FBC New Braunfels member didn’t intend to lead women’s ministry, but God had other plans

When she learned that a bus crash had claimed the lives of 13 First Baptist New Braunfels senior adults returning from a Hill Country retreat in March 2017, Marcia Dean responded as she always had: She went to church.

The former financial secretary at FBC New Braunfels heard about the disaster through a friend’s text. As Dean switched on the news, she told her husband, Charlie, “I don’t know why, but I’ve got to go to church.” 

Dean and another former employee stepped in to help at the short-handed church office. Dean answered phones and provided support to members and staff.

“They’ve gone home,” she told a journalist about the victims, a comment that resonates still.

Church has provided a this-side-of-heaven home for Dean since childhood.

“I want to get [women] to understand that you can read a million books or do a devotional every single day, but if you don’t get into the Word of God, your life will never change.”

An early call

Dean recalled sitting “on the piano side of the church” as her mother played while her father led worship at their church in tiny Haskell, Okla. One Sunday as her father led the singing during the invitation, Dean, almost 8, felt the call to go forward. 

“God just really touched my heart and called me,” she said, remembering leaving her mom at the piano and going straight to the pastor. 

Her love of missions began in childhood, with involvement in Acteens and Girls in Action and contact with a family friend and missionary to Argentina serving with the Foreign Mission Board (now known as the International Mission Board). These early experiences would later motivate the adult Dean to take mission trips to Southeast Asia, Germany, and India. 

Dean started college in Oklahoma, but when her father fell ill, she returned home to assist her mom in caring for him. Dean’s older brother also left the university to run the family hardware store until it could be sold. 

“I crammed four years of college into seven,” Dean said with a chuckle. 

While a college student, she attended First Baptist Church in Moore, Okla. Her accounting major prepared her for a part-time job as a financial assistant at the church, the first of her staff positions at churches. Not only did she love that job, but Dean discovered another passion: the study of Scripture. She credits her pastors at FBC Moore and subsequent churches for inspiring her to dig into the Word of God.

The stint in Moore brought another bonus. Mutual friends introduced Marcia to Charlie Dean, then stationed at Tinker Air Force Base, and the two were married in 1980. As Charlie completed his 20 years of service in the Air Force, they lived in Iceland, Massachusetts, and Ohio before retiring to New Braunfels.

Dean began teaching young single adults at a small home mission church in Massachusetts. “I’m not sure how much they got out of it,” Dean recalled. She did not see herself as a teacher.

Pastor Brad McLean commended Marcia’s faithful service as a teacher and leader and called her “an enthusiastic missionary” to “multiple countries.” Charlie and Marcia Dean are pictured at left posing with their grandchildren. SUBMITTED PHOTO

God had other plans

In Ohio, Dean became involved with the Bible studies of Precept Ministries. Even though she was pregnant with her second child, she signed on for the fall semester and committed to doing the work. She toted her newborn daughter to class.

“I thought it was gonna eat my lunch,” Dean said of the rigorous study. She has been a Precept studies teacher or student since 1986.

The in-depth study of God’s Word for nearly 40 years “has changed my life,” Dean said. “God has given me [opportunities] to impact and change other women’s lives.”

In Ohio, she attended Precept Ministries training for her own benefit. After relocating to New Braunfels, she joined the Precept group there. Shortly afterward, the leader moved out of town. 

“I was the only one who had been trained,” Dean said. She had already signed up for additional Precept training in San Antonio, so she reluctantly went.

At that San Antonio class, the leader told the group to turn to the person on their right and express their greatest concern so that person could pray for them.

“I am scared to death that I am going to have to lead my Precept Bible study this fall,” Dean admitted.

“Oh honey, I have the gift of prayer,” her new friend replied.

“I had turned to a gal who loved praying and who was faithfully going to pray,” Dean mused. “I turned to the Lord and said, ‘Oh Lord, I am in really big trouble now,’” she said.

Despite her reservations, she began teaching the studies, which moved to First Baptist in September 1993, stepping down for a few years in the early 2000s before reassuming the role in 2008.

Women changed by the Word

Also in the 1990s, Dean became aware of women’s ministries developing in other churches, something she had a desire to start at her own church. She became among the first to attend Southern Baptist Convention women’s leadership training in Nashville.

With the pastor’s support and blessing, Dean and a team, including some who had accompanied her to Nashville, began a women’s ministry at the church. The ministry would not be event-driven but would focus on Bible study, discipleship, and prayer, Dean determined.

It flourished, from mentoring programs to book clubs to Bible studies. 

“We began offering a variety of things,” Dean said, adding that most women participated at some level.

Dean, who also spent 18 years as the church’s financial secretary, had found her calling. 

“I want to get [women] to understand that you can read a million books or do a devotional every single day, but if you don’t get into the Word of God, your life will never change.”

She refuses to accept excuses. “Don’t ever say that you don’t have time. You have time,” she tells women she teaches. As a young mother with two small children at home and a husband who constantly traveled, she learned to get up early to work on her Bible study lessons before the kids woke up.

What’s next for Dean? She is not through teaching yet, but with grandkids in North Carolina and Charlie retired for a second time, travel to visit family factors into the schedule.

At 68, she remembers her mother asking herself, “How did you get so old?” and remembers the answer: “One year at a time.”

Dean knows how to make those years count.

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