Early Days

On August 11, 1957, a meeting took place in an old funeral parlor known as Jack Schmitz Funeral Home. From this meeting Denton Baptist Temple originated under the leadership of Pastor R.D. Wade of Gainesville, Texas. A few years later on December 10, 1961, the well-known evangelist and church planter Dr. Richard Loys Vess took over the pastorship of DBT. With a new pastor deeply concerned for the people of Denton, including students from two universities, the church purchased a little over 4 acres of land just off the I-35E corridor about 40 miles north of Dallas, Texas on January 14, 1962. Construction work started immediately on the Sunday School building which was the first of four units to be built. As the congregation eagerly awaited the completion of the main auditorium near the I-35 frontage road, the first service was held in the“blue auditorium” of the Sunday School building on Easter Sunday April 22, 1962.

After 12 years of service, God called Pastor Vess away to start a new church in Irving, Texas. DBT had several more pastors who held the pastorate position with short stays, but one noted pastor/evangelist who was instrumental to the life of the church was Pastor Bernie Rogers. Pastor Rogers and his wife, Janet came from their church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in the summer of 1979 to lead DBT forward. Several key families were instrumental in those early years of advancing the gospel ministry. As prominent figure heads in Denton, Mr. David Mulkey was the general contractor for building the church building and its parsonage while his son, Mr. Charles Mulkey, kept the church finances in shape as chief financial officer. Fred and Wanda Arrington not only held faithful positions in the church as treasurer, and organist respectfully, but they owned and operated one of the best dry cleaners and alterations’ shop in town.

Recent Years

A few more pastors graced the doors of the church in the 80’s, until Dr. George Anderson took over the reins on August 5, 1990. As former missionaries to Mexico, he and his wife, Sharon led the flock at DBT graciously with a strong desire to see that church members were established in God’s Word. Two of Pastor Anderson’s greatest contributions were establishing a discipleship ministry and the ongoing support of Baptist missionaries around the world. Pastor Anderson’s dedication to missions was such an important facet in his life that when he and his wife left the mission field, they founded Baptist Bible Translators Institute in Bowie, Texas. This institute has trained many independent fundamental Baptist missionary students in cultural studies and language acquisition. Students from the institute could use this education for teaching and training people in unreached regions to translate, write, and print God’s Word where no Bible in their language had existed.

Pastor Anderson retired from DBT in June 2025 and gave the pastoral reins to Pastor Jeff Grasher who comes from Midtown Baptist Temple in Kansas City, Missouri. Pastor Grasher and his wife, Kylie moved to Denton with their four beautiful daughters in January 2026. Their prayer is that Denton Baptist Temple would be a soul-winning, disciple-making, leadership-equipping, and church-planting church for years to come.