Terrell, Texas · Founded 1948 · Rams
“The only historically Black college in the Churches of Christ — 45 students in Fort Worth in 1948, a Round House in Terrell, and a president who stayed nearly 50 years.”
Church TV Network obituary-tribute tracing Evans's full biography: baptized at 15, preaching at 16, SwCC student, president from 1967, accreditation in 1973, bachelor's degrees in 1982.
Houston's Fifth Ward Church of Christ honors Evans as a 'Home Town Super Hero' in 2018 — his trademark line, 'Live the life, and then preach the Word.'
Guest sermon by the sitting SwCC president, recorded at Crenshaw Church of Christ on April 20, 2014 — Evans the preacher, not the administrator.
Evans speaking at the 69th Annual Churches of Christ National Lectureship in Houston — a mark of his standing as one of the brotherhood's premier evangelists.
The president's son preaches his father's eulogy at the November 16, 2019 memorial service in Terrell before 1,500 mourners.
Gospel singer performs 'Our God, He Is Alive' — Dr. Jack Evans's own song — at the Evans memorial, Terrell, 11/16/19.
The Alumni Chorus sings 'My Soul is Anchored' at Founder's Day 2016 on campus — the a cappella tradition that defines SwCC music.
1985 a cappella gospel quartet whose four members — Sharon Harris, George Pendergrass, Adam Thompson, Ronald Walker — are all noted SwCC alumni; Pendergrass went on to lead the group Acappella.
Renaissance quartet of SwCC alumni performing 'We're Going Home.'
Renaissance quartet of SwCC alumni performing 'I Am Stuck On Jesus.'
Gospel sermon by G.P. Holt Sr., the preacher-author and SwCC board member with a lifetime commitment to the college (honorary doctorate).
'Courtside with the Coaches' episode featuring the SwCC basketball coaches in Terrell — the Rams' NJCAA Division I program.
Houston native; SwCC student in the 1950s who became the school's first Black president and served nearly 50 years (1967–2016) — one of the longest-tenured college presidents in U.S. history; renowned Church of Christ evangelist and debater.
Lead singer of the internationally known a cappella group Acappella (15+ albums); also performed with U2, Michael W. Smith, and on a Disney soundtrack; member of the Renaissance quartet of SwCC alumni.
SwCC alumnus and gospel singer-songwriter whose songs are sung in Churches of Christ across the country; released multiple solo albums; member of the Renaissance quartet.
SwCC alumna; soprano and first tenor of the Renaissance quartet; sang with the Southside Church of Christ Choir, Reflections, and Straight Company.
SwCC alumnus; baritone of the Renaissance quartet; worship leader in Reseda, California, and pursuing an acting career in Hollywood.
Preacher, author, debater, and staff writer for the Christian Echo (the paper founded by G. P. Bowser); served on SwCC's board and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters; maintained a lifetime commitment to the college.
Minister and son of the longtime president; preached his father's eulogy before 1,500 mourners at the November 2019 memorial service in Terrell.
Son of Jack Evans Sr.; minister in Churches of Christ; announced his father's passing to the church community in 2019.
Gospel singer who performed Dr. Jack Evans's own song 'Our God, He Is Alive' at the 2019 memorial service for Evans in Terrell.
SwCC alumnus and Church of Christ minister remembered as a mentor to young preachers, including Kysean Dixon; described as the late Bro. Ricky Lawler in church circles.
Young Church of Christ minister who began preaching at 15 and was ordained at 21; mentored by SwCC alumnus Ricky Lawler; preaches in East Texas and the DFW metroplex.
Former SwCC student of Jack and Patricia Evans; quoted in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education on the Evanses' life work building the college for Black youth.
George P. Bowser is born in 1874. He begins as a Methodist minister, converts to the Churches of Christ, and brings a preacher's hunger for Black education with him — training in biblical and ministerial studies at Walden College in Nashville, Tennessee. He would spend the next half-century trying to give Black Church of Christ youth the schools the white Church of Christ colleges would not.
Bowser founds the Christian Echo in 1902, a journal for Black members of Churches of Christ that he edits and builds into a movement voice. It still publishes today, and it becomes the connective tissue for the schools, preachers, and congregations he will spend his life raising up. The paper made his name known in Black Churches of Christ across the South.
From 1907 to 1914 Bowser leads the Silver Point Christian Institute in Silver Point, Tennessee — his first attempt at a school of his own, built on the conviction that Black youth in Churches of Christ needed an institution of their own. The institute does not survive, but Bowser carries the model, and the lesson, into everything he builds afterward.
Bowser launches the Bowser Christian Institute in Fort Smith, Arkansas — a second try at the school he had carried in his head since Silver Point. It collapses in 1946. He is 72 years old, and a lesser man would have quit; instead his protégés pick up the work two years later in Texas.
Two years after Bowser's Fort Smith school collapses, his protégés J. S. Winston (1906–2002), R. N. Hogan (1902–1997), and Levi Kennedy (1899–1970) establish the Southern Bible Institute in Fort Worth, Texas. Forty-five students enroll for the first classes, which begin September 26, 1948. The founders intend to buy land in Fort Worth and build a permanent campus — but fate has other plans.
In the summer of 1949 the closed Texas Military College property in Terrell — about 30 miles east of Dallas — comes up for sale, and the trustees seize the opportunity. They buy it from the Perry estate, move the school that fall, and rename it Southwestern Christian College. The campus includes the Terrell Round House, the first dwelling ever built in Terrell: an octagonal house with the first glass windows in Kaufman County, today one of only 20 surviving round houses in the nation.
Edward Washington McMillan becomes the first president of Southwestern Christian College, serving 1950–1953. McMillan was a minister, author, and editor born in Baden, Texas in 1889, trained at Gunter Bible College, Austin College, Baylor, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; he preached across the United States and in Japan, China, Korea, and India, and founded Ibaraki Christian College in Japan, where he also served as president. He came to Terrell already a veteran builder of Christian colleges, and died in 1992 at age 101.
The school's namesake and founding visionary, George P. Bowser, dies in 1950 — just as the Terrell campus he helped inspire is taking its first steps. He does not live to see the college accredited or to see the generations of Black preachers it will train, but the gymnasium that later rises on campus carries his name, and his protégés carry his mission for the next seventy years.
H. L. Barber serves as the college's second president, 1953–1956, succeeding McMillan. His years are recorded in the college's presidential record; no further biographical detail was found in published sources, so this entry stays honest rather than inventing a legacy for him.
A. V. Isbell serves as the third president, 1956–1967, steadying the young college through its second decade in Terrell. As with H. L. Barber, the published record preserves his tenure dates but no verifiable biography was found — a common gap for the early leaders of a small school that kept few archives.
Jack Evans Sr., a Houston native baptized into the Church of Christ at 15, enrolls at SwCC after graduating from the Nashville Christian Institute in 1957 (where Marshall Keeble was president). While studying he serves as associate minister of the College Church of Christ, and in 1959 he marries Patricia E. Officer. He then earns a bachelor's in History and Religion from Eastern New Mexico University (1961) and a Master of Arts in History and English from Texas Western College. He is, in every sense, a product of the school he will soon lead.
In 1967 Jack Evans Sr. becomes the fourth president of Southwestern Christian College — and its first Black president — at roughly age 29. He will hold the office for nearly fifty years, until the end of 2016, making him one of the longest-tenured college presidents in American higher-education history. The school's entire modern identity is inseparable from his tenure.
Under Evans, Southwestern earns full accreditation as a two-year junior college from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in 1973. For a small Black church school with no endowment, accreditation was the difference between survival and obscurity — and it was Evans, the young president, who led the push to get it.
In 1982 Southwestern begins awarding four-year bachelor's degrees in Bible and Religious Education, becoming a four-year college; the first bachelor's-degree graduates walk across the stage in 1984. Junior- and senior-level courses keep expanding after that, and eventually the school adds online offerings — all while the trustees deliberately keep the college's limited resources from being spread too thin.
In the pre-dawn hours of January 27, 2008 — around 2 a.m. — fire tears through the historic administration building, the old Texas Military College hall built by W. B. Toone, destroying it and an adjacent building. Hundreds of boxes of collegiate and student records, stored in a drained pool on campus, are lost. Abilene Christian University sends seven laptops and 35 desktops to help the devastated campus recover.
By 2013 the college is in severe financial trouble, and Evans — who had carried the school for nearly half a century — anchors himself in faith rather than panic. The crisis passes without the school closing, a quiet testament to how much of SwCC's survival rested on Evans's personal will and the loyalty of Black Churches of Christ congregations.
Jack Evans Sr. retires at the end of 2016 after nearly fifty years as president. He is succeeded by Ervin D. Seamster Jr., who takes the helm of a school of about 130 students, still accredited, still church-supported, and still the only historically Black college associated with Churches of Christ. In 2018 the Fifth Ward Church of Christ in Houston honors Evans with a 'Home Town Super Hero Celebration'; his trademark line: 'Live the life, and then preach the Word.'
Patricia Officer Evans — SwCC's First Lady and 'Queen Mother' for more than 50 years, who taught literature and French and coordinated the college's musical performances — dies on March 31, 2019, at 77. Seven months later, on November 1, 2019, Jack Evans Sr. dies at 81 after a prolonged illness. On November 15–16, gospel preachers and 1,500 mourners fill an auditorium in Terrell to celebrate his life; his son Jack Evans Jr. preaches the eulogy, and singer Thomas Fitzgerald performs Evans's own song, 'Our God, He Is Alive.'
SwCC keeps writing its story: the 75th Annual Commencement honors the Class of 2026 on May 9 in the Ben Foster Jr. Memorial Chapel; the 89th Annual Lectureship runs November 21–24, 2026; and on September 14, 2026 the new men's soccer program earns its first-ever NJCAA victory, 2–0 over Cedar Valley College. Small, church-rooted, and still standing — the way G. P. Bowser drew it up.
No named rivalry is documented for SwCC in any source found. The Rams play NJCAA Region 5 junior-college competition (programs like Weatherford College and Baton Rouge Community College appear on their schedules), but no rivalry game or trophy tradition is on record. Left unverified rather than invented.
No marching band or instrumental program has ever been documented at Southwestern Christian College. Churches of Christ practice unamplified a cappella worship, so the school's signature music tradition is the SwCC Acappella Chorus and the Alumni Chorus (heard at Founder's Day and campus events), not a band. Marked unverified rather than invented.
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No NPHC presence is documented at this small Church of Christ college in Terrell, Texas. The only Greek-letter organization on record is Kappa Pi Sigma, a homegrown co-ed Christian fraternity founded on the campus in 2001 on ideals of Unity, Scholarship, and Service, which performed community service across the Terrell, Dallas, and Fort Worth area. Campus life otherwise centers on the Acappella Chorus, Summer Tour singers, and campus ministry; Peterson's generic directory boilerplate lists Greek categories but names no chapters.
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Trustees bought the closed Texas Military College property from the Perry estate in the summer of 1949 and moved the school that fall, renaming it Southwestern Christian College. The parcel carried deep local roots: W. B. Toone had run a co-ed school there from 1896 to 1904, the Methodists held it briefly, and Colonel Perry operated a private military school on it. That one purchase gave a 45-student school a real campus: administration building, dormitories, and grounds at 200 Bowser Circle in Terrell.
The school's home court carries its founder's name: the G. P. Bowser Memorial Physical Education Building (also billed as the G. P. Bowser Memorial Gymnasium) hosts Lady Rams volleyball and Rams basketball in Terrell. The building's construction date is not dated in any source found; it stands as the living memorial to Bowser on the campus he set in motion.
Commencement ceremonies are held in the Ben Foster Jr. Memorial Chapel (the 75th Annual Commencement on May 9, 2026 was scheduled there), which anchors the spiritual life of the campus. Its construction date is not documented in any source found.
In the pre-dawn hours of January 27, 2008, fire broke out around 2 a.m. in the historic administration building — the same structure that had once housed the Texas Military College — and destroyed it along with an adjacent building. Hundreds of boxes of collegiate and student records, which had been stored in a drained pool on campus, were lost in the blaze. The college's own history page calls it a fire 'long remembered for its historical significance.'
Within three weeks of the fire, Abilene Christian University — a sister school in the Churches of Christ — stepped in: its administration sent seven laptops and 35 desktop computers to replace what the fire consumed, and ACU's student association gathered signatures on an encouragement banner for Terrell. ACU Bible professor Jerry Taylor and president's executive assistant Jim Holmans organized the relief. For a small school with no deep reserves, that lifeline kept classes running.
The school's own channel documents a 'Southwestern Campaign' video raising money for dorm repairs in Terrell — part of an ongoing effort to keep the campus's student housing livable on a shoestring budget. The college's homepage still advertises permanent memorials and tributes that donors can leave as part of the campus landscape, a classic small-HBCU funding strategy.
SwCC added men's soccer to its NJCAA lineup in recent years (four Terrell High seniors signed with the program in May 2025), and on September 14, 2026 the Rams earned the program's first-ever NJCAA victory, beating Cedar Valley College 2-0 in Terrell. The school celebrated it as a milestone: 'you're not just building a program. You're building history.'
Alongside on-campus instruction, SwCC now offers online courses — a meaningful reach extension for a school whose enrollment hovers around 130 students and whose students are drawn from across the country for Churches of Christ ministry training.
Patricia Officer Evans (1941–2019), wife of Jack Evans Sr., taught literature and French and coordinated the college's musical performances for over 50 years — the school's 'Queen Mother.' Athletic programs run under coaches featured in the school's 'Courtside with the Coaches' series; individual coach names were not verified in sources found. The Johnson Kisero listing (Associate Professor of Biology) appears in older school documents; current roster unverified.
President and CEO; 'Spirit of the King' Award recipient from the City of Terrell.
This is a tiny school — about 130 students, 90% full-time, 15-to-1 student-faculty ratio, three-quarters Black — and it feels like a family more than a campus. Life revolves around chapel, the Acappella Chorus (a cappella is doctrine here, not just tradition), and events like Founder's Day, Homecoming, Thursday Night Kickbacks sponsored by the track team, and door-room decorating contests. The 89th Annual Lectureship each November brings Church of Christ preachers and alumni back to Terrell; the Alumni Chorus sings at Founder's Day. Friendships formed here, in the school's own words, 'last lifetimes.'