July 29, 2002
Baylor's social work school makes unique impact on churches, ministry
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___FORT WORTH--Baylor University's School of Social Work fills a unique niche in Christian higher education that helps Texas Baptists and Baptists worldwide, Dean Diana Garland told a gathering of alumni and students June 28.
___"There is no other accredited graduate social work education in Baptist life--not Southern Baptist, not American Baptist, not National Baptist," Garland reported at the luncheon held in downtown Fort Worth.
___"There is none in Presbyterian or Episcopalian or any of the other moderate and mainline denominations," she added. "Our only colleagues in faith-based educational institutions are Catholic and Seventh-day Adventists and Free Methodists."
___Baylor, she said, has picked up the mantle of the dismantled Carver School of Church Social Work. That school, of which she once was dean, was closed by fundamentalist trustees and administrators at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
___During the decade of its accreditation, the Carver School was the only seminary-based master's degree program in social work with national accreditation.
___Baylor, which Garland said had "one of the premier undergraduate social work programs in the nation" for 30 years, had considered developing a master's program but decided it was not needed because of Southern's program.
___After the Carver School closed, however, Baylor stepped up to the plate and expanded its program. Baylor's graduate social work program was accredited last August.
___"Baylor is not simply recreating what was destroyed at Southern," Garland said. "We are building a new program that prepares social workers to work in both public settings and in church leadership and the missions and ministry programs of the church. We believe that wherever social workers care for persons in crisis--whether a state agency or a city hospital or with American Red Cross emergency response teams or protecting children from abuse--they need to understand faith as a significant dimension in human experience."
___Faith also motivates many students to choose social work as a profession, she explained. "Our students do not come because they see social work as a way to make a lot of money. They come because they feel called to serve and to care for others. Our program helps them respond to that calling in their lives."
___In response to that calling, Baylor places social work students in faith-based contexts for training, Garland said. "Our students are doing internships in congregations, in faith-based family and children's services programs, in hospitals and in community organizing."
___Baylor's School of Social Work works closely with Buckner Benevolences, for example, and supplies trained workers for other faith-based programs in the state.
___Because of the unique role it fills, Baylor's School of Social Work is emphasizing research and writing that will explain the faith connection to social work, Garland said. "The research and literature base for professional leadership in social work and the church is extremely limited."
___As examples, she cited two major research projects currently in progress at Baylor.
___The Lilly Endowment is backing a "Service and Faith" project to study the impact on the faith of churchgoers who involve themselves in missions and ministry.
___"We have assumed that faith leads us to serve, but we are studying the rest of that cycle," Garland said. "How does service, then, influence our faith? Does it deepen or challenge or change us? And if it does, how can church leaders guide Christians into making those important connections between their service and the faith that motivates them?"
___A second project is funded by Pew Charitable Trusts. In it, Baylor students and faculty will study the "faith factor" in faith-based organizations.
___"How are faith-based organizations and congregations serving poor urban communities, and what is it about the fact that they are mission-driven that makes them unique?" Garland asked. "How can they be more effective in collaborating with others and at the same time preserving and strengthening their identity as faith-based organizations?"
___This research will expand the Christian witness far beyond Texas, she said. "From our research, we will be providing the knowledge for technical assistance to congregations and faith-based organizations to address the problems of urban poverty all over the nation."
___Baylor's School of Social Work also serves Texas churches and communities in a variety of other ways, Garland said. She cited editorial direction of the "Family Ministry" journal, work of the Institute for Gerontological Studies and the Center for Family and Community Ministries, as well as a variety of conferences.
___Currently, Baylor has 125 students in its undergraduate social work degree program and 60 in its graduate social work program. About one-third of the graduate students are enrolled in a dual degree program between the university and Baylor's Truett Theological Seminary.
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