Texas Baptist Ministry Award recipients honored

A Southeast Texas hospital chaplain, a West Texas college campus ministry director and a Central Texas lay couple involved in restorative justice ministry are the 2009 recipients of the Texas Baptist Ministry Awards.

Baylor University and the Baptist Standard confer the awards annually to recognize excellent ministers and highlight models for ministry.

David Cross, director of chaplaincy at the Baptist Hospital of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, has been honored with the W. Winfred Moore Award for lifetime achievement.

Cross has served 27 years as a chaplain with Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas, working the last 25 years as director of the chaplaincy de-partment.

He leads a staff of four fulltime chaplains and numerous volunteers, in addition to performing the typical on-call duties of a hospital chaplain.

In 2002, Cross created the hospital’s Faith Community Nursing program. Now recognized by the International Parish Nurse Resource Center, the program has certified 54 nurses ministering in 160 churches.

He has been a resource regionally to churches, civic organizations, businesses and government agencies—as well as the health care community—in the areas of stress, interpersonal relations, grief, death and dying, and organ and tissue transplantation.

Cross was director of the Pastoral Counseling Services of Central Texas and director of counseling and community services for Waco Baptist Association from December 1979 to January 1982. During that time, he and his wife, Jacquie, served as missionaries in Christian social ministry with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Home Mission Board.

Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our headlines in your inbox on Thursdays Email Address Buddy Young

Buddy Young, director of Baptist Student Ministry at West Texas A&M University in Canyon and coordinator of the South Padre Island Beach Reach ministry, is recipient of the George W. Truett Award for ministerial excellence.

In 1980, while he was attending seminary and serving the Baptist Student Union at the University of Texas at Dallas, Young took a small group of Christian students to South Padre Island to share their faith.

That began an evangelistic ministry he continued as BSU director at Alvin and Brazosport colleges and that he brought to students at the Canyon campus when he became BSU director at West Texas A&M in 1988.

The ministry officially was launched the next year with a handful of students primarily from Texas Baptist Student Unions. The first few years, volunteers primarily participated in street and beach evangelism. By 1984, the ministry began providing free rides, water and beach first aid stations to the Spring Breakers.

The outreach has developed into a ministry involving hundreds of Christian students from multiple campuses throughout the United States in evangelistic outreach to their peers during Spring Break on South Padre Island.

This year, Beach Reach involved 525 participants from 17 campus and collegiate church ministries who touched the lives of more than 20,000 students. They saw 21 people baptized in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since the beginning of Beach Reach, more than 5,000 Christian students have been trained in personal evangelism, and at least 3,000 people have accepted Christ.

In 1998, Beach Reach spawned similar ministries in Panama City Beach, Fla., and other popular Spring Break destinations around the country.

Charles and Mary Alice Wise

Charles and Mary Alice Wise from Trinity Baptist Church in Gatesville are recipients of the Marie Mathis Award for lay ministry. The Wises have spent 40 years in volunteer prison ministry, including 16 years ministering to women on Death Row.

Wise first became involved in prison ministry with Bill Glass and his Champions for Life Ministries. That initial experience led to a long-term commitment to leading weekly Bible studies for prisoners.

When a federal judge ordered Texas to close the Gatesville State School for Boys and Mountain View School in 1979, and those facilities became correctional units for female inmates, the Wises believed God brought a mission field to their town. And they responded to that missions opportunity.

Since 1993, the Wises—sometimes individually, more often together—have ministered to women on Death Row at the Mountain View Unit. They also have ministered to the family members of Death Row inmates, even accompanying them to the Huntsville Hos-pitality House for the hours surrounding executions.

In the last nine years, Mrs. Wise particularly has devoted much of her energy to launching the Central Texas Hospitality House, a nondenominational, nonprofit ministry to prisoners’ families. She serves on the board of directors for the ministry, designed to provide a safe place of refuge for the visiting family members of prisoners incarcerated in the Gatesville area.