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DEKALB—From the far corner of northeast Texas, First Baptist Church of DeKalb has been ministering to its community for 150 years. The 200-member congregation extends its reach beyond the local population of 1,700 to minister across Texas and around the world by giving through the Cooperative Program.
“The exciting thing to me about the Cooperative Program is that it allows churches—average churches and even smaller churches—to be a part of reaching the world,” said Walter Jackson, pastor of the church since 2001.
For many years the church faithfully gave 9 percent of undesignated receipts through the Cooperative Program (CP), and then voted last year to increase that amount to 10 percent after Jackson explained the significance of that decision.
“When the 1-percent challenge was issued to increase our giving to the Cooperative Program, I let them know we have the opportunity to join with other churches to add an additional $100 million to CP, send out 300 new missionary families, and support 16,000 seminary students” while supporting new churches across the nation, Jackson recalled. “It’s an opportunity to be a partner right here in the state of Texas where our Southern Baptists of Texas Convention cares so much about the world that we give away more money than we keep here in the state.”
“We’re able to do so much work for the kingdom of God. When the challenge was given, they upped it 1 percent,” he said, praising the recommendation of the budget and finance committee.
Jackson takes every opportunity to keep CP before the congregation, showing video testimonies provided by the SBTC and distributing CP-related flyers in church bulletins.
Two groups of volunteers traveled from the church to help with recovery following Hurricane Rita, helping the Nehemiah’s Vision ministry funded partly by CP support from SBTC. Eleven members of the church completed Phase 1 disaster relief training last year in order to be available through a ministry made possible by the CP gifts of Southern Baptists.
“We talk about our mission offerings and consistently exceed our goals. We have personal friends serving as Southern Baptist missionaries and I tell our people, ‘If you give, you are helping support these efforts.’”
Among those friends are Ed and Linda Miller, career missionaries appointed by the International Mission Board to serve in Zambia for 31 years. Miller was ordained while serving as associate pastor of the DeKalb church. Their regular visits while home on stateside assignments, and since retiring to Grand Prairie, provided a personal connection when Jackson and earlier pastors encouraged CP giving.
Two students from the church, Calder White and Jade LaVergne, traveled to Suriname last year to serve alongside cousins Charles and Brittany Shirey, who serve with the IMB and are supported by Southern Baptists’ CP funding channel. As Jackson traveled with former SBC president Johnny Hunt on a mission trip to train pastors in Minsk, Belarus, and his wife helped distribute the “Jesus” film to Muslims in Paris, those journeys provided additional connections to the worldwide ministry funded by churches like First Baptist of DeKalb.
“I want our people to understand that we’re not just about this community. If we’re not going, we’re helping someone else go,” he told the TEXAN. “We’re able to multiply our gifts because it’s going through the Cooperative Program.”
