Our church was envisioned around 1942-1943 by two men who were missionaries. They met in the American Legion Hall in downtown Brentwood. The church was officially founded on September 3, 1944, as the First Missionary Baptist Church of Brentwood. The church met in the old Masonic Lodge where Cap’s Restaurant is now located. The current property was purchased around 1950. The first building is just off the smaller parking lot and is frequently referred to as the “Red Room” (due to the original red carpet). There was a parsonage where the main sanctuary now stands. The church met in the basement of the smaller building for more than five years and had some events on the roof of the basement. We were sometimes jokingly called the “Basement Baptists”. The finishing touches were put on the rest of the chapel building in the late 1950s. A fellowship hall and kitchen were built out of cement building blocks behind the parsonage. Today’s nursery and 3-5s classroom are part of this building. You can still see the original building blocks as you approach the nursery and classroom. The name of the church was changed to First Baptist Church in the early 1970s, and we became an independent Baptist church. Around 1974 the parsonage was torn down, and the present sanctuary was built. The people of the church worked together to build much of the new sanctuary saving almost half the construction costs. In 1985 the church underwent a doctrinal shift from a “free will” gospel to a gospel of “sovereign grace”. In September of 1988 we officially became Grace Bible Fellowship. At around the same time a change in our leadership structure took place. Moving from a traditional model with a senior pastor we moved to the biblical model of leadership with elders who share equally in the church’s decision-making process and who place themselves under the leadership of the Chief Pastor, Jesus Christ.