Among the founding members of Believers Bible Church were several couples and individuals who were instrumental in the life of the church for years to come. Some have been mentioned here already, but there were others. And God had orchestrated each family’s background and experiences uniquely to lead them to this new venture at the right time.
Craig and Barbara Prather
God used Craig and Barbara in a mighty way—but He had to prepare them first. And they weren’t just new seminary graduates or new to leading a church. They were relatively new believers too, having come to faith, like many others, during the Jesus movement.
“It was just God,” Barbara recalls. “He was really working … in the late sixties, because we came to the Lord through all that Jesus revolution….That was started in ’68, and God was just working in the country.”
“We weren’t hippies,” she adds, “but we were searching for the Lord, even though in the Methodist Church we were taught how to be really good. We were moral people, but we didn’t know the Lord—you know, have a relationship.”
At some point in the late sixties, Craig and Barbara both realized that there was something lacking in the moralistic, religious traditions of their upbringing. They came to know God in a real and true way. “So we’re now really thinking that we’re not getting fed,” Barbara explains. “And so we were discipled by Campus Crusade. And so we saw what the Bible was.”
God put on Craig’s heart a desire to go into mission work and preach the gospel—which led to him enrolling in Dallas Theological Seminary. During Craig’s seminary years, the Prathers attended Northwest Bible Church in Dallas, where Craig was ordained.
“God was really working in the early seventies,” Barbara recalls. “We had classmates from Dallas start [churches]. One started Midlothian Bible Church….the Bible Church movement was really starting.” And God would soon use Craig and Barbara to start yet another Bible Church.
Earl and Louise Swain
Earl Swain was a pilot—first flying fighter jets for the Air Force and later flying commercially for American Airlines. He and his wife Louise had moved around the country more than a dozen times over the course of eight years. By the time Earl left the military as a decorated captain, he and Louise had three children. And when he’d gained enough seniority with American Airlines, the Swains were able to move from a suburb of Chicago (the last place the Air Force had relocated them) to Grand Prairie. It was closer to family for him and Louise, who were both from Ponca City, Oklahoma.
During his Air Force service, Swain had also spent time in Da Nang, Vietnam. It was there that he cultivated a passion for missions and missionaries. “He established relationships with the missionaries who were there in Saigon,” said Swain’s son, Mike. “He would meet with other Christians there, and then they would travel to Saigon together and meet with missionaries there. And … you could see how that [love for missions] kind of developed through the years also, especially at the church.” Along with similar passions from others, Swain’s love for missions would become a heavy emphasis for this new fellowship.
When the Swains first came to Grand Prairie in 1966, they joined First Baptist Church. But sometime later—as the Jesus movement was ramping up—they began to want something different in a church. “Mom and Dad were just kind of dissatisfied, I think, with the preaching and the spiritual atmosphere at First Baptist,” Mike explains. “They were at First Baptist for a long time. But I guess, spiritually, they weren’t growing and didn’t feel like they were receiving what they needed at First Baptist Church. And they had known the Bartels for a long time [and] developed that friendship at First Baptist.”
“We were highly affected by that era,” says the Swains’ younger daughter, Terri Pulec (nee Swain), speaking of the Jesus movement. She recalls:
Our dad was especially affected by it, and he wanted something real. And that’s when … religion no longer satisfied people. They wanted to grow. They wanted to really know the Lord, and I think our parents had come into that full-fledged. And it wasn’t a passive movement for them. They were in, all in. They were chasing after God. And I think that’s why we had to kind of church hop a little bit, trying to find a place where they felt they were growing in. There was no place in Grand Prairie close to home, and I think they wanted a church, a community that was close to where they lived….So, we had been going to other churches farther away, and it was … hard to be a part of a church that far away.
“We went to a couple of other churches prior to [the founding of Believers Bible Church],” Mike recalls. “We went to MacArthur Baptist Church in Irving for a little bit.” But that wasn’t where God was going to keep them long-term.
Terri continues, “So that’s when I think the idea [of starting a new church] sort of formed between Cecil Bartel and Dad and these people who were genuinely chasing after God and wanting a real relationship with Jesus. And that’s kind of how everything really grew from that movement.”
By 1974, the Swains’ oldest child, Lynette, was preparing to go off to college. But Terri and Mike were still at home and became part of the fledgling fellowship. During the days of the True Vine ministry, the Swains were personally and generously committed to the work the Lord was doing. “I remember … them [Earl and Louise] opening up their homes, and people would come [and] stay with us,” says Mike. “It was my bed they were sleeping in, and I was sleeping on the foldout couch. But yeah, it was people associated with the coffeehouse ministry.”
“They were true hippies,” Terri adds. “They hadn’t bathed in a while … you know, like that kind of stuff. But … their hearts were so genuine.” She also recalls that they were “super sweet people [with] so much love for Jesus.”
In addition to hosting young hippies who needed a place to stay, one of the initial Bible study groups that led into forming a new church also met in the Swains’ home for a time. “They were very generous,” Mike says. “And Mom’s gift was hospitality, and they hosted the small groups in their house often.”
Cecil and Helen Bartel
Cecil and Helen Bartel were also instrumental in founding the new fellowship. Cecil, born in Balko, Oklahoma, was a World War II Navy veteran who worked as an aerospace engineer with Lockheed Martin. Helen, his wife since 1948, grew up in Perryton, Texas and worked as a nurse for many years. Like their longtime friends the Swains, the Bartels also came out of First Baptist Church. Janis, the Bartels’ daughter, recalls the events that led their two families to this point in their lives: “We had gotten to know the Swains. They moved here when I was going into junior high, and they had a daughter my age.” Janis Bartel and Lynette Swain both began college around the same time, just as Believers Bible Church was starting to form. Janis continues: “[T]heir kids were going into the youth group about the same time as me and my brother. So my mom and dad sponsored youth things together. Earl always drove the bus when we went to church camps….So yeah, we knew them….We had fun with them in church youth ministry before that point.”
“I guess when they were dissatisfied a little bit with the current churches … they kind of set out together to start this new thing,” Janis recalls, speaking of her parents, Cecil and Helen. And she felt a similar dissatisfaction based on her perspective of the ongoing Jesus movement. “It just broke my heart, too, that the church, the established churches, turned their backs on those people [the young hippies who were seeking Jesus]. And so I’m really emotionally detached from [that church], and I’d grown up in that church.”
Following her years in the youth group at First Baptist and her involvement in the city’s youth revival, Janis was going off to college by the time her parents helped form Believers Bible Church. But whenever she came home for summer or holidays, the new fellowship became her church too. “They would tell me about it when I come home, [they would] be excited, and I’d visit up there [at] the YMCA,” Janis says. “Because that’s where my parents were.”
Janis quickly got involved in the life of the new church. “There was always things for me to do, and my mom and dad were great at volunteering me,” she recalls. “I did a lot of babysitting when I was home, for the women’s Bible studies. And if they needed a babysitter while they had some kind of program or something at church, I was usually volunteered to do it.” Despite being away from home for most of the year, Janis still felt welcomed by her parents’ new church. “I was a part of that,” she says.
Janis recalls the passion and dedication her parents had for the church—not just the universal church, but for this body of believers in particular. “It was their whole life. It was their whole focus. It was where they wanted to be, and they would say it. They would rather be at the church [or] in a Bible study, or doing something, or cleaning the church, or mowing the grass, [or] whatever needed to be done up there.” She adds, “Starting Believers Bible Church was one of their greatest life accomplishments. I think they would say that. I would think they would say that over raising four kids and going to college and being an aerospace engineer and being a RN.”
Don and Janie Reeves
Other founding members of Believers Bible Church included Don and Janie Reeves. Don, originally from Fort Worth, was a Marine Corps Reserve veteran with an MBA, and he worked in a number of different fields throughout his lifetime. He had moved to Grand Prairie for a job along with his wife Janie. “We moved here in 1968,” Janie recalls. “Scott [their son] was just a baby … and then our daughter [Tammy] was born a year later.”
“We started going to First Baptist Church here in Grand Prairie,” Janie says. “And we went there for seven years. And that’s where we met Cecil and Helen, and Louise and Earl, and some of the others that are founding members of our church.”
Janie also spoke of the factors that led her family to eventually leave First Baptist:
We had a ministry [the True Vine ministry] that I wasn’t as much involved as the Swains and the Bartels….They were ministering to hippies … back in the seventies….And all these hippies, when we were going to First Baptist, they invited them to church. Well, the people at First Baptist were too prim and proper for these long-haired hippies, barefooted and [wearing] sandals, and so they didn’t want them there. So Cecil and Helen and Louise and Earl started a ministry at the … coffee shop, where they went and had Bible studies.
“We were in a Bible study at Cecil and Helen’s house,” Janie continues. “Some of us didn’t feel like we were getting fed at the church we were at. We were just getting the Baptist salvation message every Sunday … [but] we were looking to be fed.” This desire led to them seeking a Bible study group outside of the Sunday morning service. “Don and I attended that along with some other people in the church.”
Not much later, as detailed above, Craig Prather came onto the scene. “He [Craig] found out about our Bible studies, and he called,” Janie says. “I still remember the day he called the house. Don was at work, and I was home with the kids, and [Craig] was wondering if we were interested in being a part of it [a new church plant]. And I told him I thought we were. That’s how it started. And we left First Baptist and started to go to this new church.”
Leaving an established church after years of attendance is never without its challenges. Janie recounts, “When we changed churches to the Bible Church, my mom was going, ‘What are you doing? What’s happening? This is a cult!’ And Don’s brother was a Baptist minister, and he couldn’t believe we were getting out of the Baptist Church.” But despite the criticisms, Don and Janie knew they still needed something that had been missing in their church involvement up to this time—-and that they were following where God was leading them.
Dick and Shirley Perkins
Other founding members, Dick and Shirley Perkins, came out of the Methodist Church. “Both of us grew up in the Methodist Church,” Dick recalls. “I was in the army for two years, and we moved back to Grand Prairie, which was in ‘69. We were a part of First Methodist Church. We grew up in the Methodist Church, both of us.”
But, like several of the other couples involved, Dick began wanting something different from a church community. “[We] just didn’t really feel comfortable with what we were seeing there and hearing from our pulpit,” he describes.
Dick recalls how he eventually got involved with the body that would become Believers Bible Church:
In 1973, they had what they call a lay witness mission. That was a fairly popular type of outreach ministry back in those days, and they had that at First Baptist Church there in Grand Prairie, and I was kind of reluctant to go, but felt like I really needed to go just to see what they had to say. And it was in that particular time, that first night, that they had a series of people in church together to discuss the gospel and everything. And they asked the questions in there that were really convincing to me about my faith, which was very weak at the time. So I came to know the Lord through that lay witness mission.
After that, we immediately began to say, ‘You know this is not the church for us,‘ even though that’s where I became a Christian. But … Randy and Martha McCracken got us into that Bible study right there right after I was saved. And through that Bible study we heard about a church, a Baptist church, that had an excellent pastor. His name is Ron Dunn, and we started going to that church fairly soon after we became saved, and we just really enjoyed the teaching. Ron is just a fantastic pastor. And so we grew in our faith through being a part of that church.
Fairly soon thereafter, I think within about a year, is when GPBC [Grand Prairie Bible Church, which Believers Bible Church would later change its name to] or BBC started.
Dick recounts the events that led to the church’s forming–many of them already detailed in this chapter–and his and Shirley’s own involvement in it:
There were probably between thirty and forty people initially, who for different reasons were looking for a different church. They were having concerns about the churches they were in, and [those churches] just weren’t meeting their needs. And so at that time, of those thirty or forty people … the churches that I remember them coming from were First Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, First Methodist Church in Grand Prairie, which my wife and I were part of, and First Christian Church in Grand Prairie. And then there was a couple or two couples, maybe from Pantego Bible Church, who were not necessarily concerned about their church but were concerned about the fact that they lived in Grand Prairie and the drive to Arlington to go to church.
Dick continues:
The Bible study that we started attending right after I was saved really showed me that there was a need to move from the Methodist Church. And so, when it was brought up about the fact that all these people were coming together to discuss a new church in Grand Prairie, then we were drawn to that very quickly, and it was just perfect for us….So I was a part of that thirty or forty people [who] were in that first meeting.
Dick recalls being part of that initial Bible study group that would form into a new church body:
I can’t recall the person who led that Bible study, but we were in a Bible study with some of the people who were looking to get out of First Methodist Church in Grand Prairie, and through that, and a series of conversations with some other people that they knew, there was a couple from Pantego Bible Church who had a meeting in their home back in the early part of ‘74 to see what might be done to form a new church. And that’s when there were about between thirty and forty people that showed up to their house for that particular event.
Dick also remembers the struggles of a brand-new church to find a meeting place:
There was a lot of discussion about where we were gonna have … the church, whether we were gonna try to buy a church or rent a church, or just what we were gonna do. And there was probably two or three places that we looked at. And one of those was the Church of Christ building where the people had moved out of that church and just left the building vacant. But that for some reason didn’t work out for us. So ultimately we wound up renting the YMCA building….
And so we rented that for Sunday services. And for Sunday morning and Sunday evening services, they were fine with that. But for Wednesday services, which we were having back then, they had other activities going on in the YMCA that night. And so we actually rented another building on Carrier Parkway [in Grand Prairie for] some period of time for our Wednesday night services.
Just as the newly established church would become a major influence in the lives of these early members and their families, Dick and Shirley would become actively involved parts of this growing fellowship.
Barbara McPherson
Another key member at the church’s beginning was Barbara McPherson (later, Barbara Steffey). Barbara’s daughter, Nancy Pittman (nee McPherson), who was young and recently married at the time, recalls her mother’s involvement in the new church: “I just remember she was looking for a church, and I think it was the Swains that somebody put her in contact with. And they told her about meeting in homes. And that’s how she started.”
“And then they started going to the YMCA,” Nancy continues. “And that’s when I started going there, because of her. She told me about it. And my husband and I at the time started going there.”
“She just loved the church,” Nancy says of her mother—referring not just to Believers Bible Church but to previous church attendance before its founding. “My daddy never went to church.” She adds, “I think he was a Christian in the end before he died. But he was an introvert … and he stayed home and cooked Sunday dinner for us while we went to church.” But Barbara raised her children in the church faithfully. “She took us every Sunday, every Wednesday….I had a sister, and we all three went, every time the door was open.”
Barbara’s faithful devotion to the church would become a staple of this new fellowship for many years to come.
Other Founding Members
With thirty to forty reported founding members, several of them now deceased, it would be very difficult to have in-depth conversations with each family or to list extensive background information for them all. The following list of names contains people who were also part of Believers Bible Church from the very beginning, and they were no less important to God’s plan for this church body than were the names already highlighted above:
- Lloyd and Jan Carlisle
- Curtis and Cathy French
- Harrold and Kay Henson
- Bobby “Doc” and Edrey McClintock
- Randy and Martha McCracken
- Joe and Rea Messer
- Chuck and Martha Wince