worship. It was a part of a very active rural community with a school, a general store, and a number of families all interwoven through the church and the normalities of village life.
Linda Smith (longtime member) grew up attending Cypress Baptist Church and remembers it as a real community hub. "It was a meeting place," she says. In the 1950s, there were the long summer revival meetings which would go on for two or three weeks. There was no air conditioning, so you'd get all your chores done, get the kids ready, and get the evening meal on the table, and then you'd go to the meeting. It was a real commitment, and it was a real effort for the mothers to get the kids ready after a day's work.
Smith also remembers the move of the congregation into the present-day church building (built in 1953). Pastor Steve Smith recalls that the building was constructed using timber taken from the old community school building. It was a new church building in a sense, but it was also a building that had a physical link to the past. For Smith, who was only three when the congregation moved into the building, those early memories are very much alive.
The church's history is very much a personal one for its present pastor, who grew up in Cypress and has been with the church for about 10 years. His family moved from Dallas when he was a kid, and Cypress Baptist Church was a major part of his formative years. He was under the pastoral care of Joe Bass for many years, and it was Bass and his wife Nancy who really instilled his faith in him. Bass and Nancy are very much a part of the church's history and are greatly missed by the membership, who will often speak of the impact they had on so many families over the years.
Having served in ministry at a number of other area churches and having spent a period of time away from pastoral work, he eventually got back to Cypress. What started off as just going back to his old church eventually led to opportunities to preach and then an invitation to become pastor. To be the pastor of the church that had been the very church that he'd grown up in is one of the great blessings of his life. Pastor Steve mentioned that one of his greatest blessings has been to have led both of his children to faith and to have baptized them in the very church where he was brought up. The family connection goes back several generations. He remembers the Youngs were among the very first to establish the church, and his own kids are pretty much the sixth generation of the family in the church.
Although the congregation is a lot smaller now than it was in some of its peak years, the mission of the church is exactly the same. Pastor Steve admitted that a small church faces its own set of problems with families moving out and membership going up and down. Currently, they average about 20 people on a Sunday, but he stressed that the church's value isn't in the number of people attending. The focus is still very much on the Gospel, on caring for each other and on meeting the needs of the wider community. "We just try to be what God calls us to be," he said.
That commitment has seen Cypress Baptist Church through all the generations, all the changing communities, all the wars and all the economic ups and downs that have occurred over the years. The church and its cemetery have also been recognized for their historical importance with a Texas historical marker.
As the members came together for their 175th anniversary, it wasn't really about the dates, the buildings, the milestones. It was an occasion to honor the many individuals who had given their prayers, their time, their very lives to keep the church going through the years. From the very first service under a brush arbor right up to the present-day sanctuary, Cypress Baptist Church is a living testament to the importance of the rural church in the making of the communities of Northeast Texas. All that has changed since that first service in August of 1851; the church is still here doing what it has always done, continuing the legacy of faith and fellowship for all the generations to come.
