Texas Tidbits

Posted: 8/19/05

Texas Tidbits

Churches, associations honored. The Baptist General Convention of Texas honored three churches and three associations for their work in starting African-American churches. First South-west Baptist Church in Houston, where Rickie Bradshaw is pastor, received the Antioch Award for starting the most African-American churches in the last two years–14 congregations. Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Dallas started the second-most congregations with nine, and Lakeside Baptist Church in Dallas started eight. Dallas Baptist Association, where Gary Hearon is executive director, received the Barnabas Award for the association starting the most African-American churches–37 congregations. Union Baptist Association started 35, and Waco Baptist Association started 13. Glenn Majors, director of BGCT Cooperative Program services, received the first E.B. Brooks Excellence in Service Award for encouraging and connecting new African-American churches with BGCT resources.

Byron Weathersbee

Baylor names interim chaplain. Byron Weathersbee, co-founder and president of Legacy Family Ministries, has been appointed interim university chaplain at Baylor University. Weathersbee, 42, will provide leadership for Baylor's twice-weekly chapel services, and pastoral care to the university community. He also will lead university ministries, directing resident chaplains, discipline-specific mission opportunities and the sports chaplain program, as well as relating to Baptist Student Ministries. Weathers-bee is a graduate of Baylor, and he earned a master's degree in religious education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctor of education degree in leadership from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has served in staff positions at First Baptist Church in Gatesville, Immanuel Baptist Church in Temple and Columbus Avenue and University Baptist churches in Waco. In 1995, Weathersbee and his wife, Carla, founded Legacy Family Ministries, a nonprofit organization that does relationship development with students, marriage preparation courses for engaged couples and family camp weekends. The Weathersbees have three children–Bo, 18; Brittney, 16; and Casey, 12. They are members of Columbus Avenue Baptist Church.

BGCT revises church profiling efforts. The Baptist General Convention of Texas is revising the way it attains yearly information about churches in an effort to better serve its constituency. The convention is streamlining the traditional LifeWay Annual Church Profile reporting form from 51 categories to 17 to make it easier for congregations to indicate aspects of their respective ministries. BGCT leaders also are making category titles more generalized rather than program-specific to accommodate a wider range of outreaches. The new process will have fewer stewardship categories because some financial data can be based on actual funds given through the BGCT. Church contributions for the Texas Cooperative Program, Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions, Annie Armstrong Offering for North American Missions and Lottie Moon Offering for International Missions already are known and do not need to be reported through the ACP. The new forms will be capable of being scanned to help associations cut down on the amount of data entry required for each church.

Aging adults seminar focuses on Boomers. "Beckoning the Boomers" is the theme of two aging adult ministry leadership seminars, Sept. 22-23 at the Baptist Building in Dallas and Sept. 29-30 at Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston. Deborah Perkins of Virginia Woman's Missionary Union will be the featured speaker at the Dallas seminar. James Ellor and Dennis Myers from the Baylor University School of Social Work, authors of a new workbook for ministries to aging adults, will speak at the Houston seminar. For more information, e-mail jerry.reynolds@bgct.org.