The church that launched Transform, a mission to spruce up area schools, had also transformed the remnants of Grace Temple Baptist Church, a congregation that had dwindled too much to tread water at its Oak Street sanctuary.

Associate Pastor Lan Leavell said the leadership team at Grace Temple Baptist Church in Denton “chose life” last year when it approached The Village Church in Highland Village about merging.

“We were on borrowed time,” Leavell said. That’s what he told the church’s leadership team then. “Not that the church would die, but we couldn’t keep this place up with what we had.”

Gilbert Montez, director of communications for The Village Church, said Leavell approached Pastor Matt Chandler, and the two started talking about what it would be like for both churches to come together.

“I think in terms of people who made the transition, that it’s just been like new life,” Leavell said.

Sept. 16 will mark the one-year anniversary of the merger.

“This first year has been incredible,” Montez said. “It’s really been great to see people come and connect to our church and to God. Pastor Chandler asked those church members who live north of the Lewisville [Lake] bridge if they will commit to a year of helping to plant this church.”

The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, officials said.

“We had a couple of hundred people respond to that,” Montez said. “They aren’t going to go back.”

And no one person is taking credit for the success.

“We knew that it was way bigger than us,” Leavell said. “There are a lot of good phrases that have gotten worn out or are trite and pithy, and one of them is ‘It’s a God thing,’ but this really was.”

Leavell said that on most Sundays, one of Grace Temple Baptist’s longtime members, a semi-retired professor at the University of North Texas, goes to the front door of the church “just so he can see the students walk across the street [from the campus] because he’s been waiting to see that for 30-something years.”

—Lori Forgay