Lubbock Christian University Campus Tour

Lubbock Christian began in 1954 as part of a grade school affiliated with Churches of Christ and opened as a junior college in 1957, holding its first classes partly in surplus military barracks. It has since grown into a university on a 155-acre campus on Lubbock's west side. This short walk follows the school's daily chapel tradition from its first home to its current one, visits a fieldhouse that was trucked in from Los Alamos, New Mexico, and ends at the arena that now hosts a national women's basketball tournament every year.

Lubbock Christian University is a young school with a surprisingly good backstory, and this short walk on Lubbock's west side tells it through one enduring tradition and a few remarkable buildings. The college opened as a junior college in 1957, holding some of its first classes in surplus military barracks. It has since grown into a university on a campus of about 155 acres.

The thread running through the walk is daily chapel. Students first gathered for it on September 24, 1957, in the administration building named for founding president F. W. Mattox, in the space that now holds the library. The service later moved to McDonald Moody Auditorium, where students still meet each day for a half-hour service. The start time has shifted over the decades, but the gathering has anchored campus life since the college's very first semester.

The most unexpected building is the Rhodes Perrin Recreation Center, long known on campus simply as the Fieldhouse. It began as an Atomic Energy Commission hangar in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Handbook of Texas records that the college bought it for $1,700 and spent far more to reassemble it on campus in 1961. For years it was the home of Chaparral athletics, and after a renovation around 2020 it now holds intramural courts, handball and racquetball courts, and an indoor walking track.

It's an easy, compact stroll for anyone curious about how a small Churches of Christ college built itself on the South Plains.