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The original Cornerstone Baptist Church building at 2815 Ervay in South Dallas is seen April 23, 2026. Construction of the church was led by members of East Dallas\u2019 Wilshire Baptist Church<\/a> in 1986. Photo by Camilo Diaz Jr.<\/p>\nCornerstone\u2019s roots grew out of Second Baptist Church, established in 1888 at Ervay and Corinth. Seventy years later in 1958, Second Baptist moved to the then \u201csuburbs\u201d of East Dallas and became Westglen Baptist Church on Ferguson Road<\/a>, mirroring the \u201cwhite flight\u201d of hundreds of other urban churches.\u00a0<\/p>\n By the early \u201960s, Second Baptist\u2019s abandoned building had become the Ervay Street Baptist Center, a community ministry sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention\u2019s Home Mission Board<\/a>. Then in the \u201980s, the SBC\u2019s decision to end its financial support of urban mission centers shuttered Ervay Street Baptist \u2014 but when the SBC walked away, several local Baptist churches showed up.<\/p>\n The coalition of churches purchased a property at 2815 Ervay, a few blocks south of the shuttered center. One of them was Wilshire Baptist Church in East Dallas, whose members \u201cled the volunteer efforts in the construction of the building,\u201d notes the missions overview in Wilshire\u2019s 35th anniversary booklet published in 1986, the same year Cornerstone Baptist Church<\/a> opened. (Wilshire celebrates its 75th anniversary<\/a> this year, as Cornerstone commemorates its 40th.)<\/p>\n The church was built in \u201cwar zone,\u201d a label conferred by Dallas police and reinforced by media<\/a>, because of the drive-by shootings, the gang activity, the prostitution, as the Rev. Chris Simmons recalled in a recent interview: \u201cWe buried a lot of people in this neighborhood, a lot of young men. Many of the people who could get out of the neighborhood, got out \u2026 It left a lot of urban blight, a lot of vacant apartments that were owned by slum lords in order to continue to cover the drug trade.\u201d<\/p>\n The plan was to build Cornerstone on a pier and beam foundation so that \u201cwhen the church died, they could move the building and sell the land,\u201d Simmons says. But for some reason \u2014 perhaps because the original Cornerstone building sits on toxic soil<\/a>, says longtime Wilshire member Bob Law \u2014 the church was constructed atop a slab foundation.<\/p>\n Today Cornerstone is synonymous with Simmons, who has shepherded the church and its ministries for 37 of its 40 years. Most people know him as \u201cPastor Chris.\u201d He had moved from Washington, D.C. to attend Dallas Seminary, and one day as he walked through the student center, praying about a ministry opportunity, he saw a note on a message board about a role assisting with education and music in an inner-city congregation. His intent was to work with Cornerstone until it was time for him to return to D.C.<\/p>\n \u201cSome old ladies in the church told my wife, \u2018We like him, but he\u2019s not going to make it in the neighborhood.\u2019 And so we took that kind of as a challenge,\u201d Simmons laughs. \u201cIronically, 37 years later, some of those old ladies say, \u2018The jury is still out. We still don\u2019t know if you\u2019re gonna make it or not.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo be quite honest, if I understood what we were getting into. I probably wouldn\u2019t have stayed, but I was young. I didn\u2019t know any better,\u201d Simmons recalls. \u201cAnd we just really believed that God had called us to this place and and just made a decision that we would raise our family here in this community.\u201d<\/p>\n During our 30-minute interview, no less than five people walking down the Ervay sidewalk or darting in between Cornerstone\u2019s ministry buildings called out, \u201cHey, Pastor Chris!\u201d to which Simmons would cheerfully respond, greeting them by name, asking how they were doing, and telling us a bit of their story.<\/p>\n In the early days, however, most people thought Simmons was an undercover agent.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200b\u200bUnfortunately, doing a lot of funerals, they understood I was the pastor,\u201d Simmons says. \u201cAnd then we started doing children\u2019s programs and connecting with kids, because if I was in a very heavily drug-infested community, if the kids would call me out, then the people would say, \u2018Oh, he must really be OK because the kids know who he is.\u2019 And so that\u2019s kind of how I just started making sure people knew who I was, so they wouldn\u2019t shoot me, thinking I was undercover.\u201d<\/p>\n Simmons says he understood that he was an outsider in an under-resourced community in crisis, and his strategy was to attend community meetings, sit in the back \u201cas a fly on the wall,\u201d listen to neighbors\u2019 concerns, and ask himself, \u201cIs there something we can do to meet that particular need in the neighborhood?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo many of our ministries came out of what we heard in those community meetings,\u201d Simmons says. \u201cBecause what we did not want to do is scratch where the community did not itch, and we didn\u2019t want to answer questions that the community were not asking.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Cornerstone outgrew the original building and now meets in the former Minyard\u2019s grocery store around the corner on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Its original structure on Ervay now functions as an after-school program, and is flanked on all sides by the church\u2019s expanding footprint.\u00a0<\/p>\n The church now owns 52 properties, making it the largest landholder in the neighborhood, Simmons says, with everything from a kitchen that provides 10,000-15,000 meals a month to the unhoused, clinics for medical and dental care, a maternity home for pregnant women, reentry housing for people transitioning out of incarceration, a community garden, a convenience store<\/a> and a laundromat. Most of the efforts begin where Simmons started long ago \u2014 listening to what the community needs and responding.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always make it a point to make sure we are in dialogue with the community,\u201d he says, \u201cthat we\u2019re hearing what their concerns are and seeing if we can address those concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n These days, Simmons says, Cornerstone hears three main asks:\u00a0<\/p>\n Affordable housing, which is \u201cwhy we are so aggressively trying to purchase the vacant land and dilapidated apartments to renovate those for the good of the neighborhood,\u201d Simmons says. \u201cWe\u2019re in a period now, a revitalization that includes the people in the neighborhood. We do not want urban renewal to equal urban removal.\u201d<\/p>\n Small business development, the reason that \u201cback in 2020 we started the Cornerstone Center for Economic Opportunity<\/a> now works with about 175 entrepreneurs<\/a>, helping them to start their businesses and scale their businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n Workforce development, by teaching HVAC, electrical and plumbing skills so that neighbors aren\u2019t limited to fast food and other minimum wage jobs, and instead can earn \u201clivable wages\u201d and afford to stay in South Dallas.<\/p>\n Four decades after the foundation was laid, and 37 years into Simmons\u2019 ministry, the work isn\u2019t finished. The church, so to speak, is still under construction. But these days, \u201cpeople can walk the neighborhood at night freely without fear of being taken advantage of or being robbed,\u201d Simmons says. \u201cI mean, we\u2019ve still got a long ways to go, but I think we\u2019ve created a community where people know each other and trust each other.\u201d<\/p>\n A version of this story was co-published<\/a> in the Wilshire Baptist Church Tapestry<\/a> as part of the congregation\u2019s 75th anniversary celebration<\/a>. Dallas Free Press executive director Keri Mitchell is a Wilshire Baptist member.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The paradox of the Baptist church in South Dallas called \u201cCornerstone\u201d is that its original building wasn\u2019t supposed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[54024,102,104,103,1884,116850],"class_list":["post-326835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-cornerstone-baptist-church","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-south-dallas","tag-wilshire-baptist-church"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Wilshire-Cornerstone-35th-anniversary-booklet-1027x1600.jpg\")
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