Akron Baptist Temple

Akron Baptist Temple was a Baptist house of worship located on Manchester Road in Akron, Ohio. The congregation first met in 1934, and the church was officially organized a year later. In the years that followed, Akron Baptist Temple grew to be one of the first megachurches in the United States, and at its peak was considered the largest church in North America. The church building was sold in 2019 and the congregation moved to Coventry Township and renamed themselves as Connect Church.

Akron Baptist Temple was established by Dallas F. Billington, a Kentucky native who moved to Akron in 1925. Billington, born in 1903, was the son of a Kentucky tobacco farmer. A Goodyear Tire employee, Billington studied theology at a Baptist correspondence school while working at a shoe factory in Paducah, Kentucky. Prior to the establishment of Akron Baptist Temple, he had preached at the Furnace Street Mission in Akron and had appeared on Akron radio, billing himself as the "Southern Evangelist". Billington conducted his first service in 1934 at the Rimer Elementary School on Manchester Road. The church was among the first churches to take a practical approach to urban evangelism, without worrying about how promotion in the urban environment might corrupt the church theologically. On April 21, 1935, the Akron Baptist Temple was officially organized with more than 80 charter members. Within six months, the congregation had grown to more than 500 followers.

The congregation's first church building was erected in 1937, costing a total of $60,000 (equivalent to $1,343,750 in 2025). The church's membership grew so large that a speaker system had to be installed outside, and by 1949, the church's membership was estimated to be 10,000. A new church building was built in 1949; the new sanctuary featured a 2,800 seat auditorium and reportedly cost $2 million (equivalent to $27,062,937 in 2025). Visible from a distance of ten miles (16 km), this building stood 84 feet (26 m) tall and featured six-foot-high (1.8 m) red lettering that flashed "BAPTIST TEMPLE". In July 1949, Life magazine published a photo-essay, noting that "At the doorway...ushers stand with mechanical counters and add up the people who file past them. The average total attendance, including a Bible class, a Sunday school and two church services, is 15,000 every Sunday, which Temple officials say is the biggest Baptist congregation in the U.S....pastor...Billington has systematically eliminated all the standard excuses for staying at a home. A fleet of buses tours Akron each Sunday to bring in people who do not have cars. Arrangements are made for private cars and ambulances...to pick up the aged and sick. And those with the biggest excuse of all--restless, crying children--are provided with a glass-enclosed 'Babyland'."

The church became actively invested in media ministry, producing a radio program prior to occupying its first permanent building. Later operations included the establishment of its own record label, and broadcasting Sunday services on WAKR-TV. By the 1960s, the church claimed the title of the world's largest Sunday school, a claim confirmed by outside sources in 1969 when attendance of the church's Sunday school was listed in excess of 5,700. However, attendance would soon be in decline.

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).