Center for Church Health

The Center for Church Health was created to strengthen the local church, providing resources in the areas of church health strategies, evangelism, apologetics, discipleship, worship, children’s ministry, student and family ministry, single & young adult ministry, women’s ministry, Boomer ministry, church architecture and GC2 Press publishing. When churches need assistance with any local church ministry area, they know to call the Center for Church Health.

The present grouping for the Center for Church Health includes the following teams: Discipleship, Evangelism, Music & Worship, Church Architecture, GC2 Press, Church Health Strategy, Women’s Ministry and Single & Young Adult Ministry. Every team listed went through some degree of change in assignment or personnel during this reporting period.

The new mission statement for our convention proclaims that “Texas Baptists is a movement of God’s people to share Christ and show love by strengthening churches and ministers, transforming culture and connecting the nations to Jesus.” We believe the Center for Church Health is uniquely positioned to effectively speak to this mission statement.

Discipleship added Nicole Gaviria as Discipleship ministry assistant this year. David Adams leads a staff of gifted discipleship leaders who are always seeking to respond to the needs of Texas Baptists.

Evangelism – Leighton Flowers guides a wonderful team of evangelism leaders who are making a significant impact on the Kingdom through resourcing our Texas Baptists churches.

Music & Worship – Under Tom Tillman’s leadership this ministry continues to meet needs in such a wide variety of churches each year. Vicki Schmidt joined our staff this year as our new Music & Worship Ministry coordinator. We welcome her commitment to all aspects of music ministry.

Church Architecture – With the retirement of our previous Church Architecture staff, we spent considerable time revisioning what the future of the ministry would look like. As you’ll see in their report that follows, VisionBridge Consulting, along with the capable leadership of Ken Hunnicutt, has built on the heritage of that ministry and taken it to new levels of response to our churches. We have exciting days ahead in Church Architecture.

GC2 Press publishing continues to see great response from our churches to the resources consistently being produced. In addition to the adult Bible study materials, Connect 360, which is the hallmark of GC2 Press, we have seen the inclusion of several books authored by some of our Texas Baptists staff and other writers.

Women’s Ministry, led by Katie McCoy, has inaugurated an effective means of hearing from, and uniquely responding to, the needs of our churches. We welcomed a new ministry assistant, Payton Abernathy, to aid in this important work. We continue to receive positive feedback from church leadership who are hungry for the resources being curated for this ministry.

Church Health Strategy, under the capable leadership of Jonathan Smith, has developed a church health strategy for our Texas Baptists churches, entitled PAVE. Libby Shorman has joined the team as the ministry assistant and brings many skills to assist Jonathan in this exciting work. Watch for information and announcements about future training events and resources tailor made for every aspect of church life represented across our state. This is a major accomplishment that addresses the many requests consistently coming from our churches.

I encourage you to read the reports on every one of these teams in the pages that follow. We are excited to announce we are adding the Single & Young Adult Ministry to our center. I encourage you to look for that report in next year’s Book of Reports.

PHIL MILLER

Director

DEBY MILLER