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The county seat and oldest city in Dimmit County in South Texas, Carrizo Springs sits 45 miles north of the Mexican border, 82 miles northwest of Laredo, and 10 miles from Crystal City, its nearest neighbor.
The city is home to around 5,000 residents and boasts the state’s only olive orchard and oil press. Of the community’s few churches, the two largest are First Baptist Carrizo Springs and the local Catholic church.
Carrizo Springs is known for its pure artesian wells. These days, many are discovering water of a different sort through the ministry of First Baptist Church: living water and salvation in Christ Jesus.
And all this has come about, Pastor Jonathan Hewett insists, because of concerted prayer.
“We’d been seeing a slow increase [in attendance] for a long time, but over the last six months, it has exploded,” said Hewett, the church’s pastor the past 13 years. Average attendance was 160 in 2024 and today is 270. More than 300 may show up on any given Sunday.
To handle the increase, the church has added temporary seating in the foyer where attendees peer through windows into the fan-shaped worship center. Hewett said he has challenged members to fill those seats first, allowing visitors to access the sanctuary.
The growth has come locally, Hewett added. Neither are people flocking to the church from other congregations. Most of the church’s growth has come through baptisms—68 in 2025 alone.
“This is not transfer growth,” he said. “There’s really nowhere to transfer from in Carrizo Springs.”
A vibrant community presence
FBC Carrizo Springs maintains an active, generous presence in the community with outreaches such as God’s Garage, where church members team with a local auto repair business to handle oil changes and minor maintenance tasks for widows and the less fortunate.
“We do one in the fall and two in the spring,” Hewett said. “This is oil field country. Everyone knows engines.” There is never a lack of volunteers for the outreach, he noted.
The church’s 20-person School Connect team partners with Carrizo Springs ISD to offer assistance without overt evangelism.
“The purpose is to engage the campus in service only,” Hewett said. The goal is to build trust. Volunteers prepare faculty dinners and special meals such as a pancake supper to attract parents to a meeting with third grade teachers about upcoming testing.
During football season, worship and youth pastor Santiago Lopez Jr., who grew up in Carrizo Springs, leads fifth quarter activities in the school gym. The church supplies pizza or hot dogs and keeps 75-100 kids occupied until midnight, with the school’s blessing.
“We give the kids something to do after the game, rather than going to someone’s house and drinking,” Hewett said. “This also makes students aware of what our youth are doing.”
“Ministering to these students gives me the chance to show them that a relationship with Christ makes them heirs to the throne,” Lopez said. “I’m so blessed to be serving in the town that shaped me and molded me to care for others like they’re my family.”
Additionally, the church conducts two revivals each year, hosts a women’s conference, puts on a live nativity at Christmas, and is active in missions.
“We’ve gone to Zambia, Cuba, Panama, Peru, Nicaragua, Macedonia,” Hewett said. A new partnership with International Mission Board missionaries in Sevilla, Spain, is just beginning, he added.
Lifestyle changes often accompany decisions to follow Christ. Aware that finances often prevent couples from marrying, FBC Carrizo Springs offers simple weddings.
“We are specialists at quick weddings,” Hewett said. For almost a dozen couples, volunteers have adorned the worship center with candles and wedding décor for a ceremony held just after the Sunday morning service.
“When you are not paying for the preacher or the venue, you can do it,” Hewett said. One recent bride, baptized that very morning, fixed her hair, changed her dress, and walked down the aisle.
“Two things we say all the time: ‘You have not because you ask not,’ and ‘We don’t know how to do anything, Lord. But you do.’”
Powered by prayer
All this would not be possible apart from prayer, Hewett said.
Nearly three years ago, Hewett began to read exhaustively on prayer and attended a prayer conference for pastors led by Jim Cymbala of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. As a result, Hewett felt called to change his church’s traditional prayer service, which he said had grown stale and was not well attended.
“We didn’t see any power going on,” he said. That’s no longer the case. “We don’t do things at the church that aren’t prayed over. Prayer is the whole thing.”
Change has accompanied that prayer, with Wednesday nights devoted to it. Hewett said he began the shift by slowly, methodically teaching on prayer.
“I don’t do anything on Wednesday nights that’s not prayer-related,” he said. “We have a time of full-on worship with songs, then I spend 20 minutes speaking on prayer.”
Directed prayer follows as members confess their issues before God, then pray for others. “We ask God to move in the hearts of people and bring responses. We pray for people at work [and church],” he said. “We pass out index cards with names or prayer requests.
“Everybody prays over their card,” he added. Sometimes the congregation forms groups to pray. “We mix it up. But specific praying for what we do as a church is the whole idea.”
Nothing gets left behind. Remodeling the building? They pray. Fifth quarter coming up? They pray. A couple getting married? They pray.
“Our growth is not the result of me being skilled or some new program,” Hewett said. “We prayed. We didn’t do anything else.”
Teaching his people to pray using Scripture has been immensely gratifying, Hewett added.
Many of the younger generation in Carrizo Springs are not bilingual. “English is their heart language,” Hewett said. “We are in a middle range here between two cultures.”
Prayer is proving to be a bridge.
“Two things we say all the time,” Hewett said. “‘You have not because you ask not,’ and ‘We don’t know how to do anything, Lord. But you do.’”
