This summer Watermark South Dallas will celebrate three years of Sunday services and five years since we purchased the former Pearl C. Anderson Learning Center. Watermark’s involvement in South Dallas started over 15 years ago with various Watermark members serving alongside South Dallas leaders through several nonprofit organizations. Then, in 2019, after DISD placed several shuttered schools up for public auction, Watermark acquired the current property in the “as-is” condition as the only bidder. The next year was spent removing about 70 cubic tons of debris and conducting significant environmental abatement and repairs.

So far, we’ve finished about 24,000 square feet of the 190,000-square-foot property. We have worked to honor the legacy of Pearl C. Anderson in the South Dallas community through the ways we have preserved certain aspects and designs within the building. The heart of our campus is the original cafeteria from the Pearl C. Anderson Learning Center, which will hopefully feel familiar to all former students and faculty who visit.

Our first church service was on June 20, 2021. Three years later, we welcome about 120 adults and 60 kids and students each Sunday. Throughout the week, we hold men’s and women’s Bible studies, host community events, and try to be good neighbors by serving our surrounding areas with initiatives like trash cleanup days and summer day camps for kids.

Beyond church services, our goal has been to use the space to meet the needs of the surrounding community through providing meeting spaces for Young Life, Fellowship of Christian Athletes and other organizations. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, the Dallas Tigers host youth sports games, and our fields are filled with the sounds of players, coaches and fans taking part in a time-honored Texas tradition: football. Two ministries, Watermark Community Development Corporation and Watermark Health, operate consistently at our church as well.

Watermark Community Development Corporation provides services to financially empower the community, including financial education, matched savings programs, job placements, career training workshops and business owner support. So far in South Dallas, Watermark Community Development Corp. has had the privilege to work with 152 participants to purchase 12 strategic assets such as homes, vehicles, educations, or business assets, and gain access to $87,800 in matched funds to further economic opportunities. We’ve seen 154 job placements through our Job Connection Program, pairing each career seeker with a mentor who walks with them through their first six months of employment for support and encouragement. Forty-one local businesses have participated in the Business Cohort, a 10-week class for entrepreneurs, and we have invested $192,000 of cash, in-kind services and grant funding to help see these businesses continue to thrive and contribute to the community.

Watermark Health operates a mobile clinic on our campus twice a week, providing care for urgent and chronic medical conditions such as treatment for cough or cold, minor injuries or pain, various infections, school physicals and hypertension management.

Most recently, Watermark Health has been able to offer a vision clinic with free lenses for students as they return to school. In partnership with Texas Health Resources, we have added a blood pressure kiosk to our lobby to allow residents the ability to take their blood pressure regularly and connect with services for follow-up care. All services are provided for free, with no insurance required.

To date, over 2,000 patients have been cared for through our mobile clinic in the South Dallas area as we seek to treat our neighbors’ physical needs and care for them spiritually and emotionally. A secondary goal of the mobile clinic is to help keep our city’s emergency rooms from being overcrowded with non-emergent needs. More than 30% of patients indicated they would have gone to the ER if Watermark Health’s services weren’t available, and 36% said they would have had no access to care.

Over these last five years, we have learned much from the South Dallas community and are so grateful for the patience, hospitality and partnership many have shown us. We have had the opportunity to host weddings, funerals, trainings and networking events on our campus, and met with dozens of community and church leaders and local non-profits to continue to find additional ways to collaborate.

During community meetings over the last few years, South Dallas residents consistently identified four major community needs: healthcare, jobs, food, and youth development.

To those ends, from 2022 to 2024, we pursued a zoning change to adapt our building for additional uses to meet some of these needs – specifically zoning that would allow us to provide a more robust approach to medical care and food access as well as vocational training and job opportunities.

While our zoning request was ultimately denied in early 2024, we plan to meet the same needs the community identified, but within a more limited scope.

We will continue to host weekly church services and community events and operate Watermark Health’s mobile clinic. We also intend to expand the Watermark Community Development Corporation’s involvement through job training, financial services, and economic empowerment initiatives. Our most immediate project is to renovate an additional 10,000 square feet of the property to accommodate more space for current and future ministry activities.

So, after five years of being a neighbor, we want to say thank you to South Dallas. It’s truly been our joy to learn from other churches, ministries and nonprofits who have been a part of the community for so many years. We have witnessed firsthand the way so many of our neighbors reflect the love of Christ to serve one another and their community.

We’re honored to work collaboratively with you. We hope to continue together for many more years to come.

Todd Anders, Timothy Ateek, Ben Caldwell, Mickey Friedrich, Blake Holmes and Rob Thomas are the elders of Watermark Community Church.

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