Baptist Church Builders of Texas

The Beginning of Church Builders

Well, you see, God called two guys to build a church.  One was the Director of Missions who lived in Stamford, T.O. Upshaw.  The other was a Contractor and Lumber Yard owner, W.C. (Carl) Matthies of Roby
To start with, T.O. had two associations in his area, and he got to thinking one day, “If all of these churches have buildings and they are paid for, why don’t we help somebody else get one?” So before long, each association had purchased property to help a church build a building on, one in Dubois WY,  the other in Dillon, Montana.  Well, the one in Dubois got their building pretty quickly, but the one in Dillon just couldn’t seem to get going.
Well, T.O. attended a conference in Ft. Worth and heard a speaker ask the question, “What did you do last year, that if God hadn’t intervened, you would’ve failed?  Well, T.O. couldn’t think of a thing.  So on his way home, God impressed upon him to challenge the churches in his associations to raise $40,000.00 to buy the materials needed to build the church in Dillon. And so, he thought, If I had 40 churches give $1,000.00 each, I’ll have $40,000.00.  And so he asked the churches if he could set goals for each church to give over a period of 3 years.  And so he did.  And the amounts ranged from $300.00 for a smaller church to $1,800.00 for the larger churches. 
Well, T.O. tells that an aggie that was the pastor at Aspermont called him up and asked if they had to wait till the end of the 3 years to give all their money.  T.O. being the Baptist preacher, told him No, I’d be glad to take your money now.  And so, he mailed his check the next day.  T.O. thought, Hmmmm, I think I can get some mileage out of this…..So he went to Rotan, and the pastor there was a Howard Payne graduate.  He said, “You know what that Aggie did, He gave all his money at once, I’ve already got his check.”   That preacher from Rotan said, “Well, what that Aggie can do, I can do!!”  So, T.O. went to Roby, and well, Roby and Rotan were rivals.  He told that preacher, “You know what Rotan did.”  And he went on to Cross Roads, and well, you get the picture.  And what started out as a 3-year project, in 6 months he had his $40,000.00.
So, T.O. called the pastor in Dillon, told him he had the money, and now he needed to get some plans and a builder.  The Pastor said he already had the plans but he suggested that T.O. come up and build it.   T.O. said “While I was trying to think of 10 excuses not to, the pastor told him ‘I’ll put the plans in the mail tomorrow, and he hung up.’ “

T.O. hadn’t bargained on that.  So he got the plans, looked at them, and told God “I don’t know anything about plans, I gotta have a builder” and God laid Carl on his heart. 
So he took those plans with him over to Roby to the Lumber Yard and told Carl, “Let’s go drink some coffee.”  They started walking across the street to the Drug Store and Carl noticed that T.O. had plans, and he knew that T.O. didn’t know anything about plans.  And so they got them a cup of coffee and T.O. rolled out those plans and asked Carl, “Are they a good set of plans?”  Carl said, “Yeah, I guess so.”  And T.O. said, “Look again, because I’m gonna ask you to lead a group to build this church in Dillon Montana.”  T.O. said, “It got real quiet.” And Carl really started looking at those plans.   T.O. told him, “Don’t tell me now, just pray about it, and when you got an answer, give me a call.”  And two days later, Carl called T.O.  and told him to get your guys together.
That first group of 57 volunteers went to Dillon Montana in 1978.  Many, many churches and other projects have been completed since then and hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised and donated to help those churches.