Even though the prospects were meager and he was broke, Dr. Fleming testified, "We would not be discouraged because we felt that God had led us to Dayton."  Just when Pastor Fleming's money ran out, he and his wife were invited to use Mr. Dunn's quarters, since he had plans to be out of the city for several weeks on some business. The situation being what it was, they gladly accepted and moved into Mr. Dunn's sleeping room when he left the city.  A preacher friend in Troy, Ohio, about twenty miles north of Dayton, referred Pastor Fleming to Dr. Dallas F. Billington, pastor of Akron Baptist Temple, who had a daily broadcast that covered Dayton, because he might know of prospects to start a church.  The next day Pastor Fleming drove to Akron and walked into the office of Dr. Billington, a man he had never personally met The pastor of the world's largest Sunday School graciously put the young couple in a hotel for the night, provided food, and next day provided a church secretary to go through the files, where Dr. and Mrs. Fleming found 128 names in the Dayton area.  It took Brother Fleming five days to visit the prospects, most of whom were not interested in helping to begin a New Testament church.

 

     As a young lad, Dr. Fleming came through the Depression, when his family lost everything.  His father was an old-fashioned "share­cropper" farmer who preached in little country Baptist churches on Sundays.  Due to the drought, floods, and bad crops over a period of several years, the family was forced to move into the small town of Independence, Missouri, where the father could get on W.P.A.  As a young boy in Independence, Gerald delivered papers in the fall, winter and spring months all over the town; in fact, even to Harry Truman himself!  During the summer months he worked on the farm, riding a bicycle 14 miles one way to work ten hours and then riding home in the evening.  Also he sold aprons and hotpad hold­ers his mother made on an old Singer sewing machine, from door to door, in order to sup­plement the meager family income. That prompted him on one occasion, when greatly discouraged, to tell his mother, "I'll never do anything again where I have to knock on doors."  Today he admits, "Sometimes God makes us eat our words."  The success of Dayton Baptist Temple is Dr. Fleming's aggressive door-to-door visitation.

 

     He was saved at ten years of age, when his family took him to a little basement Baptist church, Waldo Avenue Baptist in Independence.  During his teen years he got away from God and spent the latter part of World War II as a merchant marine, sailing around the world twice.

   

     After the war, upon the insistence of his father, he heard Dr. Wendell Zimmerman preach, pastor of Kansas City Baptist Temple, and went forward for rededication.  It was here he first began to serve God, leading singing in the young people's department, witnessing on the streets and working in the Sunday School.  After young Fleming surrendered his life to the Lord for full-time service, Dr. Zimmerman rec­ommended to him the Bible Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, where Pastor Fleming studied under Dr. J. Frank Norris, who made a great impression on him.

 

     One of the secrets of the continual growth of Dayton Baptist Temple is the dogged patience Dr. Fleming has exercised in carrying out the ministry.  He testifies, ''I keep going when others quit; I've always found another door to knock on when the others have gone home."  On one occasion in the early days of the church, in the very beginning, Dr. Fleming and his wife had visited all day and had had trouble finding the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell, finally locating the house at six o'clock in the afternoon.  The young preacher said, "Honey, this house is too 'rich looking.'  You wait here; I know it won't do any good, but I'll at least meet the people since we've come this far."  Pastor Fleming knocked on the door and told the lady he had been called of God to start an independent Baptist church.  Mrs. Caldwell cried, "Praise the Lord, we've been praying for two years for someone to come to Dayton and start an independent Bap­tist church."  The Caldwells insisted that young Fleming go immediately and call on their friends, the Carlton family.  Mrs. Carlton came out of the basement where she was doing the washing, wiping her hands on a towel wrapped around her waist, and said, "Praise God!  He sent us a preacher."  Dr. Fleming and his wife were hungry and she most lovingly sat them down and gave them meat, sandwiches and milk.  According to the young couple, "It was like manna from Heaven."  Later that night Pastor Fleming found the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. C. Orme but it was very late, about eleven o'clock, too late (by normal standards) to visit Mr. and Mrs. Orme, with adult members of several other families, were sitting around the dining room table, discussing what church they all should attend, because they had, just a few weeks previously, been saved in a Hyman Appelman citywide crusade and felt they ought to be actively attending a church. Since the lights were on, the young preacher knocked on the door and said, "My name is Gerald Fleming.  I've come to Dayton to start a Baptist church."  All four of these families came to the church and all of them are still in the Dayton Baptist Temple after 21 years of miracles.

 

     The next day Pastor Fleming got a job as a shoe salesman in Rikes Department Store and then located an apartment He had to return to Kansas City, Missouri, and get his child and meager possessions, but he didn't have enough money for gas, let alone food, along the way.  Dr. Fleming knew that God had provided thus far and would continue to do so.  At five o'clock the next morning, he came out to get in his car.  He had told his wife, "We'll drive as far toward home as we can, then phone my father to come and get us."  On the dew-wet grass in front of the rooming house Pastor Fleming found a $5 bill and four $1 bills, enough, with the few dollars he already had, to get him to Kansas City, where he borrowed another $25 from his father and returned to Dayton.  The following Tuesday evening, at the first meeting of the infant congregation, with sixteen people present in the front room of a home, Pastor Fleming preached on the parable of the ten virgins. One person was saved and there was an offering of $16.25.  Every person present in that first meeting is either still in the church or is now in Heaven.

 

     That week Pastor Fleming rented the old Townsend Hall at Fifth and Main in downtown Dayton for $12.50 a Sunday and the young church met there for five weeks until they got organized.  But the church needed a more permanent home.  Dr. Fleming appeared before the Dayton school board and asked for the rental of a school The board initially turned down his suggestion, but an old German stroked his white beard and asked, "Young man, why do you want this building?"  Without flinching, Pastor Fleming told him, "I want to build an inde­pendent Baptist church to win people to Jesus Christ" The elderly man beamed at Fleming's determination and said, "I make a motion we let the young man have Brown Elementary School for the next year."

 

     Dr. Fleming is eternally grateful for the encouragement he received from Dallas Billington, who announced the young church's meeting over his radio station.  The well known Billington also held a Tuesday-through-Thursday revival meeting that gave the infant congregation instant status in Dayton.

 

     There were 120 saved during the first year of the church and on the first anniversary there were 147 in Sunday School without any special-day activities - that was the average attendance.

 

     The church needed $4,752 to pay for three acres on Ohmer Avenue, the planned location for the new church.  Early in 1952, while the church was only months old, Fleming raised $3,200 in one Sunday from the small congregation of 75 people, some giving $5, others $20, and a few people as much as $100.  The offering on that day was a good down payment.  According to Dr. Fleming, "This was one of the greatest miracles in the life of our church, even though people today might think the amount small in comparison to today's astronomical figures."  Some ten years later the state took the back half of the church's parking lot for an Interstate expressway, and paid the church $94,500.  According to the pastor, "This was a blessing and a curse at the same time."  The expressway put the church in immediate access to everybody in the greater Dayton area and the sales price gave them a financial basis for expansion. However, half of the parking space was lost, and now the church had to expand by buying individual houses at the rate of $20,000-$25,000 per house.  Lack of parking held down Sunday School attendance greatly from 1963 to 1967, but that problem is now being solved.

 

     During the second summer the church held three evangelistic crusades in a large tent on the new property.  Each crusade ran two weeks with a space of two weeks between them.  Dr. Fleming now looks back and reflects, "Those were days of great blessings; many people were saved who still attend our church and the evangelistic outreach into the community was accompanied with the power of God that many churches seldom realize.

 

     The young church grew rapidly, and that fall a basement church was built to accommodate 350 people.  When the congregation moved into the basement, there was only pitrun gravel on the floor and the flat roof leaked; but people came and stood around the walls to hear Pastor Fleming preach.  That auditorium was always full, and in those days they used no promotion, no giveaways - just the preach­ing of the Gospel The basement was expanded in each of the next few summers so that the Sunday School was averaging 900 before the first permanent auditorium was actually built in 1958.