Local history: As Akron Baptist Temple is demolished, its glory days are remembered

After years of desecration, the demolition seems merciful.

Vandals, looters and squatters have destroyed the former Akron Baptist Temple at 2324 Manchester Road. They’ve smashed walls, started fires, shattered stained glass, splintered pews, scattered garbage and painted blasphemous graffiti.

“While I wish there was a different outcome for this memorable building, today marks the start of the next chapter for the Kenmore community,” Mayor Shammas Malik said in a ceremony March 19 before Eslich Wrecking Co. began tearing down the landmark.

Sandra Outland-Brewer, 73, a self-described “preacher’s kid,” remembers the glory years and laments the old church’s fate.

Her father, the Rev. Paul D. Outland, was associate pastor for nearly 50 years. Her mother, the former Mary “Mickey” Leatherwood, was organist and church secretary.

“I’m so glad they’re in heaven, because as bad as it breaks my heart, it would turn theirs inside-out,” she said.

Origins of Akron church

Outland-Brewer’s family connections go back to the church’s beginnings. Her grandfathers Raymond Outland and Thomas Leatherwood were among the original congregants and met their future wives there.

Kentucky native Dallas F. Billington, a factory worker at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., began to preach at the Furnace Street Mission in 1928 and appeared on Akron radio as “The Southern Evangelist.”

He conducted his first service in 1934 at Rimer Elementary School during the Great Depression. The 13 attendees put $1.18 in a collection plate.

Billington quit Goodyear and organized Akron Baptist Temple on Easter 1935 with more than 80 charter members. Months later, over 500 people belonged. In 1937, they built a $60,000 church near Rimer.

More than 38,000 attended the April 3, 1949, dedication of a new $1 million Akron Baptist Temple, featuring a 2,800-seat auditorium. An inscription above the entrance read: “Upon This Rock I Will Build My Church.”

Outland-Brewer’s dad attended Bible Baptist Seminary with Billington’s son Charles in Fort Worth, Texas, in the late 1940s. She still owns the letter in which Dallas Billington invited her father to work at the temple. He started in 1950.

Doing what God wanted

Paul and Mickey Outland’s lives revolved around the church. Not only did he assist Billington with preaching, but he was on call 24 hours to visit hospital patients. He also supervised the bus ministry in which 50 buses crisscrossed the city to pick up worshippers for services.

“When I started helping my dad down there, I was barely as tall as the wheel well of the bus,” Outland-Brewer said.

The Outlands spent more time at church than at their Conrad Avenue home, she said.

In fact, when Outland-Brewer was a pupil at Rimer in the mid-1950s, she gave the church address as her home address. During school lunches, she walked to the temple to dine with her mom, dad and others in the office.

“They were doing what God wanted them to do and what they felt in their heart that they should do,” she said.

Outland-Brewer had the run of the church as a girl. She liked to explore, and knew every nook and cranny. Her favorite place to visit was near the top of the brick building.

“You know the two spires?” she said. “There’s a shorter place in the middle with those bars across it. That was my hideout. If I just wanted to be alone, I’d get the key from my grandfather and go up there and just sit and watch traffic go by.”

In the 1950s, Billington’s radio sermons aired in every state, and in the 1960s, he was featured on 30 TV stations. His congregation grew to 16,500 and included “The World’s Largest Sunday School,” which averaged 6,000 pupils. It was one of the first megachurches in the country.

The Rev. Dallas F. Billington was 69 when he suffered a fatal heart attack Aug. 26, 1972. More than 18,000 mourners filed past the casket during a 24-hour vigil and 6,000 packed Akron Baptist Temple for the funeral.

Fire destroys new building

The Rev. Charles F. Billington succeeded his late father as pastor, overseeing construction of a $4.2 million, 4,000-seat sanctuary that opened in May 1979. Akron Police Lt. Jack Cunningham painstakingly created 72 stained-glass panels for four giant windows.

Shockingly, a fire destroyed the building in May 1981. Investigators suspected arson, but the culprit never was caught. The congregation blamed the devil.

Outland-Brewer remembers surveying the smoldering destruction with her grieving father. Their photo appeared in the Beacon Journal.

“We had been up all night,” she said.

The stunned congregation vowed to rebuild. Three years later, the temple dedicated an $8 million, 5,000-seat sanctuary in 1984.

Cunningham made stained-glass windows for that building, too.

Billington remained as pastor until 1996 when his son, the Rev. Dallas R. Billington, succeeded him. The third-generation pastor served for over a decade before moving to Florida.

The Rev. Paul D. Outland retired in 1997, moving with his wife, Mickey, to Georgia, where their daughter had moved a decade earlier. Sandra lost her mother in 2005 and her father in 2010 — two weeks after the passing of the Rev. Charles F. Billington.

As soon as she got old enough, the preacher’s kid bailed from church, but she eventually returned.

“I think I had to hit bottom before I figured out what was right and true,” Outland-Brewer said.

She works today as a ministry assistant at Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Georgia, where Dr. James Merritt broadcasts the “Touching Lives” program.

“I never realized when I was a little kid why the church meant so much to my mom and dad,” Outland-Brewer said. “Then in 1994 when God took me back, I realized that they served God. They lived to serve him. They lived to serve the people in the church.”

With membership declining, the Akron congregation sold its 29-acre property and 363,000-square-foot buildings for $1.5 million in 2018 to the Word Church, which put the complex up for sale a year later. Akron Baptist Temple moved to Killian Road in Coventry Township and rebranded as Connect Church.

The abandoned Manchester Road church deteriorated for more than five years. Vandals and looters wreaked havoc, damaging much of the property, including the stained-glass panels that Cunningham had so lovingly created.

Although the building’s loss breaks her heart, Outland-Brewer keeps it in perspective.

“It’s not the bricks and mortar,” she said. “It’s the blood, sweat and tears that the original people gave that made the Akron Baptist Temple what it was. After the wrecking crew is finished and there is only a vacant piece of ground sitting at 2324 Manchester Road, there will still be work being done all over the world that was started on that property. That, my friend, is what matters and what is important.”

Demolition draws spectators

People have been stopping to watch the demolition and lament the church’s passing.

Former member Nicole Poston, 37, of Akron, and her son Aiden Parker, 14, came to pay their respects Wednesday. Her parents, Gene and Denise Pennington, met at the church and got married there. Her grandfather Gene “Penny” Pennington drove a bus as did her father.

As backhoes nibbled at the complex, Poston said she wanted to represent her family because Akron Baptist Temple holds special memories.

“I know the church isn’t the building; it’s the people,” she said. “But still. It had meaning with it as well.”

Former Connect Church member William Reynolds, 40, of Akron, wore a large cross around his neck as he visited the site. During an earlier trip, he had salvaged a Bible, hymnals and a podium, and had witnessed the terrible destruction inside.

“There’s a lot of people who are pretty upset about the desecration,” he said.

Before driving away Wednesday, Reynolds prayed for God to bless the generations of people who were involved with Akron Baptist Temple.

“Even bless the people who destroyed it, Lord,” he said. “Help them come to know you and be repentant for what they did.”

Fresh start at City Church

When one door closes, another one opens.

The Rev. Dallas R. Billington, grandson of the temple’s founder, moved back to Akron in 2010 and established City Church AC in 2014. For 10 years, the congregation rented various spaces until opening a permanent home March 24 at 737 George Washington Blvd.

On Palm Sunday, mere days after demolition began at the old church, he celebrated a fresh start.

“I have something to share with you — yet another miracle that we had happen that you all prayed about,” Billington told the congregation in a service that was streamed live.

He pulled a cloth to unveil a stained-glass panel, a fragile relic in red, green, blue and yellow. The congregation gasped and applauded.

Billington explained how he had salvaged the glass, one of the few panels left unbroken in the old church, with the help of Cunningham’s daughter Kelly Lance and her husband, Ron. They received permission from Eslich, rented equipment and spent six hours removing stained glass in 32-degree weather.

“As I was going out there last Monday and we were going through the rubble and all the graffiti on all the walls, and broken glass everywhere, as we were taking that stained glass out, so many things were going through my mind,” he said.

A fire had destroyed the church, but it was rebuilt, and thousands of souls were saved in the years to follow, he said.

One building falls, another one rises. The faith is unshakable.

“I want you to see that the devil cannot ever stop God’s kingdom,” Billington said.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron Baptist Temple remembered