Awards presented to missions leader, pastor & medical doctor

February 10, 2011

College Station-based missions innovator, a Houston pastor and an Abilene physician are recipients of the 2010-2011 Texas Baptist Ministry Awards, presented by Baylor University and the Baptist Standard.

The awards were announced during the Winter Pastors’ School at Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary and its Kyle Lake Center for Effective Preaching.

James W.L. Adams

James W.L. Adams of College Station is recipient of the W. Winfred Moore Award for Lifetime Ministry Achievement. Moore was longtime pastor of First Baptist Church in Amarillo and a president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

Adams has been in ministry six decades, from his student days at Baylor University to service as an interim pastor in his retirement years.

Thirty years ago, when he served as pastor of Beech Street First Baptist Church in Texarkana, Ark., Adams founded International Baptist Ministries as a volunteer. He began taking groups overseas on “friendship weeks” to participate in evangelistic events, lead training opportunities and undergird the work of indigenous churches in about two dozen countries.

Since its beginning, 100 percent of the contributions to International Baptist Ministries have been used for mission work, with no funds expended for organizational or administrative expenses. Through three decades, Adams consistently has told potential donors any gifts to the global ministry should be above and beyond tithes and offerings to their own churches—not in place of them.

Adams’ pastorates included First Baptist Church of Navasota, First Baptist Church in Madisonville, First Baptist Church of South Houston and First Baptist Church in Victoria. While he served the Navasota congregation, he also preached each Sunday afternoon at First Baptist Church in Anderson when that historic congregation was without a pastor, saving the church.

Denominational service included terms as moderator of Guadalupe, Bowie, Southwest Arkansas and Creath-Brazos Baptist associations, as well as a period as interim director of missions for Creath-Brazos Associa-tion. He also has served on the executive boards of the Texas and Arkansas Baptist state conventions.

Marvin Delaney

Marvin Delaney, pastor of South Park Baptist Church in Houston, has been honored with the George W. Truett Award for Ministerial Excellence, which recognizes a Texas Baptist minister for a singular ministry achievement in the recent past. Truett, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas from 1897 to 1944, was widely recognized as a world Baptist leader.

In 1978, Delaney hocked his pickup truck for $2,400 to buy four Radio Shack laptop computers and begin teaching computer programming in his community—a program that later spread to several campuses in the Houston Independent School District and at South Park Baptist Church.

That passion for teaching continued, as Delaney has been instrumental in leading South Park to address the educational needs of at-risk youth through University Park Academy.

Since 1996, the secondary school has graduated more than 2,000 students, all of whom previously had failed TAKS. More than 150 either have graduated from college or are currently enrolled in a university.

Under Delaney’s leadership, South Park Baptist also has become involved in international ministry. Last year, the church focused on Nigeria, restoring a hospital in Ogbomoso, providing financial support  to Bowen University in Iwo and helping to modernize the publication house in Ibaden. 

At the same time, South Park built a church and children’s home in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and has been involved in a project to provide fresh water in Gantier and Tube, Haiti.

Delaney has been involved deeply in denominational activities, serving as a director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas Executive Board and as an officer in the Texas Baptist African-American Fellowship.

George Dawson

George Dawson of Abilene is recipient of the Marie Mathis Lay Ministry Award, which recognizes a Texas Baptist layperson either for singular or lifetime ministry achievement. Mathis directed Baylor’s Student Union 25 years, served as president of both the state and national Woman’s Missionary Union and led the women’s department of the Baptist World Alliance.

Dawson became a medical doctor and his wife, Dorthy, became a nurse out of a sense of calling. After their daughter, Nan, was born with cerebral palsy, they found themselves unable to pursue their desire to serve as career medical missionaries. But for nearly 50 years, they have found other ways to fulfill God’s calling.

In 1964—long before short-term international mission trips became commonplace— Dawson spent one month as a volunteer in Kontogora, Nigeria, providing the Baptist medical missionary who served a 35-bed hospital there a much-needed res-pite. That journey marked the first of four similar trips to Africa in the 1960s. In the years that followed, he served in Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and India.

He also was instrumental in starting the first medical clinics along the Rio Grande as part of Texas Baptist River Ministry.

Dawson, a longtime member of First Baptist Church in Abilene, helped that congregation launch its counseling center in the 1970s—one of the first church-based counseling centers in the state. He also helped launch the first charity clinic in Taylor County and helped First Baptist start a medical clinic at what later became Ambler Baptist Church.

Even after he retired from Abilene Family Practice—and gave the medical building to Hendrick Medical Center as a charitable trust—Dawson continued to serve area residents as medical director of the Hospice of the Big Country.