Second Chance Baptist Church came from humble beginnings and remains so to this day.
We began as Faith Temple Baptist Church in the early 80’s. Our first and founding pastor was Brother Tommy George. Brother Tommy was a faculty member at the Independent Baptist College and a small group of believers approached him about forming an independent Baptist church. Brother Tommy assisted in this matter
Over time, Brother Tommy built a thriving yet small church in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, Texas. He continued to serve as a faculty member of IBC along with tuning pianos and doing pretty much anything and everything else that needed to be done to minister to and through our church. In time, Brother Chris Minefee was added to the staff as the Youth Minister and served in that capacity until Brother George resigned and moved on to other ministries. Brother Minefee was the pastor of Faith Temple Baptist Church until the spring of 1994 when he was called to be the pastor of Trinity Temple Baptist Church in Oak Cliff.
During our pastoral vacancy the church called IBC for pulpit supply preacher boys and it was through that pulpit supply ministry that God provided and directed us to our present pastor, Brother Randell Turner. He graduated in the spring of 1994 and officially became our pastor on Mother’s Day of that same year. After several years of trying any and all kinds of ministries and doing numerous outreaches into our surrounding community it became obvious that we were going to have to do something different if we were going to touch lives as we were commanded by the Lord to do.
Brother Randell had read a couple of books that gave him a new sense of direction, but more than this he met a homeless man called Slim on Northwest Highway just west of Loop 12. The church needed a focus and we needed some way to sense and follow our purpose. It was discovered that others had traveled down this path before and we adopted and adapted five purposes that have been the guide of most all of our ministry decisions since 2002.
Our purpose is to: “Assist every person to take their next step closer to Jesus.” Since no one is in the same spot when it comes to closeness with Jesus it seemed that these five purposes would assist anyone and everyone we came in contact with if we just kept these in the forefront of our church life. They are:
Brother Randell met Slim and saw a rather large group of homeless people at about the same time we were discussing how we might best carry out these very vital aspects of church life and for the most part, the rest is “history.” During this time we began ministering to that group of homeless people and we decided that we needed a name change in order to reflect the ministries God called us to do.
After much prayer, consideration, discussion and reflection we became Second Chance Baptist Church and now operate under the legal umbrella of Second Chance Ministries of Dallas. The buildings we inherited were built as temporary buildings well over 50 years ago and they were literally sinking into the ground. Over the course of 10 years or so, all options for a new or better facility were investigated and finally we had to do something as our buildings were literally falling down around us. We were blessed with an adequate facility that was way beyond our means to pay but the lease was signed and now five years later God has made a way for us to pay that lease and due to our landlord needing to expand his business we are in the midst of another relocation.
13370 Branch View, Suite 110, Farmers Branch, TX 75234.