Todd Roberson: God’s call often is bigger than we imagine

Todd Roberson is the president and CEO of Children at Heart Ministries in Round Rock, where he has served since 2011. From deep in the heart of one Texan, he shares his background and thoughts on leadership and family ministry. To suggest a Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated leader to be featured in this column, or to apply to be featured yourself, click here.

Background

Where else have you worked, and what were your positions?

I served as assistant business administrator, vice president of business administration, vice president of development, chief operating officer, interim president and CEO, and president and CEO of South Texas Children’s Home Ministries in Beeville 1992 to 2011.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in Lubbock and later moved to Houston.

How did you come to faith in Christ?

I was blessed by parents who modeled Christ and his love from the day I was born into their home. It came naturally to me to grow in my understanding of Christ as a child.

During revival services at First Baptist Church in Lubbock when I was in second grade, I came to the point of placing everything I knew of myself into the hands of everything I knew about Christ and his love, trusting everything else by faith in Christ.

Where were you educated, and what degrees did you receive?

• Baylor University, Bachelor of Business Administration, 1989.
• Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Master of Arts in religious education, 1992.

About ministry

Why do you feel called to your particular vocation?

My father was in full-time church ministry as the minister of education at the churches where we were members. I had a natural inclination toward business, and in high school believed God was leading me toward full-time ministry, probably as the church business administrator in a church.

I thought about going to Baylor University to major in business with an emphasis in insurance and management, as well as taking some electives in areas of ministry. During my senior year at Baylor, again during a revival service, I committed to full-time Christian ministry, still thinking I was headed toward a bivocational life in the local church.

Toward the end of my last semester at Southwestern Seminary, Jack Green called me from South Texas Children’s Home to see if I would consider coming to work in their business office. I thanked Dr. Green for calling, but respectfully declined, thinking: God called me to be a church business administrator; who is Jack Green, and what is South Texas Children’s Home; and where is Beeville, and isn’t that really close to Mexico? Being a native Texan and growing up as a Texas Baptist, you might think I knew some of these things, but I didn’t.

Dr. Green was a persistent and certain man. He continued to dialogue with my wife Jill and me. Even after I told him “no” nicely, he called one day to say he had some meetings to attend in the Dallas area, and he wondered if he could come by one evening and take Jill and me to dinner at a steak place in Fort Worth.

Now, I may not be very smart, but Jill was a school teacher, and I was a seminary student working part-time in the purchasing department at the seminary. Who were we to turn down a steak dinner and meeting a new friend?

Dr. Green convinced us to come to South Texas and see the South Texas Children’s Home and meet some of the staff. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I began to learn God’s calling often is bigger and broader than what we necessarily can imagine from our limited perspective and experience. In hindsight, it is really obvious. But at the time, it was a crossroads of trying to discern God’s calling and how that would relate to what I did vocationally.

I never could have expressed as a high school or college student this was where God was leading me. However, at just the right time and giving what I knew of myself to what I understood as God’s direction for my future, the calling I thought was to church business actually was to the business side of things related to the day-to-day ministry to children and families through the South Texas Children’s Home and related ministries of Texas Baptists.

Please tell us about your Texas Baptist institution—the breadth and nature of its work, including its mission, measures of scope, etc.

Children At Heart Ministries is a family of ministries dedicated to transforming the lives of all children and families. Our ministries provide those most vulnerable with the support and structure they need to find hope, heal and put their lives back on track.

CAHM provides administrative, organizational and other support on a no-cost basis to a family of Christian ministries comprised of Gracewood in Houston, Miracle Farm outside of Brenham, and STARRY and Texas Baptist Children’s Home headquartered in Round Rock.

Gracewood rescues and restores children and their single mothers, teaching basic tools needed to make long-term, quality-of-life improvements.

Miracle Farm is a ranch for at-risk teenage boys who want to change their lives for the better. The ranch includes an innovative horse program, vocational training and support services promoting conflict resolution, appropriate behavior, goal setting, academic success and family reunification.

STARRY nurtures children, strengthens families and restores hope through counseling, foster care and adoption. STARRY counseling services currently are in 31 counties across Texas.

Texas Baptist Children’s Home, our original ministry founded in 1950, provides a safe home and a stable family environment where children and their single mothers and youth aging out of foster care or facing homelessness can learn, grow and ultimately experience a happy, healthy future.

What aspect(s) of your institution and/or its mission do you wish more people understood?

Having grown up in Texas and being a lifelong Texas Baptist, I realize how difficult it is for our churches and their members to get their arms around all the various people served across the Texas Baptists family through the ministry institutions.

I would love Texas Baptist churches and people to understand better what they support when they give through the Cooperative Program. Each church has the wonderful opportunity to be a part of ministry work through children’s homes, universities, hospitals, retirement communities and so much more. Even visiting the exhibit area at the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting doesn’t give you much more than a snapshot of what each ministry does.

I would encourage Texas Baptists to reach out and be involved with one of the ministry organizations near them or that stirs their hearts and interests them. It is through serving, being involved, volunteering, being a trustee, a prayer partner, an advocate and other ways that you begin to realize the difference being made in the lives of people every day.

Encourage your church or a group from your church to invest time and treasure with these ministries. Suddenly, you realize the blessing it is to you as an individual or a group to be involved.

How has your institution and its mission changed since you began your career?

The stigma for people reaching out for help seems to have increased. Costs have escalated in so many ways. Fundraising is even more of a necessity.

The need to be multi-focused and diversified in ministry has grown over the years, though our mission has remained the same. We continue to exist to honor God and build a better world by serving children and strengthening families. However, our ministries have extended their footprint and services.

Residential child care has changed drastically the way children get to a children’s home. Focus has increased toward meeting the needs of the whole family when possible.

Much more has been learned about the impacts of trauma on individuals, and especially on children in their earliest years. Our organizations likewise have learned to help people work through the impacts of trauma to reach their full potential better.

How do you expect your institution and/or its mission to change in the next 10 to 20 years?

We will continue to need to do more with less. Adapting and adjusting will continue to be the name of the game. As a family of ministries, I anticipate the need to continue to diversify the ways we seek to meet the needs of children and families in our communities.

There might be a need to add another ministry or two to the family of ministries. Likewise, one of our ministries could grow and develop to the point of being self-sustaining and independent from the family of ministries.

About Baptists

Why are you Baptist?

Every moment of my life has been greatly influenced by Texas Baptist churches and institutions.

The big principles and guiding values that cause me to want to be a Texas Baptist include the Bible as God’s written, divinely inspired revelation of himself to each of us, the priesthood of every believer, soul competency, believer’s baptism, salvation because of Jesus Christ and his gift of eternal life, religious freedom, the separation of church and state, local church autonomy, missions, evangelism, the priority of social issues and Christian education.

What are the key issues facing Baptists?

Remaining relevant to current and future generations, while also remaining steadfast to traditional Baptist values and upholding biblical truths without diluting them to meet the times.

Similarly, Baptists have got to find a way to fill the proverbial donut hole in the church. Twenty to 40-year-olds are leaving in droves as they finish college, get married and begin work. Many see Sundays as just another day to relax, go to brunch and enjoy the outdoors, or consider it all as an encounter with God’s world. Others are leaving Baptist churches to be part of other denominations or nondenominational churches that “meet” their needs better.

As Texas Baptists, I hope we can come up with a consistent plan that helps this age group re-engage with the local church where they see God’s love in action and where they are empowered to help be the future leaders of the church.

About Todd

Who were/are your mentors, and how did/do they influence you?

My dad and mom, Charles and Van Roberson, have modeled the Christian life in public and in our home all my life.

Roy and Bennie Roberts, my adopted parents through Columbus Avenue Baptist Church in Waco while I was a student at Baylor, loved and cared for me during a pivotal time in life. They showed me how to reach out to others and were another set of parents who lived out their Christian faith in front of college students.

My parents-in-law, Tom and Jan Purdy, raised three great children, one of whom is my wife Jill. They have modeled the value of talking and listening, as well as reaching out to all sorts of people in all walks of life. At Thanksgiving and Christmas, you never knew who would be at the dinner table with you. It may be a college student who couldn’t go home for the holidays, a professor or neighbor who was alone for the holidays, a widow or widower recently alone, someone from another country who definitely was a long way from home. They model hospitality and compassion well.

Jill’s and my grandparents were some of the wisest, poorest, very educated, undereducated, hardworking, loving, caring, giving people we have been privileged to have in our lives.

Jack Green, Mickey Hurry, Homer Hanna, Mark Childs, Greg Huskey and T.J. Burris helped and guided me as mentors and friends in the early years of ministry with children and families at South Texas Children’s Home.

Jerry Bradley, Don Cramer, Don Forrester, Dawson Clark, Stephanie Ochoa, Kirk Kriegel, Maynard Phillips, Keith Dyer, Debbie Rippstein, Alex Hamilton, Richard Singleton, Jenny Rice Cotton and many more have helped me learn the ropes at Children at Heart Ministries. They have been in the trenches, as well as friends.

Lots of trustees of the various organizations where I have served the last 29 years. Their wisdom and wit are invaluable as we have sought and continue to seek to be the very best we can be.

Greg and Nancy Traylor, our Beeville pastor and his wife, are real people and real friends who live out their faith consistently in the church, the community and their home.

Who is your favorite person in the Bible, other than Jesus? Why?

As a boy in the temple, Samuel had the sensitivity to know he was being called, but he didn’t realize yet it was the Lord calling him (1 Samuel 3:1-21). Eli the priest helped him identify it was the Lord calling and to say the next time it happened, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

I also like the frantic father concerned for his son (Mark 9:14-29). He brought his son to Jesus’ disciples, so they would heal him from an unclean spirit. The disciples couldn’t do it. The father asked Jesus if he could, and Jesus said to him: “‘If you can?’ All things are possible for the one who believes.” The boy’s father cried out: “I do believe; help my unbelief!”

I see myself in the father’s response: “I do believe; help my unbelief!” How many times do I shortchange what God can and/or wants to do in my life? I find myself thinking, “I believe, but help my unbelief.”

When we ask God to do something, and he does it, we shouldn’t be surprised. We are reminded of his care for the birds of the air and the flowers in the field, and how much more he cares for us. Help my unbelief.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The name of South Texas Children’s Home was incorrectly edited in the fifth question and has been updated.