This Work Won't Go to the Cemetery

For just a moment, during one of the most difficult funerals Senior Pastor Chris Simmons has preached, he managed a smile. “Heaven has seen some changes these last two weeks,” Simmons said as he described the ascendence of the man who toiled alongside him for 36 years at Cornerstone Baptist Church in South Dallas.

“As soon as Dr. Davis got there, Peter had to get off that grill,” roared Simmons. The packed sanctuary’s laughter and amens left no doubt: Brother Gerald was doing the celestial cooking from now on.

Associate Pastor Gerald Lynn Davis died unexpectedly in January, leaving the church without its gregarious pitmaster and take-charge leader. The congregation tumbled into mourning for a man who always found time to deliver counsel during quiet moments between the difficult community-centered work this church is known for.  

Simmons delivered his sermon with his heart and mind racing as to how to move the church forward without his longtime confidant, detail-obsessed adviser, and nonjudgmental friend. Davis was assigned to the church, located on Martin Luther King Boulevard alongside Interstate 45, six months after Simmons arrived in 1988. They agreed early on that if Cornerstone didn’t intend to make a difference in the surrounding community—at the time, a drug-infested, drive-by-shooting war zone—it might as well not exist.

Over the decades, Simmons and Davis devised solutions to some of South Dallas’ most pernicious problems. They created a laundry, food market, and bike shop in an area bereft of basic services. They launched a home repair program and donated air-conditioning units for seniors and other vulnerable residents. They helped close drug houses and bought the properties to keep the neighborhood's future in protective hands.

“I could see a big picture, the dream,” Simmons says. “I could toss those ideas to Brother Gerald and he could see all the steps to get us there.”

Davis was masterful at getting projects moving. In 2024, with an inventory of 47 church-owned land parcels, the two pastors pledged to step up Cornerstone’s efforts to grow quality affordable housing. The need felt urgent as development pushed toward MLK from the adjacent Cedars neighborhood. Suddenly, outsiders were calling and offering to buy the church’s land.

Neighborhoods such as Cornerstone’s have seen this version of urban renewal—more accurately, urban removal—time and time again. Working-class communities are remade into places unrecognizable and unaffordable to longtime residents. “We realized we can't eradicate all market forces,” Simmons says, “but individuals who want to stay in their neighborhood should be given that right.”

Simmons referred to Davis as his real estate guru, and the associate pastor also served as director of real estate and acquisitions for the church’s Cornerstone Community Development Corporation. But both men felt overwhelmed by the work. “They didn’t teach development in seminary,” they often reminded the other. Then they read about a national effort to fill the holes in their knowledge and skills: Housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners put out a call for applicants interested in its faith-based development initiative.

The program offered 13 classes spread over six months followed by, at no charge to participants, a development consultant’s help creating a project blueprint to be presented at a Shark Tank-style event in the fall.

Simmons signed up Cornerstone right away and in October began his first 90-minute class. Davis, meanwhile, participated in a local United Way-led cohort that the pastors hoped would help the church expand its homeless services. At the end of their long days, the two friends joked about “going back to school” and traded information about what they had learned.

Three months after the Enterprise classes began, on Jan. 12, Davis passed away at age 66.

On that Sunday morning, Davis had told Rhonda, his beloved wife of 37 years, that maybe he better skip worship and instead locate an urgent-care clinic. Immediately, she knew something must be terribly wrong and called 911. Davis died of a heart attack soon after arriving at the hospital.

Hundreds of people, young and old, attended the funeral of a man whose church responsibilities over the years filled 13 typed pages. When he wasn’t implementing the senior pastor’s big audacious ideas, this self-described “barbecueologist” visited folks in the hospital and cooked for their families. He and Rhonda did not have children, so he took neighborhood kids under his wing. They saw him as “Pawpaw,” who showed up for their graduations, recitals, and sporting events.

Simmons pulled the congregation—and himself—through Davis’ service with the Old Testament reminder to the Israelites after Moses’ death: “Grieve, but you’ve still got work to do,” the senior pastor called out from the pulpit, reminding the congregation of the strong foundation Davis had set. “Cornerstone, we’ve got more drug houses to take over … We’ve got more children to help … We still got those without hope.”

“The work don’t go to the cemetery,” Simmons concluded.

Six months later, the grief still raw for many, Simmons and the church’s laypeople carry on, including persevering on housing. The senior pastor finished the Enterprise curriculum and hopes to present plans at the nonprofit’s pitch event for a multifamily dwelling on Cleveland Street. “This will be our effort to prove we can do this kind of work,” Simmons told me in one of my recent visits to the church. It will be called the Davis Manor House, in honor of Brother Gerald.

Cornerstone is a joyously noisy place where the glory goes to God, not to material trappings. When I visited on a weekday in May, schoolchildren called out answers to math problems at tables lining a long corridor; in June, summer camp participants chased one another in the multipurpose hall where worshippers gather on Sundays. Community members stop off in the reception area to get out of the July heat and enjoy a few minutes of fellowship.

Simmons’ office is such a jumble—”it’s been that way since Easter,” he says with a laugh—he resorted to opening a folding metal table on which he piled all his Enterprise materials for one of our conversations. We sat at the end of a wide hallway, its walls lined with shelves overflowing with children’s toys, laundry supplies, and theology books.

Most everyone in South Dallas calls Simmons “Pastor Chris,” probably because he was only 25 when he arrived at Cornerstone as an intern. After finishing his studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, he became senior pastor in September 1989. He was so young that the kids thought nothing of calling him “Chris”—until their parents admonished them to at least add his church title. Well into his fourth decade of service, the man behind the pulpit is still Pastor Chris.

While Simmons felt pulled to ministry as a teen, Davis worked as an engineer with General Electric before attending Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He arrived at Cornerstone as an intern at age 31 and soon became associate pastor.

Cornerstone’s congregation had long endured a revolving door of preachers who led only until they could secure an appointment to a higher-profile church. “It must be difficult to attend a church where people feel that no one wants to pastor them,” Simmons would often tell his wife, Janie.

He and Davis committed that wouldn’t be the case with them. In their first decade together, amid fighting to get Dallas City Hall to pay attention to the neighborhood’s crime and blight epidemic, they focused on consistent pastoral care to gain their congregants’ trust.

They stayed close to Simmons’ earliest question of the church: If we were to leave South Dallas, would the community miss us? ​As the two pastors built relationships and learned their neighbors’ needs, they tried to fill gaps: After-school and summer camps that provided children a safe environment. Dorms for previously incarcerated adults and housing for young homeless pregnant women. Food programs for the homeless, a well-stocked clothes closet, and a mobile laundry operation so children didn’t have to stay home from school because they had no clean clothes to wear.

Davis also was key to the church’s partnership with the Dallas Catalyst Project, launched by the Real Estate Council of Dallas, known as TREC, in 2018 to revitalize the neighborhood, which is anchored by Cornerstone; St. Philip’s School and Community Center; and the Forest Theater, today the centerpiece of nonprofit Forest Forward’s work.

The church’s work with TREC led to the creation of three South Ervay Street establishments: Cornerstone Community Laundry; Southpoint Community Market, with its fresh, affordable food; and the South Dallas Cloud Kitchen, a commercial space for small-food-business entrepreneurs. Davis also launched a Holy Smokes barbecue startup to serve as a test model for how the kitchen worked.

Last summer, when Enterprise announced the expansion of its 20-year-old faith-based development initiative into Texas, Simmons and Davis again saw opportunity. With a $1 million grant from the T.D. Jakes Foundation and the Wells Fargo Foundation, Enterprise aims to spark the development of 800 affordable homes on land owned by houses of worship in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

Among the nonprofit’s success stories was its help in creating Trinity Plaza, a development of about 50 apartments and retail space in Washington D.C.’s Bellevue neighborhood. Since Enterprise began its faith-based development initiative in 2006, it has helped create or preserve more than 1,800 homes nationally; another 27,000 units are in the pipeline, mostly in the Mid-Atlantic states. The nonprofit’s new Dallas/San Antonio cohort includes six churches while 11 are in its Houston group.

In April, after Texas pastors completed their Enterprise classes, church leaders from North Texas and San Antonio discussed what they had learned. In addition to Cornerstone, also on the call from the Dallas area were Concord Church, located in Oak Cliff, and Disciple Central Community Church, based in DeSoto.

Simmons shared his takeaways with the group from the front seat of his car, this meeting squeezed in between two other church obligations. “I’m sorry to not be more organized,” he said, “but I lost my partner in this work in January and we’re still recovering.”

He went on to explain the church’s plans for the Davis Manor House while juggling his iPhone in one hand and, with his other, steadying a thick binder of Enterprise handouts and housing plans on his lap.

“We got into this cohort because we were getting calls from people wanting us to sell the land and get out of the deal,” Simmons told the group. “That is not what we purchased that land for over the years.”

The months since the classwork ended have been as challenging as those following Davis’ death. Simmons and his staff have pledged to match members of Cornerstone’s congregation with some of the associate pastor’s responsibilities. “We do a disservice when we don't develop laypeople to do these things,” Simmons said.

One of those who stepped forward to help is Richard Smith, who has construction experience and a history of church renovation projects. With Smith in place, Simmons was able to complete the paperwork in July that allows for an Enterprise-sponsored development consultant to help the church with the Davis Manor House planning.

Simmons knows the church’s housing work won’t get any easier—especially without the associate pastor who could read his mind and provide a solution before the senior pastor finished his question. “He took a load off my plate, for sure,” Simmons said, trailing off softly while sitting in the royal blue and white sanctuary where the two men served together for so long.

In a split second, Simmons shook off his reverie and went into a short sermon of sorts. He painted the need: “We’re only 2 miles from downtown—a community that is really poised for that kind of takeover, and we're really trying to fight against that.” Then he sketched the threat: “Churches and faith-based organizations who thought they were going to be working with a developer that had their interests in mind, and it went a whole different direction.”

As he wrapped up, I could hear the words from the funeral held in this same space just a short six months ago. Simmons is following through on his promise to his friend, that the work won’t go to the cemetery.

Sharon Grigsby is the co-founder and senior writer of The Lab Report. [email protected].

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