Buckner & CBF sign partnership to launch KidsHeart along the border

March 31, 2003

Buckner & CBF sign partnership to
launch KidsHeart along the border
___By Marv Knox
___Editor
___PROGRESO--Buckner Baptist Benevolences and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship have launched a partnership that will provide ministry to poor children around the world and offer ministry opportunities to Baptists from across America.
___Meeting at Progreso Community Center, barely a stone's throw from Mexico, Buckner President Ken Hall and CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal committed their organizations to the new program, KidsHeart.
___Now in its 125th year, Buckner is a Baptist General Conven

IN ADDITION to Ken Hall (seated left) and Daniel Vestal, signing ceremony participants included Judy Battles of CBF Texas; Tommy Speed of Buckner Children and Family Services; Esther Fraire, a Buckner trustee; Felipe Garza of Buckner Children and Family Services; Cynthia Holmes, moderator-elect of CBF; Bob Newell, moderator of CBF Texas; and Tom Ogburn of CBF Global Missions.

tion of Texas organization that provides ministry to children, families and senior adults. CBF is a national fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches that engages in global missions.
___Through the KidsHeart agreement signed March 20, Buckner and the CBF will "establish mechanisms for new funds, prayer support, volunteer involvement, field personnel connections, church partnerships and personal missions opportunities."
___KidsHeart will minister to children and their families from Texas' poorest counties along the Rio Grande, to some of the most impoverished sections of the United States, to children's homes and orphanages in the poorest regions of Africa and Eastern Europe.
___The three-page KidsHeart agreement details almost 80 actions to be taken by the two ministry organizations. In general, Buckner will provide missions opportunities and social-service training for CBF volunteers. The CBF will supply volunteers and financial support for ministry programs at Buckner facilities.
___In the first two years of the Kids Heart partnership, CBF also will supply $120,000. Buckner ministries in colonias--poor, rural communities along the Mexico border--near Progreso, Laredo and El Paso will receive $90,000. The other $30,000 will be channeled to children Buckner serves in a Kenyan orphanage.
___KidsHeart will mean much more than the details outlined on the pages he and Vestal signed, Hall added. "Partnership can never be reduced to paper. It happens in the heart, ... based on trust. KidsHeart will make a huge difference in people's lives."
___KidsHeart also will make a significant difference in the kingdom of God, Vestal added.
___"There's something to be said for working together in every part of life," he observed. "But when it comes to the kingdom of God, there's nothing so important as working together."
___Buckner and CBF were drawn together because of a common purpose--following the divine mandate of Jesus Christ to share the gospel and to meet human needs in Jesus' name, Vestal said.
___"Partnering," the key concept behind KidsHeart, is a word that will become familiar to Baptists, not just as an idea but in practice, he predicted.
___"For CBF, this is a historic day," Vestal said. "We see this as a great opportunity for the future. Today, the two of us sign the documents as Christian brothers, fellow Baptists and as leaders of organizations to help each other help people in a spirit of mutual trust and mutual respect."
___KidsHeart expands an existing working relationship between Buckner and CBF to minister along the Texas-Mexico border.
___Buckner already has supported CBF's Rural Poverty Initiative, designed to minister to people in the nation's poorest counties. Four of them are in Texas, stretching along the Rio Grande.
___"This is a great day for Texas, for CBF and for Buckner," declared Jorge Zapata, Border Ministries coordinator for Buckner and the master of ceremonies at the KidsHeart signing event. "We're here to celebrate God's work."
___CBF volunteers will make that celebration tangible this summer, when it will sponsor a hands-on missions project in Progreso, said Judy Battles, administrator of CBF's Texas chapter.
___Thirty to 50 churches are expected to spend the week of July 21 doing Vacation Bible School, sports camps, and home repair and maintenance.
___Russ Dilday of Buckner News Service and Lance Wallace of CBF Communications also contributed to this article
___

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