Baptist Temple Year in Review: 2017

SLIDESHOW: The Year in Pictures: 2017

Vacation Bible School was, once again, the high point of a year filled with God's blessings. All 5 #BTCampus churches (Baptist Temple Church, Community Bible Church Highland Park, Mision Bautista Betel, Family Deaf Church and Sunny Slope Baptist Church.) worked together to give us 96 workers and a total enrollment of 269. A sixth church, Iglesia del Dios Altisimo, brought a van filled with African refugee children that, along with a student mission team from Baptist University of the Americas, brought a total of 14 different nations to our campus that week.

SLIDESHOW: VBS 2017

Worship this year included some special events including a Blessing of the Bikes (led by #BTCampus Immanuel Motorcycle Ministry), a Blessing of the Teachers, a multi-church Youth Rally, the Hanging of the Green and a Christmas Cantata. The house was packed on Easter as BT and CBC shared the 11 o'clock hour in a combined service. On Memorial Day Weekend all the campus churches joined in worship. Delvin Atchison, director of the Texas Baptist Great Commission Team, brought the message.

In the Fall, Ferrell Foster, from the Christian Life Commission, brought the message as we celebrated our community ministries. A tour of the Brunnemann Building and snacks followed. The Brunnemann is home for our thrift store, food pantry and community garden and is open 3 days a week. Over 3500 people visited in 2017.

SLIDESHOW: Birth of the Brunnemann Building

Our food pantry is only part of our hunger ministries. Our free weekly dinners and occasional large food distributions enabled us to feed 1649 households (6181 people) and serve 11,022 meals. We distributed 85,912 lbs of food in 2017.

The latest addition to our hunger fighting efforts is our community garden. It serves as an outdoor lab to teach gardening to people of all ages while providing fresh produce to our pantry clients. This was made possible by grants from the Baptist Health Foundation and Texas Baptists.

Community outreach events included three annual events: Fall Festival, Christmas Party and Back to School Fair. The Fair put 800 people on our campus (including volunteers). We handed out 350 backpacks, 300 lunches, $2500 in vouchers for clothes and 14,000 lbs of groceries.

Our fellowship grew closer and larger this year with 25 new members. Our young people went on a variety of field trips and three different camp experiences. Our adults shared 17 meals together including the monthly Young in Heart luncheon. We ordained 8 deacons and licensed three people to the gospel ministry.

Adding to the #BTCampus fellowship are San Antonio Against Slavery (advocating against human trafficking), who meet monthly on Thursday nights, and Free By the Truth (working with ex-offenders), who worship Sundays at 2PM.

Seven mission teams stayed on the #BTCampus in 2017 performing ministry throughout the city and recording 93 professions of faith. Other local ministries and individuals have joined with us to build up our ministry in physical and spiritual ways.

This tremendous volume of ministry takes a toll on our campus. We are continually repairing and upgrading. This year our parking lot was made safer by re-striping and improved lighting, the chairs in fellowship hall were replaced and the Fritz Building got a new roof. As I write this blog, there are a number of projects in progress.

In 2017, the #BTCampus hosted 6 churches, 2 schools, 3 conferences, 9 ministries and 6 Basketball Clubs. Thirteen different churches and non-profit agencies have contributed finances, materiel and/or labor to help us in our mission to minister to the physical and spiritual needs of our community.