GALVESTON?The Pregnancy and Parenting Support Center serving Galveston County is trying to raise more than $20,000 to purchase 500 cars seats for the smallest victims of the biggest storm to hit this island in over a century.

Center Director Christy Anne Dickson said amidst all of the aid and support flowing into Galveston, the babies and infants of more than 900 mothers have not received much needed, age-specific care.

“The needs have been horrendous,” Dickson said from a small, white clapboard chapel building serving as a temporary registration and distribution point for the ministry, which is part of the North American Mission Board’s network of pregnancy resource centers and is affiliated with Galveston Baptist Association. The center’s Galveston office took in eight feet of water when Hurricane Ike surged onto the island Sept. 13.

This is the fourth time since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina that the PPSC has transformed from a counseling and support center for pregnant women to a relief organization. But the personal devastation from this past storm has been, by far, the worst Dickson has seen.

“We never dreamed how overwhelming this need would be,” she said. Of those registering for assistance for their children, Dickson said 90-95 percent have lost everything they owned.

Following the storm, food and shelter for displaced families were provided by the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, the Salvation Army, the Red Cross and other charitable organizations. Those support systems, though appreciated, Dickson said, met the basic needs of children and adults but was lacking in the care of babies and toddlers. The Red Cross tent shelter, for example, had cots but no cribs. And the homes filled with extra family members left homeless by the storm had infants sleeping on couches or the floor.

Dickson pointed out that babies need formula, baby food, diapers, wipes, proper bedding and portable play centers. She said some rocking chairs, baby swings and portable cribs and play pens were donated to the Red Cross tent shelter but the need for such items is still great throughout the county.

And transporting babies and infants in cars has been made risky with the loss of car seats. Galveston residents who evacuated on buses provided by the county and state were limited to what they could take. Car seats were not allowed. Families returned to houses and apartments ruined by the flood waters and all baby furnishings destroyed. As state law requires children under the age of five and less than 36 inches in height be restrained in a car seat, Dickson said collecting and distributing the seats is a high priority.

“We have women coming to us in tears because police are ticketing them,” she said.

Dickson addressed the issue with the Galveston Police Department and the two agencies are working together resolve the problem. Now, when police stop a vehicle for a car seat violation, Dickson said instead of a ticket officers will give the driver a card instructing them how they can contact the PPSC and register to receive a new, free car seat.

While registering for the car seats, mothers can also sign-up for relief help from the PPSC. Dickson said the ministry is committed to the long-term effort of providing moms with the essential supplies for caring for their children. When moms first register they go home with a baby bag filled with care supplies and can return two days later to pick up a bag of baby and infant clothing.

The moms can then return once a week for supplies of diapers, wipes, food and formula. Dickson said the center will take registration through mid-November for women with newborns through children 3 years of age. Dickson anticipates care for the families will continue into January when the city’s infrastructure is expected to be operational. As of late October, Dickson said more then 900 women, representing approximately 1,300 infants, have registered for relief.

Dickson reported that the women asking for help run the gamut of the socio-economic spectrum. Although the former Galveston center stands in the midst of eight housing projects and served many of the women from those facilities, Hurricane Ike has been the great equalizer. Many of the women were self-sufficient and helped provide for their families but the storm took not only their personal possessions but their means of earning a living.

One such client is America Maldenado. She lost her job in a Galveston dental office when the facility was flooded. Although she has been assured by her employer that her job is secure when the office is up and running again, Maldenado was without a paycheck until the unemployment checks began coming in. In the meantime, Maldenado and her husband were not only caring for their 1-year-old son but several other family members who had moved into their Texas City home after their homes were damaged or destroyed in the storm.

After registering for unemployment, Maldenado was trying to leave the crowded facility but was stopped in her tracks by a line of women that led to a table where the Parenting and Pregnancy Support Center was taking registrations. It wasn’t long after she signed up for support that Maldenado began volunteering for the organization.

In order to remain eligible for the relief unemployment, Maldenado said she was required to spend 30 hours a week looking for a job. The task was overwhelming due in part to the fact that there was only one vehicle being used by all 12 people staying in her home. She also viewed the task as pointless as she would be returning to her job, hopefully, by January. She did not want to get hired only to have to quit when she returned to the dental office. So she asked her case worker if she could perform community service in lieu of a job search. The request was approved and Maldenado knew where she wanted to give her time.

“I know what it’s like to need the help. What little money I had went to other needs.” She enjoys the work at the PPSC so much she hopes to continue volunteering once she returns to her job. Dickson has been grateful for Maldenado’s help because she is able to communicate with the center’s Spanish-speaking clients.

Dickson said indispensable support for the relief ministry has come from a sister pregnancy center in Lake Jackson. PPSC takes orders each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the Galveston church and faxes half of the requests to the Lake Jackson office. Orders are filled Tuesday and Thursday and brought to Galveston Wednesday and Friday by Lake Jackson volunteers. One delivery from Lake Jackson included “MREs for baby”?brown paper sacks filled by a group of kindergartners with an assortment of juice and baby food. Dickson said all the requests could never be filled without the help of their partner agency.

Other assistance has come from churches like one in Eastland, which in late October was preparing to ship 14 pallets of diapers and wipes to the center.

Dickson said she hopes individuals and churches across Texas will support the relief ministry. The center has made a long-term commitment to the mothers and their babies and will need the support of Christians across the state to meet those needs. She recommended Sunday School classes “adopt” a baby and take up a donation to cover the $41 cost for the car seats.

Any donations are welcome but monetary contributions for the car seats and related disaster relief must be designated as such. In the memo portion of the check indicate disaster relief. To contribute, checks may be made payable to CPSC, P.O. Box 164, Texas City, TX 77592. The Pregnancy and Parenting Support Center can be reached at 409-945-2888 or cpctxcty@swbell.net.

EULESS?”The Holy Spirit in You” will be the theme of the Empower Evangelism Conference Feb. 16-18 at First Baptist Church of Euless in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

The conference will feature music from Ricky Skaggs, Charles Billingsley, The Booth Brothers, Curtis Brewer, Dawn Smith Jordan, Philip Griffin, and John McKay.

Scheduled preachers and speakers include John Bisagno, Jonathan Falwell, Lee Strobel, Will Graham, Ed Stetzer, Sammy Gilbreath, Don Harms, Fred Luter, Jimmy Pritchard, Jerry Spencer and Jerry Vines.

“It is my prayer that God will use this conference to awaken a deeper surrender to do the work of evangelism in the lives of all who attend and their contagious commitment will spread across Texas in every Baptist church,” SBTC Evangelism Director Don Cass said.

Look for stories about the conference in upcoming editions of the Southern Baptist TEXAN.

You’ll hear a lot at this year’s annual SBTC convention about our 10-year anniversary. In a fellowship of state conventions where several are over 100 years old, 10 years seems paltry by comparison. Even my Hoosier Baptist friends celebrated 50 years this past month in their new work context. I think 10 years for our convention is more significant than our later birthdays will be, though.

There have been times in human history where birthdays were very big occasions because they indicated another year of a person’s survival. That’s especially true of early birthdays?life is more fragile in its early days. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention has moved in 10 years from being an iffy proposition to being as permanent as any mortal institution can be judged “permanent.” That’s big and notable.

Because we tend to think in round numbers, many of you who attended that first convention in 1998 doubtless wondered what the SBTC might be in 10 years. Happily, most of you got it wrong. The baby convention prospered in ways beyond your asking or imagination. God used any number of large and small events (and people) to build up a large fellowship of churches committed to Great Commission ministries. It’s really an amazing story even though it was not punctuated with war, famine, or scandal.

The numbers tell a story as our convention grew and prospered. A thorough selection of ministries and resources also stand to testify that God has built a new missionary channel for Texas Southern Baptists. The SBTC has become far more than it was on Nov. 10, 1998.

Let’s give honor to whom honor is due, though. The structure of the convention’s ministry is built on a foundation laid by our first leaders. Clearly, they laid that foundation on the rock. Earlier this year, the last of the SBTC’s original board members completed their tenures. It is natural and regrettable that when a leader “retires” from prominence, the next generation begins to forget his service. I hope we might delay that forgetting a little while. Remembering, as we continue along the way, is appropriate and beneficial to us all.

For the most part, the original SBTC Executive Board was drawn from the Southern Baptists of Texas Board of Directors that preceded the convention. These men and women planned the new convention and were elected to govern it in 1998. Before that, they worked hard to reform another state convention?some of them for well over a decade. Throughout the years preceding even the decision to form a new convention, these pioneers were regularly pilloried in the largest Baptist state paper in the Southern Baptist Convention. They also lost every vote.

The conventional wisdom, then and now, among those who have another view of state convention is that the SBT was just made up of cussed, fractious people. Many thought that the Southern Baptists of Texas wanted to start a new convention from the beginning. They were determined people but their goal was not to divide Texas Baptists, even as recently as 10 months before the new convention’s constituting. Instead, SBT leaders worked to reform the convention that already existed. They failed, though. And every failure put them further away from any effective influence over state convention business.

Either Southern Baptists in Texas would start something new or they would accept a worsening status quo in their only state missions partner. As courageous as their tenacity was in trying for years to reform their state convention, the decision to start over added discernment to that courage. Add to those virtues a flurry of hard work leading up to November 1998, and there we were.

There we were, but just barely. Our churches were small and few. The convention’s ministries depended on one full-time and one part-time employee. Many of the churches inclined to affiliate with the new convention were out of the habit of giving through the traditional Cooperative Program?they’d been giving around their state convention. We had no place, no equipment, and no track record. New work conventions begun since the 1950s often had an already-established convention that participated in founding and funding the newer convention. The SBTC had no such assistance. But the growth from that point was rapid, even dramatic. That’s the part of the story you’ve likely heard. Someone, several someones, had to invest themselves in the effort long before it grew and matured. In any worthwhile organization, such founders are worthy of honor.

I do not recommend devoting our convention to looking back. The SBTC has not been that kind of fellowship at any point in its life. In the early days, there was simply too much work to do. Today, we see farther and more broadly than we could have in 1998. Our mission is even larger; the time even shorter. We look forward but we do so with the heartening knowledge that those who preceded us in this work are still among us. They have set a good example and still do that. As future leaders accept the torch from their hands, they need to remember who carried it from the starting line.

Here is a list, drawn from the final Southern Baptists of Texas Board of Directors and the first Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Executive Board: Steven Bain, Dorothy Barker, Roy Baxley, John Brady, Alan Burkhalter, Steve Burns, Stan Coffey, Scott Copeland, Randy Davis, Ed Ethridge, David Fannin, Dwayne Finley, Ernest Gregory, Dan Grindstaff, George Harris, Rudy Hernandez, Al Kawamotto, Othell LaFerney, Randy McDonald, John Meador, Brant O’Hair, Casey Perry, Eulas Ready, Billy Ross, Miles Seaborn, Rick Scarborough, Dee Slocum, Gerald Smith, Danny Souder, Lou Ann Stallings, Bill Sutton, Eral Sutton, Ted Tedder, Rocky Weatherford, Don Workman, and Skeet Workman.

You’ll see many of these folks at our meeting this year. Tell them thanks for being with the SBTC from the start. Some of them are retired but many aren’t. These pioneers are part of our convention’s present and future, just as you are. But they’ve seen it all from the beginning. They cast their lot with a new and unproven endeavor during a time when most everyone else saw little hope. As we celebrate what God has done since 1998 and the future he seems to be opening before us, join me in honoring the SBTC leaders he used to start the whole thing.

It is finally here! Ten years in the making. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention celebrates a decade of ministry. All praise goes to the Lord Jesus.

Oftentimes people think of the convention as a meeting. Only once a year, usually in the fall, do the messengers of the churches gather and conduct business. Over the life of the SBTC very little business has taken place on the floor. The messengers have been pleased with the direction of the work. One observer commented that the SBTC is the happiest group of Baptists on the planet. It is all about the Lordship of Jesus and the grace of God. With all of this noted, the convention is not the meeting that takes place in the fall.

When some speak of the convention they are referring to the staff. The SBTC has a wonderful staff. They love the Lord Jesus. They affirm the Baptist Faith and Message confessional statement (2000). The staff works hard to assist the churches and associations in Texas. Partnering with the Southern Baptist Convention, the staff helps Texans touch the world. While the staff is an unusually gifted group of the Lord’s servants, they are not the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

You send messengers to that annual business meeting. You facilitate the work of the staff through the convention’s budget. You have ownership. You fund the missionaries. You come together to strengthen struggling sister churches. You provide for the college student. You provide workers for the disaster relief teams. You make the news that is printed. You plant new churches. You evangelize through Crossover. The Cooperative Program exists because of you. The SBTC is a confessional fellowship of churches. You are the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. There’s the right answer.

Celebrate the 10 years. It is a milestone. Give God the glory. He alone is worthy. Together let’s continue over the next 10 years to be the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.

The Southern Baptist TEXAN recorded a brief interview on Oct. 30 with SBTC Disaster Relief Director Jim Richardson, asking him to summarize the relief work as it stands a month and a half following Hurricane Ike’s devastation along the Gulf Coast. What follows is a transcript of that interview.

TEXAN: First off, after Hurricane Ike, how many meals did Southern Baptists of Texas Convention-led kitchens serve?
RICHARDSON: Our DR volunteers served a total of 881,258 meals. That includes all over Southeast Texas?Galveston, Huntsville, Port Arthur, Lufkin and Tyler. Galveston was the last feeding operation, and we served our last meal on Oct. 26.

TEXAN: Is it possible to quantify the spiritual fruit from Ike relief?
RICHARDSON: We know of at least 60 people who made first-time professions of faith. Of course, we pass the names of those people on to local churches for follow up.

TEXAN: What’s the next step for SBTC disaster relief?
RICHARDSON: Hurricane Ike is passed. What we need right now are more trained volunteers. We have about 2,000 trained SBTC volunteers. What we need in the state of Texas are 5,000 trained volunteers. In order to provide this type of ministry, it takes people who are willing to be trained. Five thousand sounds like a lot of people, but realize that on any given day only about 10 percent of those people are available, because of family obligations, sickness, work. And it takes a lot of people to respond to disasters such as Ike.

TEXAN: If someone is interested in training for disaster relief, how do they begin?
RICHARDSON: We will come to their church or association to get their people trained. They simply need to contact our office, 877-953-7282 or jrichardson@sbtexas.com, and we can work on scheduling a training in their area.

TEXAN: Who fits the disaster relief profile?
RICHARDSON: The DR profile is anybody in Southern Baptist life. We have people who come from small churches. We have people who come from large churches. We have people who are in their 80s. We have people who are 18. It runs the gamut of Southern Baptist life. The only thing is, people have to be at least 18 years old.

TEXAN: What’s the SBTC doing as far as recovery at this point?
RICHARDSON: We are still working in Port Arthur, Bridge City, Orange, Cove, Vidor, Galveston and Southeast Texas in general. We’re still working on mud-out, trying to get those cleanup needs met. And then over the next year or so we’re going to have a very extended commitment to help people rebuild, help churches rebuild, and help families rebuild their homes after Ike. That’s working through Nehemiah’s Vision, based in Vidor, which is partnering with us in this as they have after Rita since 2005. Again, if someone is interested in that, they can contact our office for more information on how they can help. So our biggest challenges right now are to continue the rebuild process and train new volunteers.

The following is a list (not exhaustive) of churches the TEXAN could determine were damaged in Hurricane Ike. To volunteer to help or to adopt a church, contact the SBTC office. For rebuild questions, call Jim Richardson toll-free at 877-953-7282 or jrichardson@sbtexas.com. To adopt a church or to provide financial aid, contact Mike Smith toll-free at 877-953-7282 or msmith@sbtexas.com.

Tryon Evergreen Baptist Association
Northridge, Conroe: Broken water heater/flooding.
Oak Shade, Cleveland: Damage.
Rainbow, Rye: Clean up, needs 15 passenger van; electrical-general; construction-partial reconstruction of church needed.

Trinity River Baptist Association
FBC Dayton: Limited damage.
FBC High Island: Damage to church and parsonage.
Calvary, Liberty: Some damage to their church building; new roof being added.
First, Daisetta: Minor damage.

Gulf Coast Baptist Association
Jones Creek Baptist, Jones Creek: Work has begun on repairs through insurance.

Galveston Baptist Association
San Leon Community Church, San Leon: Church, education building and parsonage all received major damage. Need rebuilt education building and three to four months help in supporting pastor.
FBC Port Bolivar: Church destroyed. Needs to be guttedto try to save some walls; parsonage is gone. Needs a mud-out crew and a partner church.
Crystal Beach Community Church: Merged with FBC Crystal Beach.FBC Crystal Beach had some damage. Needs a partner church.
Central Baptist, Galveston: Water, roof damage. Needs a church to partner with.
University, Galveston: Minor damage. Needs a partner church.
West End, Galveston: Severe damage.
Anchor Baptist, Kemah: Churchwindows blown out; pastor’s books and computer lost.

Golden Triangle Baptist Association
Cove Baptist Church, Orange: Church had major damage.
Fellowship Baptist Church, Bridge City: Major cleanup and repair needs to church. Pastor has financial needs.
FBC Bevil Oaks: Major damage.
FBC Bridge City: Cleanup, maybe financial help.
FBC Hamshire: Brick wall on worship center damaged
FBC Stowell: Water damage to gym.
FBC Vidor: Major water damage.
FBC West Orange: Damage sustained.
Ridgewood Baptist, Port Arthur: general damage.
Liberty Baptist Church, Bridge City: Water damage.
Second Baptist Church, Bridge City: Major damage.

Southern Baptists of SE Texas
FBC, Gilchrist: Total loss. FBC Gilchrist might not rebuild because the damage was so extensive.

San Jacinto Association
Baker Road, Baytown: Roof damage, sanctuary flooded; must gut sanctuary/education building.
Baptist Temple, Baytown: Water damage in entrance to building.
Bayshore, La Porte: Outside damage; water damage in sanctuary.
Cedar Bayou, Baytown: Water damage.
Communidad, Crosby: Roof damage.
Memorial, Channelview: Minor damage, need new roof on education building.
Second Baptist, Highlands: Steeple gone, sanctuary flooded, roof damage.

South Texas Baptist Association
Highlands Baptist, Highland: Water damage. Might need some help.
Antioch Baptist, Houston: Roof and water damage. Might need some support.
Farrington Baptist Church, Houston: Water damage.

Union Baptist Association
(The following reported moderate to severe damage.)
Calvary Korean Baptist Church, Houston
Humble area’s First Baptist
Iglesia Cristiana Bautista Eben-Ezer
Korean FBC, Pasadena
New Life Community Church
Second Baptist, Houston

(A list of affiliated churches and their contact information is available online at sbtexas.com. Click the affiliated churches link.)