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In the early years of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, members joined small groups to study the Bible and gather outside of Sunday morning worship.
Now, five decades after the church's founding, lead pastor Jonathan Evans wants to bring back that idea for the needs of the church and its congregants.
"We're going to spread our wings a little bit further and take that original motif and expound on it," Jonathan Evans, the son of the church's founding pastor Tony Evans, said in an interview.
The megachurch in Dallas is marking its 50th anniversary this year. As it looks to the future, Jonathan Evans said bringing back the small groups, or "Kingdom communities," will put the gifts of the church's thousands of members to good use and help members connect meaningfully with each other.
"The faithfulness of God yesterday is the same faithfulness of God today," Evans said.
On Saturday, congregants marked the anniversary with an all day event to hear from church leadership and celebrate its history.
In remarks to an apt congregation, Tony Evans charged members with being Christians in actions in order to "advance" God's kingdom.
"I am so proud of what you are doing and will do over these next years," Tony Evans told the crowd. "And I'm going to play my part in supporting this pastor, this vision, this church."
After church member Rachael Turner moved back to Dallas from Chicago about four years ago, she returned to Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship particularly for the teaching, which she described as practical.
"It's a beautiful transition with Pastor Jonathan," she said. "You can kind of tell something's shifting."
Related: Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Church members say pastor's move a 'sign of spiritual maturity'
Church founded 50 years ago
Over the years, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship has grown to a membership of around 8,000.
The church first began as a Bible study with Tony Evans and later moved into an A-frame building that's still on the church's large campus on Camp Wisdom Road.
The church was founded around the same time as several other prominent historically Black churches in the area, including Friendship-West Baptist Church and Concord Church.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship began to rapidly grow in membership and ministries. Jonathan Evans chalked the growth up to his father's preaching and teaching.
"Not only was he a didactic teacher in terms of the way that he taught the Bible, but he is also one of the greatest illustrators of all time," Jonathan Evans said. "He could story-tell like none other."
Eventually, the church built multi-use space for recreational activities like basketball and church picnics. The church now features a large worship center and bookstore, and has two campuses for its affiliated private schools. It also owns a golf course.
"We became more and more of a staple in the community and a place for people to come to, not just to go to church," Jonathan Evans said.
Tony Evans, who led the church for decades, stepped down in 2024 following an undisclosed "sin." In October, the church announced that Tony Evans had completed a restoration process, but would not return to church leadership.
Related: Pastor Tony Evans on legacy, fighting racism with the Bible, time away from pulpit
Jonathan Evans was officially installed as its lead pastor in December. Evans was a football player at Duncanville High School and Baylor University. He signed with the Dallas Cowboys as an undrafted free agent in 2005 and spent five years on NFL practice squads.
He graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary with a master's in Christian leadership, according to the church, and is chaplain to the Dallas Cowboys.
Jonathan Evans said the church is in a time of transition, where his father and his father's generation of leaders are passing the baton. But both generations are holding the baton at the same time.
"I feel that support," Jonathan Evans said.
Vision for the future
The church's core mission is called the "Kingdom agenda," a philosophy Jonathan Evans said was his father's vision based on Psalm 128, a chapter of the Bible. Jonathan Evans described the philosophy as "the comprehensive rule of God over every area of life."
"What that passage does is it goes from the individual to the family, through the church to the city to the nation, and then brings you back to generational blessing," Jonathan Evans said.
The church's goal has been to support the individual and families, foster a healthy church and make an impact on the broader community.
"We want people to bring what they believe down into their normal life," Evans said. "We don't believe that there's a distinction between the sacred and the secular."
Jonathan Evans said the church is emphasizing that model of organization, and part of that vision will be implemented through the return of the small groups.
Now that congregants come to the megachurch from all around the Dallas-Fort Worth area, including Lewisville and Arlington, the church wants to connect its congregants with their immediate neighbors, wherever they live.
The church plans to train leaders to organize the communities. Once established, the communities will meet in homes twice a month to share a meal or discuss spiritual matters. The groups will also volunteer and organize to benefit their neighborhood and "evangelize where they live," Evans said.
The church plans to go through its dozens of ministries and decentralize the work into the Kingdom communities.
"How do you utilize 8,000 gifts?" Evans said, referring to the members. "Well, you have to decentralize."
The transition will come with change. For decades, the church engaged in outreach to public schools with a support program called the Turnaround Agenda that offered mentoring, tutoring and family support.
Evans said the church recently ended that program to focus on its own private Christian PreK-12, the Kingdom Collegiate Academy. Parts of that work, such as the church's food pantry and adult literacy program, will continue under the outreach of the church and not under the separate brand of Turnaround, Evans said.
Related: 'Not just a building': Friendship-West Baptist Church celebrates 50th anniversary
Time of transition
The culmination of the church's 50th anniversary was celebrated Saturday with an all-day conference which included a documentary on the church's past, discussion of its future and an emphasis on personal spiritual growth for its members.
Six-time Grammy Award winner Israel Houghton led the congregation in praise and worship as members danced, sang, prayed and swayed.
Mindy and Jeff Truly have been members of the church for five years, and started attending after the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I'm really behind the vision that God showed him to go out to, to spread out and grow," Jeff Truly said.
Read this story on dallasnews.com
