DALLAS—Texas Baptist Men broke ground for a headquarters for its construction ministries during a February executive board meeting and accepted invitations for missions projects in Kenya, Nigeria and Malawi.
TBM officials announced the 8,000-square-foot warehouse for equipment and trailers, workshop and office building for the TBM Builders will be named for Bill Pigott of Tyler, who has served 19 years with the builders.
In 34 years, the TBM Builders have constructed more than 1,600 churches and camp buildings, saving congregations and encampments more than $48 million in labor costs.
“Over the past 20 years, the builders have invested their labor in 48 major construction projects and saved our retreat center more than $2 million,” Alton Belew, director of Riverbend Retreat Center, near Glen Rose, told the board.
The Pigott Center, on property adjacent to the Robert E. Dixon Missions Equipping Center and John LaNoue Disaster Relief Complex in east Dallas, will cost about $600,000. Prior to the board meeting, gifts and pledges equaled about $176,000.
Water ministry
TBM’s water ministry, which provides access to pure drinking water globally, hopes to drill three wells in Kenya in March. TBM supports an ongoing community transformation ministry in Kenya that currently includes orphanages and micro-enterprise endeavors.
The water ministry also will drill a well for an orphanage, widows’ center and hospital in Eku, Nigeria, to support Walking in Love Ministries. Mary Kay Posey, whose parents founded the hospital, and her husband, Fred, launched the ministry in 2005 after the Southern Baptist International Mission Board changed its strategy and redirected funds away from the medical mission.
Africa outreach
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TBM plans to send an agricultural expert to Eku to help Walking in Love Ministries assess ways the ministry can produce more fruits, vegetables and poultry to provide food for the orphanage, hospital and a nearby leper colony.
TBM also agreed to send a pair of agricultural workers to Malawi, to work in cooperation with Foundation for Farming/Farming God’s Way. TBM volunteers will help set up demonstration garden plots in four villages.
Prison crusades
Tommy Malone, vice president for restorative justice ministries, announced Bill Glass Champions for Life asked TBM to lead Experiencing God weekends after each of its evangelistic prison crusades and enlist local volunteers to provide ongoing discipleship and mentorship.
“We’ll catch them. You’ll clean them,” Alan Mann, director of finance and operations for Bill Glass Champions for Life, said.
TBM also plans to schedule appreciation events for correctional officers outside the prison gates. Volunteers will distribute gift bags with Bibles, candy for the officers’ children and other items to say “thank you” for their service.
Malone also announced TBM will serve as host to a regional Restorative Justice Ministries Network conference in Dallas in the fall, focusing on plans to launch a program in Dallas County to help released prisoners re-enter society, modeled after the Welcome Back ministry in Tarrant County.
In reports, the TBM board learned:
• Disaster relief ministries responded to 14 situations in 2013—nine in Texas, four in other states and one in the Philippines.
Volunteers prepared 27,000 meals; provided temporary emergency childcare for more than 200 children; offered access to more than 2,500 showers and facilities to wash and dry 3,000 loads of laundry; and worked in more than 900 recovery operations, including chainsaw crews to remove storm-damaged limbs, mud-out and ash-out crews to clean homes after floods and fires, and blue-tarp roofing teams.
TBM also distributed more than 24,000 cardboard boxes to enable disaster victims to gather and safely store keepsakes they discover as they dig through the rubble of their destroyed or damaged homes.
• In 2013, 3,346 boys attended Royal Ambassador summer camps, where 423 made spiritual decisions, including 219 professions of faith in Jesus Christ.
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