SUTHERLAND SPRINGS, Texas — The Texas church where more than two dozen people were killed by a gunman during Sunday services will be demolished, the pastor said.

Pastor Frank Pomeroy told leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention earlier this week that it would be too painful to continue using First Baptist Church as a place of worship.

Pomeroy discussed the plan with the denomination's top executives, who traveled to the rural community in a show of support, a national Southern Baptist spokesman said.

The pastor described the building as "too stark of a reminder" of the massacre, spokesman Sing Oldham said.

Pomeroy expressed hope he could turn the site into a memorial for the dead and put up a new building on property the church owns, Oldham said.

Charlene Uhl, mother of 16-year-old Haley Krueger, who died in the attack, agreed that the church should come down.

"There should still be church but not here," she said Thursday as she visited a row of white crosses commemorating the victims in front of the church. She said her daughter attended worship services and a weekly Thursday night youth group meeting held by another victim, Karla Holcombe.

Other sites of mass shootings have been torn down, including Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults in December 2012. A new school was built elsewhere.

Authorities said the 26 dead also included the unborn baby of a woman who was killed. All the victims died at the scene, except for one child who died at a hospital.

Eleven people remained hospitalized Thursday with wounds they suffered in the attack.