West End Baptist Church, a century-old fortress of God, seemed headed to a bitter end.

Once, in the mid-1960s, the Houston Heights church boasted some 2,000 worshipers. It was a leader in Christian education and community service. By 2015, though, membership - buffeted by real estate and demographic changes - had dropped to fewer than 20.

City inspectors called for costly upgrades to West End's sanctuary. Players in the near-north side neighborhood's frenzied redevelopment offered millions for the church's choice Shepherd Drive property.

Only time, it seemed, stood between the church property and its rebirth as an apartment complex or parking garage.

Then a most remarkable - some say miraculous - thing happened.

Patrick Kelley, pastor of River Pointe Church, an evangelical mega-church with 6,000 members in Richmond and Missouri City, came looking for a Houston home. West End members, eager that their land be used in God's glory, gave him one. For free.

After $6 million in upgrades to the 62-year-old sanctuary, including new sound and lighting systems, the newly formed River Pointe/West End Church will launch its ministry Sunday morning.

Kelley, trained at a Southern Baptist seminary, said his pulpit messages will be evangelical, but denomination-neutral.

"I don't think people really think so much in terms of denominations, whether they be Methodists or Lutherans or Baptists," said Kelley, who hopes to craft a spiritual appeal to church-resistant millennials.

"We want to create an environment where people feel safe to be themselves. We want to invite people to come to figure things out, not to take them off guard, to ask them for money or embarrass them in any way. We want to provide a safe way for them to process their doubts."

Members of the old West End Baptist Church, many of whom have moved to suburban churches or joined their last pastor, the Rev. Michael Quintanilla, in a northeast side start-up church, expressed optimism that a new approach will draw young members.

"As we drop off and another preacher comes in, there's a possibility that younger groups will come," said Nancy Williams, who spent most of her 77 years as a West End member. "We were down to all senior adults. We didn't have any children in the church in the last three years. I have a nephew who's a preacher in Cleveland. He told me our church was not unique. It's happening all over the state."

Actually, declines in church membership are a national phenomenon, with more than a third of millennials identifying as "nones" - atheists, agnostics or "not much of anything." Pew Research Center reports U.S. church membership declined by 5 million between 2007 and 2015.

Southern Baptists this year reported a 200,000 drop in membership from 2014. Membership in the nation's largest Protestant denomination has fallen annually for nine years. Other denominations report similar declines.

Tracing its history to 1895, East End Baptist had seen once-suburban Houston Heights transformed into a center-city neighborhood. In the closing decades of the 20th century, the area filled with Hispanic families. Then, in the past few years, the area changed again as block after block was redeveloped for high-end housing for affluent millennials and empty-nesters.

The old West End congregation tried to draw young members, greeting new tenants at a Heights-area apartment complex with cake, coffee and an invitation to worship.

There were no takers.

Kelley said he draws on personal experience in trying to reach the unchurched.

"I didn't grow up in the church," he said. "As an adolescent, I didn't ask what life was all about. To me, it was about fun. I had a lot of fun. I smoked a lot of marijuana, drank a lot of beer. I chased girls and caught a few. But after a year of that, I said 'There's got to be more.' I had no idea what 'more' was. I was that far away from God."

Invited to church by a "pretty girl," Kelley was charmed by the congregation - until the sermon began.

"Then everyone seemed angry," he said. "They wanted everyone to behave. I never was interested in behaving."

Kelley finally came to Christ through a high school friend. "He was the first Christian who seemed normal," Kelley said. "He laughed at funny things. He asked if I knew Jesus, and I said I did. I knew Jesus as I did Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln - as a dead religious folk hero."

When the friend began talking about Easter, Kelley envisioned bunnies and egg-filled baskets. "Then he explained that Jesus was alive and wanted to be my friend," Kelley recalled.

Building a friendship with Jesus is core to the River Point/West End message, Kelley said.

Kelley's church began as a home worship session with four families in the mid-1990s. As membership grew, the congregation met in a series of schools. In 2005, the church moved into a permanent home in Richmond "and our membership just exploded," Kelley said. A second congregation, in Missouri City, was started in 2012.

When Kelley told Cliff McDaniel, an old friend from Houston's Second Baptist Church, that he hoped to open a satellite church inside Loop 610, the veteran real estate agent scoffed.

"I told him that the day of new churches inside Loop 610 had come and gone," McDaniel said. "Literally, I thought it was impossible. Still I told him I would help. 'If this works,' I said, 'It's because of God.' "

As the pair drove around early last year looking for likely church sites, a Catholic high school agreed to let Kelley hold interim services on its campus. Slowly over a period of months, membership grew to about 150.

Deeply religious, McDaniel schedules Bible study in his office on Thursday mornings.

During one session, a sales staffer mentioned that he had made a $6 million bid for a client on a Shepherd Drive church. If the sale went through, the building would be razed.

"I said, 'Oh, no. Back off!' " McDaniel recalled. When McDaniel and Kelley approached West End leaders, they were in for a big surprise.

"God wanted us to do something with the property," said Quintanilla, pastor at West End Baptist for almost a decade. "Giving it to them - that's what we finally ended up doing."

On Sunday, worshipers will find a church that - while acknowledging the legacy of West End Baptist - is designed for contemporary worship. Installed in the sanctuary are state-of-the-art lighting, sound and video systems.

Ceilings have been raised to provide worshipers a full view of the sanctuary's magnificent stained glass window, previously back-lit and visible only from the street. The church lobby has been expanded, its brick walls exposed, to provide a congenial setting for congregational mingling. A water heater, formerly a component of the church bapistry, has been refashioned as a lamp.

West End Baptist member Williams said the changes garnered support from the old congregation.

"We felt very strongly that it should be kept as a church," she said. "Now it's between the new congregation and God."