With a small $1,000 gift from member Fannie Jobe, Pastor Thomas Potts led the congregation to build a one-room stone chapel at the corner of Bellevue and Erskine Avenues.

The church relocated to its current building (2000 Appling Road), which seats 7,000 in the main sanctuary, on a 377-acre (153 ha) campus in Cordova, a Memphis suburb, in 1989.

Bellevue is ranked 80th in the largest and fasting growing churches in America by LifeWay Research for Outreach Magazine.

Nevertheless, the Seminary has maintained a close relationship with the congregation ever since it moved to Memphis in 1976; former Bellevue pastor Adrian Rogers was an influential figure at MABTS.

The first service was held on July 12, 1903 with Bellevue's first pastor, Henry Hurt, saying that he hoped the new church would become “one of the greatest powers for good” that the city of Memphis had ever seen.

[4] A two-story wooden frame building was added to the original stone structure in 1910, with evening services sometimes held on the rooftop.

[5] Lee preached the sermon Pay-Day Someday more than 1,200 times at Bible conferences, in state capitol buildings, churches, universities, youth camps, and ballparks across the nation and around the world.

[4] To accommodate the crowds that came to hear Lee preach the hour-long sermon each year on the first Sunday in May, Bellevue moved services to Ellis Auditorium in Memphis.

In December 1934, Lee called for a special "love offering" to help pay off the church building debt.

[4] William Ramsey Pollard was pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, when Robert G. Lee retired.

[4] In June 1972, members of the pulpit search committee traveled to Philadelphia to hear Adrian Rogers preach at the Southern Baptist Convention Pastors Conference.

[4] Rogers consulted and prayed personally with four U.S. Presidents (including Ronald Reagan), and was invited by George W. Bush to speak at the National Day of Prayer in 2001.

Gaines previously served as pastor at First Baptist Church in Gardendale, Alabama; a suburb of Birmingham, for fourteen years.

[14] After eight months of reviewing potential candidates for senior pastor, the search committee reached a unanimous decision.

[4] Through the Southern Baptist Mission Board in 1962, Pastor Ramsey Pollard led Bellevue in being the first church to adopt a Cuban refugee family and help establish them in America.

Pastor Adrian Rogers led missions crusades in Brazil (1990) and Romania (1992) with many church members participating.

[4] Bellevue's main reasoning behind the move to the other side of the city, besides needing more room, was that its membership had changed, with the majority of it now located in the eastern part of the Memphis metro area.

On Sunday, November 19, 1989, overflow crowds attended back-to-back morning worship services at 2000 Appling Road in Cordova.

[21] In September 2006, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis' predominant newspaper, reported that recent changes at Bellevue have led to protests by some members.

According to the site, deacons from the church met on November 5 and reviewed Gaines' credit card charges, unanimously finding no inappropriate expenditures.

[29] The next day, December 18, Gaines released a statement that acknowledged that he had been aware of the allegation since June 2006 but that he did not address it for several months because Williams had been attending professional counseling, because of confidentiality concerns, and out of compassion for the staffer.

Some church members have argued that this aim is contrary to Bellevue's historical philosophy of being "pastor-led, deacon-served, committee-operated and congregation-approved.

Lane served with three Bellevue pastors who were each elected Southern Baptist Convention president: Robert G. Lee, Ramsey Pollard, and Adrian Rogers.

[34] For the community they presented 38 consecutive performances of Handel's Messiah, as well as other classical works like The Seven Last Words of Christ and Mendelssohn's Elijah.

After working together as pastor and minister of music at First Baptist Church in Merritt Island, Florida, Rogers and Whitmire reunited at Bellevue in 1975.

In December 2005, when he retired as senior minister of music, 5,000 adults and children were enrolled in Bellevue's vocal and instrumental programs.

The crosses are engineered to withstand 70-mile-per-hour (110 km/h) winds and are constructed of four pieces of structural steel and angle iron painted white.

[37] The landmark crosses were dedicated at a special ceremony with choir, orchestra, and hundreds of church members at midnight on New Year's Eve, 1999.

On September 28, 2009, the State of Tennessee House of Representatives issued a proclamation recognizing Bellevue as an institution that has demonstrated “unflagging capacity for love, dedication of spirit, and faith in God” and for enriching the lives of people in their community.

"[38] The document mentioned the church's sponsor of a Christian Mobile Dental Clinic that provides free dental care to the underprivileged, and the church's funding of The Vue, a ministry for college students located near the University of Memphis and accessible to students of other local colleges and universities.