The young man from the Rio Grande Valley who called the SBTC DR chaplain hotline last week said he needed help dealing with fear. The victim of a recent physical assault, he was afraid of contracting COVID-19.

He told chaplain Mike Flanagan that he had not been to church in many years.

Flanagan shared the gospel with the young man, asking him if he would like to pray to trust Christ with his life.

Without hesitation, the caller said, “Sure.”

“We prayed together and as soon as we were done, I recognized an immediate change in his voice,” Flanagan said. “Whereas before he sounded weak and afraid, now he spoke with confidence. It was like having a conversation with two different people, which, in reality, it was.”

To help people distressed by the coronavirus crisis like the young South Texas man, trained Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Disaster Relief chaplains like Flanagan are manning the toll-free hotline at 1-800-921-3287 from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. daily, with voicemail available after hours.

The hotline began operations in March, but has seen a recent uptick in callers in April, said Gordon Knight, SBTC DR director of chaplains.

“Sadly, as long as this goes, the further we get into the crisis, the more calls we will get,” Knight told the TEXAN. 

Currently volunteers take turns fielding the calls, Knight said.

“Sometimes four walls can close in on you,” SBTC DR chaplain Brenda Jansen told Texarkana’s KTAL NBC 6 recently. 

“When people are going through a crisis, usually the question is ‘why me?’ So, we can take them to Scripture … read Psalms 46, or Psalm 91, or go to Proverbs,” Jansen said. 

“Some people think the Bible is old, but when they see that it’s the same thing happening from generation to generation, that gives them comfort,” Jansen said, adding that disasters cause many people to think about eternity.

“We all know that we’re all going to die someday, and so this gives them a chance to pause and think about, where would I be?” she said.

While providing spiritual comfort and prayer is the hotline’s main purpose, the chaplains are prepared to connect callers with local churches or resources to meet immediate needs—such as food or medicine—if the callers share their names and contact information, Knight said.

The SBTC DR chaplain hotline is one of several begun by nine Baptist state conventions in eight states thus far, including New York and California, he added.

SBTC DR task force member Daniel White provided technical assistance to help set up the New York hotline, Knight said.

While most calls have come from Texas, the hotline had received calls from as far away as Massachusetts and Florida from people who had seen news reports mentioning the number, Knight added.

Soon after the hotline was established, chaplain Dennis Parish fielded a call from a middle-aged woman from North Texas who had pre-existing health conditions that made her fearful of the virus.

“We began to talk. I asked her how I could pray for her. She was a Christian. She belonged to a Sunday school class. But she felt so isolated,” Parish recalled.

“I prayed that the peace that passes all understanding would just settle on her beyond that which she could comprehend,” Parish said, recommending the woman alleviate her isolation by phoning members of her Sunday school class to check on them and see how she could pray for them. 

“I can do that,” she said, brightening, finally ending the call with these words: “You have blessed me. You don’t understand how much this phone call means to me.”

“God takes turmoil and he makes good,” Knight said.

As the COVID-19 pandemic and its ensuing economic crisis continue, the churches and entities of the Southern Baptist Convention are no exception to the effects being felt in every sector. 

For the convention’s six seminaries, the last two months have forced drastic changes, including moving students off campus, transitioning classroom instruction to an online format and adjusting budgets.

The TEXAN submitted questions to each of the seminaries to gain a clearer picture of how COVID-19 is affecting these institutions, among them inquiries regarding recruitment prospects, student enrollment, housing occupancy, finances and expectations for Cooperative Program giving.

The majority of responses indicated that, for many of these questions, it’s too early to tell precisely how extensive the impact will be.

“At this point many of these questions cannot be answered with any accuracy because we do not know as of early April of 2020, even when on-campus classes may resume and under what circumstances,” said Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “At this point, it is clear that the COVID-19 challenges faced by our seminaries are nothing less than massive.”

Most of the seminaries said that they are hopeful but cautious regarding fall enrollment, acknowledging that many of the traditional methods by which they would be recruiting students—or retaining current ones—are unavailable.

A statement from Gateway Seminary said the school is “focused on reaching prospective students through texting, phone calls and email” and that “more than 1,000 individuals have been personally contacted” by Gateway staff.

“It is too soon to know in granular detail how the coronavirus is altering the plans of current and prospective students,” said Adam Greenway, president of Southwestern Seminary. In order to adapt to a social-distancing world, they chose to move some of their planned recruiting events online, holding Virtual Preview sessions for prospective students.

Midwestern Seminary president Jason Allen said, “For us, we are projecting hours taken to be down this fall, but it is too early to tell by exactly how much. As far as applications initiated and completed, we are trending very similar to where we were this time last year. Again, it is still a bit too early to tell, but we are definitely planning for a downturn.”

Ryan Hutchinson, executive vice president for Southeastern Seminary, said fall numbers “continue to look strong.”

Hutchinson also indicated that, while some students have been forced to drop classes due to family circumstances, Southeastern still has record enrollment this semester and “the percentage that has dropped at this point is not much different than a normal semester.”

Mohler said that, while Southern is being forced to cancel graduation ceremonies for May—something many colleges and universities are doing to comply with national and local recommendations regarding social distancing—they are continuing with registration for summer classes, which they expect to be held online.

“We’re committed to return to on-campus instruction just as soon as this is possible and advisable,” Mohler added.

Greenway noted that SWBTS’s new 8-week online courses, planned to begin April 27, were already “in the final planning stages” before the seminary experienced any disruption due to COVID-19.

While the seminaries went into varying degrees of detail, each acknowledged they expect the economic end of the pandemic will affect their upcoming budget.

Gateway said that although they didn’t have firm data, they are “anticipating and budgeting for a decrease in CP giving.” According to Hutchinson, Southeastern has instituted a hiring freeze and “a halt to most non-critical spending,” though CP giving remained ahead of budget for the year.

Allen said that Midwestern “has taken a conservative budgetary approach towards next year as we anticipate that COVID-19 will have a negative impact on revenue sources,” though he again acknowledged that it is too early to know exactly what that impact will be. At Midwestern’s March 30 board of trustees meeting, Allen reported the seminary has “in reserve nearly one year of operating expenses” in cash and unrestricted financial assets.

“The leaders of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College are currently assessing the potential impacts of COVID-19 on enrollment and finances,” a statement from NOBTS read. “A clearer picture of the impacts will come after the executive committee of the board of trustees meets later this month.”

Mohler and Greenway went into more detail regarding the financial impact for Southern and Southwestern.

“We already know that we’re going to be facing very significant financial challenges. We have lost virtually all auxiliary income, which at Southern Seminary amounts to millions of dollars,” Mohler said. “We also know that our endowments and investments have suffered significant loss in the midst of the economic downturn.”

Greenway, noting the “historically negative effects on the American economy due to necessary governmental measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 pandemic,” pointed out that SWBTS has already taken drastic measures to cut costs, including “budgetary reductions of approximately 25 percent campus-wide through a combination of faculty and staff position deletions, furloughs, and discontinuation of certain academic programs.”

Additionally, during their April 7 board meeting Southwestern trustees deferred action on the budget until July and authorized the seminary administration to execute special distributions of the unrestricted portion of the seminary endowment through the end of 2021. Unrestricted endowments were last reported totaling $13.3 million, according to Baptist Press.

Each seminary expressed similar sentiments regarding the value of CP giving for Southern Baptist theological education. The CP contributes a significant portion to each seminary’s operating budget. According to Allen, the CP represented about 27 percent of budget revenues for Midwestern in 2019-20. Southeastern reported about 35 percent of its operating budget comes from the CP.

“All this [financial loss] makes the support of Southern Baptists through the CP all the more important,” Mohler said. “This demonstrates all over again, for this generation, just how important the Cooperative Program is and just how vital it is to the work of Southern Baptists all over the world and in our programs of theological education.”

“Cooperative Program giving is fundamental to our mission of shaping leaders for gospel ministry,” said Gateway president Jeff Iorg, adding that it “represents the shared beliefs, vision and direction Southern Baptists hold firmly in one hand while they reach for the lost with their other.”

“In a more personal way,” Allen said, “the more than 4,000 students training for ministry at Midwestern Seminary are here in part because of Southern Baptist generosity through the Cooperative Program.”

“Ultimately, the seminaries can only be as faithful as the churches we serve,” Mohler said, “and our call is to be faithful to those churches no matter what challenges face us.”

Southern Baptists of Texas Convention churches across the state are responding to the COVID-19 crisis by serving their communities in practical ways from distributing food to lending medical equipment.

Rio Grande Valley church lends mobile medical clinic to hospital

First Baptist Church of Brownsville has loaned its mobile medical clinic, once used to bring health care to migrant farm workers in California, to the Harlingen Medical Center. The center will use the medical truck’s examination rooms to screen patients and staff for the coronavirus, the Valley Morning Star reported on March 31.

The church received the medical unit from the California Baptist Convention Disaster Relief in January for use along the Texas / Mexico border, SBTC Disaster Relief Director Scottie Stice told the TEXAN. With California’s emission standards tightening, deploying the big unit was no longer possible in that state.

The church was in the process of determining how to use the medical unit when the coronavirus crisis struck.

“We were planning how best to serve the impoverished areas of the Rio Grande Valley and our church plants, planning to provide health screenings for blood pressure and diabetes, when the virus came and shut everything down,” Steve Dorman, First Baptist Brownsville pastor, told the TEXAN.

Church member Julie Bannert, the medical center’s director of surgical services, facilitated the loan of the mobile unit to the hospital, which had set up tents outside its emergency room entrance to triage potential COVID-19 patients—sweltering work, as temperatures soared into the 90s.

“The CEO of the medical center was thrilled to have an air-conditioned mobile medical unit,” Dorman said, adding that the unit’s exit and entrance doors make it possible to funnel patients through while minimizing the risk of the virus spreading.

“We hope it will help them, help people, that they will notice something about it being from the Lord and know that Christian people love and care about them,” Dorman said. 

The unit—the words “Love in Action” emblazoned in blue and gold around a large crown of thorns on its side—came stocked with medical supplies and PPE, much of which has been donated to the hospital or to other medical professionals for use in the crisis.

The medical unit is parked near the hospital’s emergency room entrance, where ER director David Salas and a team of nurses are using its two exam rooms to screen patients.

Dorman said the hospital may use the mobile unit as long as necessary in the battle against COVID-19.

“It wasn’t how we planned to use it, but it’s how God planned to use it,” Dorman said.

Food distribution accelerates for Arlington church

In Arlington, the DFW-area multi-campus Rush Creek Church has seen a dramatic increase in clients at its food pantry, the Rush Creek Compassion Center, during the coronavirus crisis.

The church has operated the food pantry at its Arlington campus at 2350 SW Green Oaks Drive for seven years, serving not only area families with food boxes but also 500 schoolchildren from 22 schools in Mansfield, Kennedale, Fort Worth, Arlington and Grand Prairie with backpacks of food for weekends.

The backpack program is part of a school-year-long effort in which Rush Creek works with local school districts to provide the food to needy kids. In Mansfield ISD, these efforts are funneled through the Common Ground network as the church joins other local congregations in providing volunteers and support to distribute the “backpacks,” grocery bags full of items children can prepare easily. 

Since the coronavirus crisis started, the Rush Creek Compassion Center has seen its clientele double for prepackaged food pickups at its Arlington campus. Before the crisis, clients made appointments, were interviewed and then allowed to pick up boxes of food once a month.

To meet the current needs, the screening has been largely abandoned as people living in the zip codes served by the church are allowed to drive up and get food, while volunteers load the food boxes into their trunks. 

The drive-through center is open from 10:00 a.m. to noon daily.

“We have revamped to accommodate the situation,” Shane Cavitt, Rush Creek’s local compassion pastor, said, adding that volunteers are gloved and masks are available. 

Volunteers keep track of who comes, asking people to come no more than every two weeks during the crisis.

The boxes of food come with staples such as rice, beans, pasta, canned tuna, canned vegetables and fruit, peanut butter and jelly. Bread and pastries are available also. 

Church members donate food items and a local Tom Thumb grocery store provides bread and pastries, but the church purchases most food in bulk from HIM, the Harvesting in Mansfield Center.

Each box is not a month’s worth of food, Cavitt explained, but would feed a family of five for 10 days and might last two to three weeks for a small family. It is designed as a supplement.

Normally, the average client may be someone who has lost their job, just gotten a new one, and needs a little help. Now, however, many are in need. 

The church gave out 300 boxes of food over the last three weeks, twice its normal distribution. Often people driving through pick up the kids’ backpacks of food, too, since schools are shut down.

Rush Creek has even developed and distributed homeless packs, easily prepared food with pop top lids and individual servings.

The church is also sending increased financial assistance to its campus in the suburbs of San Salvador in El Salvador, Brian McFadden, Rush Creek’s global compassion pastor, said.

The 700 who attend the San Salvador church include many day laborers who have lost their jobs as the country has been locked down. Through a family sponsorship program, Rush Creek normally sends support monthly but has increased the amount given, sending funds to feed 500 families this month with plans to continue, McFadden said.

Like other churches across Texas, congregations in the Panhandle’s Top O’ Texas Baptist Association are assisting local food pantries, such as the one operated by Good Samaritan Christian Services in Gray County.

“We are making sure Good Sam’s have personnel to unload the trucks that come in,” James Greer, Top O Texas director of missions, told the TEXAN. “Large cartons are unloaded by forklift and our guys help stack the items on shelves.”

Recent volunteers include those laid off from jobs in oil fields and other industries.

“They don’t want to sit at home if they can help,” Greer said, adding that as DOM for Top O’ Texas, he is informing food banks in his association’s 16 counties of the availability of volunteers.

How your church can help 

SBTC churches wishing to add their names to a databank of churches throughout Texas willing to help distribute food or minister in their local areas during the COVID-19 crisis are invited to provide their information at the following link, managed by SBTC Disaster Relief, who will help pair churches with needs in their communities: https://sbtcevangelism.wufoo.com/forms/z1oan9ht0yoy7pn/.