Bellevue Baptist Church is a large, Southern Baptist megachurch in Memphis, Tennessee (USA). Bellevue Baptist began in 1903 in a small, log cabin like facility. The church completed a 3,000 seat building in 1952, which was one of the first air-conditioned churches in Memphis. Bellevue became one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the United States in the 1950s with more than 9,000 members. The church relocated to its current building, which seats more than 7,000, on a 400 acre campus in Cordova, a Memphis suburb, in 1989. Current church membership is more than 27,000 and the church remains one of the largest Southern Baptist churches in the United States.

Bellevue has been lead by only three pastors in the last seventy years. Robert G. Lee was senior pastor from 1927 to 1960, and he was followed by Ramsey Pollard from 1960 to 1972. The church's most well-known leader, Adrian Rogers (Th.D), was the senior pastor of Bellevue Baptist from 1972 until March 2005. During this period, the church's membership grew from 9,000 to 27,000 and the church moved into a new facility.

Sources

1. Bellevue Baptist Church's History and Vision