Jesus Christ moved in the hearts of a small group of Christians in the autumn of 1889, leading them to begin the first Baptist church in south Austin. They lived across the Colorado River outside the Austin city limits in a rural community scattered along South Congress Avenue, the major thoroughfare in the captital city even in those days.

The early years of our church were perhaps the most fleeting. The church placed its emphasis on beginning God's work in the community and on building up each other as new members found their places in the Body of Christ. As God's Spirit moved amoung the growing membership, their attention focused on where they were going, not where they had been.

During those fast-moving early years this new born South Austin Baptist Church, later named Congress Avenue Baptist Church, reached out into the rural community south of the Colorado. The founding members and those who followed them weren't concerned with creating a legacy for the future members of the church to follow. Yet, as we reflect on the history of the church, we'll discover that's exactly what they've done.

With the early years long gone, the next generations of church members began looking back to measure God's successes and to recapture the inspirations of those who founded Congress Avenue Baptist Church--to touch their roots.

The measure of success in a church is almost invariably weighed against her responses to the Great Commission. Within that commission from Jesus lies the heart of virtually all Southern Baptist activities since the denomination's beginnings:

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

The evangelistic interpretations of that commission have steered this church over the years through the ups and downs of a rapidly changing world system.

 

[taken from Congress Avenue Baptist Church 1891-1991 (Austin, Texas: Nortex Press), 1.]