Ministry awards presented to Texas Baptist innovators

Posted: 11/17/06

Ministry awards presented
to Texas Baptist innovators

By Marv Knox

Editor

DALLAS—Three innovators received the 2006 Texas Baptist Ministry Awards during the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting in Dallas Nov. 13.

Dick Maples accepted the W. Winfred Moore Award for lifetime ministry achievement. Jimmy Dorrell took the George W. Truett Award for ministerial excellence. And Shirley Madden received the Marie Mathis Award for lay ministry.

Baylor University and the Baptist Standard confer the awards annually to recognize excellent ministers and to highlight role models for ministry. They present the awards during Truett Theological Seminary’s banquet at the BGCT meeting.

Maples built upon more than three decades of pastoral experience when he founded the BGCT’s Minister/Church Relations Office in 1995. The program has served hundreds of churches, ministers and families, often at times of crisis or conflict.

He began his ministry as assistant pastor at First Baptist Church in Abilene. Later, he was pastor of First Baptist churches of Texas City; Waynesville, N.C.; El Paso; and Bryan. He also was associate executive director of the BGCT Executive Board.

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Maples has been president and first vice president of the BGCT. He also has been a member of the BGCT Executive Board, Administrative Committee and Christian Life Commission, as well as a trustee of East Texas Baptist University, Hardin-Simmons University and the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. Beyond Texas, he was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board, Committee on Boards and Committee on Committees, and the North Carolina Baptist Convention’s General Board and Christian Life Commission.

He also has served in Baptist associational capacities and on the boards of numerous local civic and service organizations.

In retirement, Maples has been an interim pastor. He now is pastor emeritus of First Baptist Church in El Paso, special assistant to the president and adjunct professor at Dallas Baptist University, Intentional Interim Ministry trainer, Sunday school teacher and chair of the T.B. Maston Foundation board of directors.

He is a graduate of Mississippi College and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned both master’s and doctoral degrees. Baylor University, the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and Dallas Baptist University have awarded him honorary degrees.

His wife, Mary Jo Maples, retired as assistant professor of English at Dallas Baptist University, where she still teaches adjunctively. They are the parents of two children and eight grandchildren.

Dorrell’s Mission Waco and Church Under the Bridge ministries impact the spectrum of society, from Waco’s homeless and underprivileged populations, to Baylor University students who see poverty and injustice through new lenses, to laypeople who find in his guidance an opportunity to incarnate the gospel.

Dorrell and his wife, Janet, founded Mission Waco, a nonprofit ministry with three goals—operating relationship-based, holistic programs among the poor and marginalized; mobilizing middle-class Christians toward “hands-on” involvement; and addressing systemic issues that disempower the poor. Dorrell is executive director of Mission Waco, which now operates 15 ministry programs.

Church Under the Bridge, which he founded, meets under Interstate 35 between Fourth and Fifth streets in Waco. The church serves homeless people and others who would not enter the door of a “typical” church but who need the saving grace of the gospel.

Last year, Mission Waco transformed the facilities of a former downtown Waco church into the Meyer Center for Urban Ministries, an accessible service center for Waco’s poor. Earlier this year, Mission Waco sponsored a broad-based conference on multicultural churches. Dorrell’s new book is Trolls & Truth: 14 Realities About the Church We Don’t Want to See.

Dorrell earned undergraduate and master’s degrees from Baylor University, a master’s from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctorate from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He has served on various community boards and has received numerous honors and awards, including the Abner V. McCall Humanitarian Award from the Baylor Alumni Association.

The Dorrells have four children.

Madden’s grace, compassion and tenacity have improved the lives and brought salvation to scores of women and children on the South Plains. Madden was the first director of Woman’s Missionary Union’s Christian Women’s Job Corps program in Lubbock. Through that program, she helped numerous women—most of them single mothers—develop job skills and parenting ability, as well as come to know Christ as Savior.

But four years ago, her vision expanded. She envisioned My Father’s House, Lubbock, a residential center where women in need could learn how to become self-supporting. Mothers would develop job skills and life skills through Christian Women’s Job Corps, and their children would be able to live with their mothers in a safe, nurturing Christian environment.

With the help of the Texas Baptist Men Builders—who provided volunteer labor valued at $1.5 million—Madden’s dream became reality. My Father’s House, Lubbock, built its 45,000-square-foot Living and Learning Center on donated land.

The center houses 20 women and 22 children. Its child development center is recognized as one of the top facilities in the region. Programs of My Father’s House, Lubbock, and its Living and Learning Center are staffed by more than 150 volunteers and 35 paid employees, including childcare providers.

Most important to her, Madden has seen more than 85 women come to know Christ as Savior and become role models for their children.

She has been a member of First Baptist Church in Lubbock 47 years. Her husband, O.C., is a CPA who has served on numerous BGCT committees. They have two sons, one daughter and two grandchildren.