March 31, 1999

Offering goal targets church starts
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___CEDAR HILL--A $5.5 million goal for the 1999 Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas mis-sions has been set by Texas Wo-man's Missionary Union's Ex-ecutive Board.
___The board set the goal and approved allocations at its March 23-25 meeting at Mount Lebanon Baptist Encampment, near Dallas.
___Designed

SHOWING OFF the goal for this year's Mary Hill Davis Offering are BGCT Executive Director Bill Pinson, Texas WMU Director Joy Fenner, Texas WMU President Jeane Law and BGCT President Russell Dilday. (Photo by Marv Knox)

to help churches and associations advance the priorities of the Texas 2000 strategic emphasis, the offering will provide $902,500 for sharing the gospel of Jesus; $158,000 for ministry to human needs; $100,000 for developing Christian families; $1.45 million to equip God's people for ministry; and $2.89 million to strengthen and start churches.
___New allocations for 1999 include:
___ $25,000 for repairs and improvements on the Eula Mae Henderson Chapel at Hispanic Baptist Theological Seminary in San Antonio.
___ $25,000 for a new series of training videos in Spanish for Sunday school workers in Hispanic churches.
___ $5,000 to enable a women's task force to design, produce and distribute information about training opportunities in various aspects of restorative justice ministries for women.
___ $5,000 to encourage the development of model churches that would complete the "LifeCall" process of equipping laity for ministry.
___The largest line item is $1.5 million to help churches start new churches. Any offerings received over the basic goal will be allocated to church starts and to the Baptist General Conven-tion of Texas "Putting God's Word to Work" media campaign that is being piloted in three areas.
___Diana Garland, coordinator of graduate social work education at Baylor University, presented information about the school's new master's degree program designed to integrate faith and social work. Texas WMU will provide $10,000 in scholarship support for Texas women in the program, with $5,000 from reserve funds and $5,000 made possible by earned income from the WorldTouch endowment fund.
___At the recommendation of the finance committee, the board authorized giving $20,000 from operating reserves to the building of Baylor's Truett Seminary. The funds would be used in the theological training school to create an area dedicated to WMU and the missionary contributions of Texas Baptist women.
___The board also approved $50,000 from reserve funds to go toward "Project: Advance in Missions." Executive Director-Treasurer Joy Fenner explained that Texas WMU will launch the project in June 1999, deploying staff into the field in response to churches' needs as they seek to move forward in their missions visions.
___The board affirmed a report from the WorldTouch administrative team. In addition to funding a graduate-level scholarship to the Baylor social work program, the endowment's earning also made possible funds to create a statewide missionary parents' network and to provide grants to associations for specific missions awareness and involvement projects.
___Three items that previously received Mary Hill Davis Of-fering funding--the "Re-entry Retreat" for college-age missionary kids returning to the United States, the Acteen Acti-vators program and TASK associational leadership development--are being funded through the endowment's earnings.
___The board voted to collect an offering for WorldTouch annually at Texas Leadership Conference and at the Texas WMU annual meeting.
___The board also heard a report from the Eula Mae Henderson scholarship committee, which had approved new scholarships for Amy McLin, Julia Petter and Carol Story at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. The committee renewed scholarships for Anne Burton at Truett Seminary and for Cecilia Solis and Cynthia Cloues at Southwestern Seminary.
___

---

Frontpage / Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!