Texas Baptists
God has been so good to us this year! He is moving among our churches and institutions.
I have had the opportunity of visiting many of our churches, our institutions and our events to witness the advancement of God’s kingdom. I have also had the privilege of traveling beyond our state to visit with those who collaborate with us in the U.S. and around the world.
We are seeing more churches planted, more churches participating in PAVE and experiencing revitalization, more ministerial students enrolled in our Texas Baptists schools, more pastors involved in our pastoral health networks and pastor strong experiences, more students engaged in BSM prayer awakenings, disciple-making and missions mobilization, more missionaries supported and more churches engaging in missions directly. The Great Commandment and the Great Commission are being lived out!
As we move forward to 2026, we continue to develop the GC2 Strong process. This process will offer a customized approach to churches who desire to grow in living out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. We are praying for a GC2 awakening! This requires spiritual renewal and a stronger commitment to keeping the main thing the main thing.
While we are thankful for great progress in the mission God has given us, we also acknowledge that the challenges ahead are great. Texas is growing
at a fast rate. Our population is more diverse than ever before. Many of our churches are declining in numbers. Some are struggling to keep their doors open.
As we focus on strengthening churches, strengthening pastors and leaders and strengthening mission partnerships, we seek to address the lostness in our state and beyond. Over half of the 34 million people in Texas do not know Jesus as Savior and Lord. The rate is even higher in other states where we have churches in our network.
In order to address these immense needs, we need more financial resources. This budget represents our direction in terms of emphasis and strategy. It is a faith budget. But it will require sacrificial giving through the Cooperative Program. We need churches to step up in faith in their contributions as well.
As we consider this 2026 budget, I ask that you pray, that you adopt it and that you increase your support through the Cooperative Program.
For the sake of the lost and for the glory of God!
JULIO GUARNERI, PH.D. Executive Director
txb.org/julio
Prioritizing prayer to see growing ministry at Baylor BSM
When the Baylor Baptist Student Ministry (BSM), “started back up eight years ago,” Director Will Bowden and his team decided to prioritize prayer over planning.
“There were moments where the most productive thing seemed like we should plan and seemed like we should be talking about what we’re doing next, and instead we prayed,” said Bowden. “We trusted that sometimes things need to fall in order to grow, and so we leaned into prayer and we trusted the process that, ‘Hey, success is obedience.’”
He said, over the years, students began bringing ideas for different ministries to the table.
“We started just hearing from really quality students to say, ‘Why aren’t we doing this? Why aren’t we doing that? Hey, we should be going into the city and working with homeless people, or we should be investing in kids and teens. What do we do with freshmen?’” explained Bowden. “As we [prayed through those ideas], we started more ministries.”
Bowden said prioritizing prayer built the “foundation of what has grown [us] to where we are right now.”
Today, Baylor BSM has expanded its ministry to McLennan Community College and Texas State Technical College, and is coining the new name “Waco BSM.” Across the three campuses, there are 11 ministries, with Pathway being “our largest ministry.”
Pathway is a “new student investment ministry” in which upperclassmen are taught “how to make disciples [and] how to invest in underclassmen.” In the fall, each
upperclassman is grouped up with four freshmen to walk through “the basics of Christianity, discipleship, mobilization [and] evangelism.” Bowden said there are around 725 total students involved.
“Seven years ago, very few of the Christians here could explain discipleship or evangelism, or be able to share the gospel. Now, those basics that we hit on [through our ministries]… we’re going to keep on growing,” said Bowden.
Other growing ministries of Baylor BSM include the Downtown Ministry, where students serve meals at a homeless shelter twice a week, King’s Club, where students provide Backyard Bible Clubs for the low income housing community in partnership with Mission Waco and Aim, an evangelism ministry where students group up and go out on campus or into the community once a week to share the gospel.
Bowden said, “there’s already hunger, there’s already openness [and] movement of new life,” on campus this semester. He said his prayer is that “students would leave with a passion to grow the kingdom wherever they are” and that the BSM would create “ministry readiness in our students.”
“We want to find the people who are passionate about doing the work of God, and we’re going to raise them up, support them… and most of our ministries are now studentled. It’s been really sweet to see,” said Bowden. “I would say we’re going to see a lot of people come to the Lord on campus this year, and that’s really exciting.”
Pastor Strong Cohorts finish on Colorado retreat, a time of “rest and recharging”
August 3-7, 47 Pastor Strong Cohort participants traveled to Buena Vista, Colorado, for a time of “worship and soul care and… community” to celebrate how God moved in and through the cohorts since their start in April.
“We end with the retreat on purpose after four or five months together in the trenches of learning and growing and being shaped and formed and gaining clarity of who we are, as Christ followers and as leaders, and then we come together at this moment of respite and rest and just soul care,” said Kevin Abbott, Area 5 representative and director of Pastoral Health Networks at Texas Baptists.
The Pastor Strong Cohorts met once a month to focus on “elements of mental, spiritual, emotional or physical health” in ministry.
Troy Allen, senior pastor of First Baptist Church College Station, said the retreat was valuable because it gave him some “time and space to hear from the Lord” and be encouraged to “stay in the fight.”
“I think that’s something that’s really great about this retreat is just having time to be away and to just spend time with God, and… intentionally listen to the Lord and what he has to say to us and to remind us that he has us where he has us for a reason, to encourage us and to encourage one another to continue to stay in the fight and continue running the race that he’s laid out before us,” said Allen.
He said concluding the cohorts with a retreat that’s “strictly devoted to rest and recharging and rejuvenation is incredibly important” to leading well in ministry.
“When pastors are mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually healthy, they’re better leaders, they’re better pastors and are able to care for people better because they’ve cared for themselves,” said Allen. “I imagine that the guys that are here are going to be able to go back and serve their churches a lot more effectively because they’ve just had some
downtime where they haven’t had to answer a bunch of questions and solve a lot of problems… but just have time to worship together, time to pray and reflect.”
Abbott said the cohorts have made a “powerful impact” in the lives of participating pastors.
“We’ve seen many [pastors] come back after 4 or 5 months of this and say, ‘Kevin, I’m leading differently,’ or ‘I see leadership through a different lens,’ ‘My people are noticing a difference when I teach and preach and when I lead meetings and how I do discipleship,’” said Abbott.
Abbott said “one of the biggest desires” of the cohort is that it would band a community together and lower the number of pastors leaving ministry “in an intentional way.”
“We’ve had several pastors come in and out of the cohort, and they’ve been very honest and raw moments throughout it saying, ‘Kevin, I wasn’t going to be a part of this cohort, but I’m glad I did because I was thinking about leaving ministry all together and this band of brothers, this cohort, this process, kept me in the game,’” said Abbott.
FBC Marble Falls is “laboring together” to rebuild homes after Kerr County floods
Texas Baptists churches in Kerrville and surrounding areas are mobilizing their members to aid in relief efforts after the flooding of the Guadalupe River on July 4.
Ross Chandler, pastor of First Baptist Church Marble Falls, said his church has teamed up with other churches in the area to participate in the “rebuilding phase” of long-term relief efforts.
“We have a huge list of about 800 homes that we mudded out that we were in over a period of two months that were damaged at some level by the flood. So now, all of us churches are trying to go back in and do what we can to [rebuild] the houses that do not have insurance,” explained Chandler.
Chandler said throughout FBC Marble Falls’ involvement in the recovery and relief efforts, they “greatly relied on the wisdom and the instructions and the methodology of Texans On Mission (TXM),” the disaster relief ministry of Texas Baptists, and “trained a thousand people over those two months to mud out those 800 homes.”
Alongside the team of churches, who call themselves “The Ark,” FBC Marble Falls has also helped train and send out community members, such as H-E-B, who send a team “every single day” to lend a hand in the mud out and rebuilding phases.
“[TXM] taught us how to do the mud out. So then we took their system, and we started
utilizing it, so it’s as if TXM was here doing [mud outs and rebuild], but we didn’t take their manpower because we knew that their manpower was way more needed in Kerrville and in Hunt than here,” explained Chandler.
Referencing Matthew 25:40-45, Chandler said it is important for his church to be involved in the rebuilding phase because “[the community] needs to know that the church loves them and cares about their home… because these people are important to us.”
“It’s Matthew 25. ‘Whatever you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done it to me. I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was naked and you clothed me. I was in prison and you visited me,’ and I was
homeless, and my house was destroyed in a flood, and you gave me a place to live,” said Chandler.
He said, “our church is stronger because we’re serving together.”
“We’re sweating together. We are sacrificing together and laboring together,” said Chandler. “It’s been a blessing for us to be involved in this and to be able to love on the homeowners and build relationships with them.”
Chandler said “The Ark” is coming to a place “where we’re going to finish some homes up [soon].”
FBC Kaufman partners with Ukraine Baptist Union for post-war initiative to rebuild and strengthen churches
First Baptist Church Kaufman has recently partnered, alongside other Texas Baptists churches, with the Ukraine Baptist Union in a “Spirit-led, trauma-aware, gospelcentered initiative” to reach Ukraine for Christ, “rebuilding lives and strengthening churches” in the wake of the RussiaUkraine War.
The initiative named “Healing Path: People of Hope” is a three-phase partnership strategy. Phase 1 will focus on prayer, relationships and strategic preparation, where two churches from each of Ukraine’s 25 oblasts (regions) will be paired with two Texas churches to “serve as regional catalysts for what’s to come,” according to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Texas Baptists and the Ukraine Baptist Union.
Phases 2: “Churches, Conferences and Campaigns,” and Phase 3: “Collaboration, Camps, Counseling, Crusades and Church Planting” will be activated at the conclusion of the war.
Brent Gentzel, senior pastor at FBC Kaufman, said he got involved in the initiative “by divine appointment.”
“I was speaking at a conference in Germany and, I think by divine appointment, ran into a member of the executive team from Ukraine Baptist Union, and he shared with me the struggles that they were facing in the
face of the war… and as we visited together, I told him that I would pray for him. Then on my flight back home, I was really convicted that we, as Texas Baptists, should not only pray, but we also could do some things perhaps to help,” said Gentzel.
This September, Gentzel and “a couple of other Texas Baptists pastors” traveled to Ukraine to finalize the partnership.
He said FBC Kaufman’s role so far has been “in coordinating this effort” by “recruiting churches from across the state, asking them to pray about being a part of this movement.”
Gentzel says he’s inspired by the Ukrainian Baptists’ “courage and their passion and their commitment to the gospel and their belief in God’s ability to use the church in this critical moment,” and “the eagerness of so many Texas Baptists churches” to partner in this effort.
According to the MOU, a fundraising goal of $1.7 million has been set “to support phase one and lay the foundation for the future. We are praying for 50 Texas churches to commit generously to their Ukrainian partners and to the work of the movement as a whole.”
Gentzel encouraged Texas Baptists churches to pray about being a part of this “important moment for Ukrainian Baptists and the Texas Baptists’ call to help them.”
Trinity Baptist Church in Kerrville invests in community through rebuilding after Kerr County floods
Texas Baptists churches in Kerrville and the surrounding areas are mobilizing their members to aid in relief efforts after the flooding of the Guadalupe River on July 4.
in long-term recovery efforts by helping rebuild houses in the community. Wheat said, “our investment is not just in our church.”
John Wheat, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Kerrville, said his church’s first response to the crisis was to open up the facility to house parents who had yet to receive word of their children’s safety.
The first three days [after the flooding], we had parents that were staying in our church overnight, and alongside our church members, to just comfort them, give them a place to be where they could console each other, but then wait to hear what was taking place,” explained Wheat.
Wheat said “all the parents that we had were the ones who did not get the good word,” so the church served as “a place of solace” to “take the time they needed [to grieve].”
After housing these parents, Trinity Baptist also opened up their facility for Texans On Mission (TXM), the disaster relief ministry of Texas Baptists, to “[take] up some lodging” and begin helping with relief efforts, including removing debris from houses and mud outs.
Today, TXM and Trinity Baptist are involved
“Our church’s investment is in our community, and so we want to do all we can to try and present the gospel to as many people that we can, and we do that outside our building,” said Wheat. “We are a part of all that is taking place, and we felt [that] God’s placed us here for a reason, and that reason is to be salt and light in this community, and part of that is being involved in whatever is needed, to rebuild and recover and restore the best way we know how.”
Wheat said, “it is such a comforting thought to know that we’re part of a bigger Baptist family.”
“There are a lot of churches in Kerrville, and we’re doing some good things together, but I’m really thankful that Texas Baptists and Texans On Mission have been reaching out to us and through us into our community,” said Wheat. “Because of the bigger connection, the bigger network… It means a lot and encourages a lot in times like this, when a crisis is taking place and we all trust in the Lord. But it’s also good to know that there’s some people out there that show up and are available.”
Budget Summary of the Baptist General Convention of Texas
The 2026 Budget was approved by the Executive Board on Sept. 23, 2025. Preparing the budget involves months of prayer, projections, research and planning to arrive at the resource plan for the coming year.
The detailed budget is published annually and is provided to the Executive Board and committees involved in the budget preparation process. The Executive Board is authorized, on a contingency basis, to adjust spending based on actual receipts. The Budget Summary and the Detail Budget Book are available online at txb.org/budgetsummary
Relationship Development
GC2 Discovery & Administration
Institutional Relationships
Health & Human Care
Univ & Theological Ed Affinity Groups
African American
Texas Baptist en Español Intercultural
Ambassadors
Resource Development
Administration & Oversight
Cooperative Program
Communications
Texas Baptist Missions Foundation
GC2 Press
STRENGTHEN CHURCHES
Administration & Oversight
PAVE
Discipleship
Evangelism
Christian LifeCommission
Music & Worship
Church Architecture
STRENGTHEN LEADERS
Administration & Oversight
Pastoral Health Networks
Pastor’s Common
Area Representatives
Associational Relationship
Financial Health
Interim Pastors & Pastorless Churches
Counseling Services & MinistrySafe
Western Heritage
Bivocational Pastors
Women in Ministry
Chaplaincy
25,000
187,500
15,000 70,00020,000 $24,000 36,200 65,500 160,000140,000 $ 218,500 $ 25,000 $292,500 $ 425,700 2025
ENGAGE MISSIONS
Administration & Oversight Church Starting River Ministry MAP - Missionary Adoption Program BOUNCE - Student
COLLEGIATE MINISTRY
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SUPPORT
Administration & Oversight
Special Projects
Texans on Mission
ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR SUPPORT
Administration & Oversight
Executive Board & Committees
Conference, Events & Annual Meeting
Human Resources
$ 311,500 663,50021,000
Administration & Oversight
Finance & Accounting
IT - Information Technology
Building Support & Operations
Historical Collection
Ministerial Benefits & Retiree’s Insur.
Center Consolidations
Total Undesignated Budget
Less: Investment Income
Net CP Budget
% of Prior Year Budget
Cooperative Program
Investment Income
Sponsorship, Booth & Registration Fees
Product Sales & Other Revenue
North American Mission Board *
BGCT Worldwide *
Donor Designated *
Mary Hill Davis Mission Offering **
Grand Total
% of Prior Year
CFO SUPPORT REVENUE SOURCES *NAMB and BGCT WW funds are included in the Donor Designated budget **MHD funding per requests. Actual received will be less if offering does not reach goal
Baptist General Convention of Texas 2026 Budget Detail of Theological Education & Institutional Support
Baptist University of the Américas
Baylor University
Dallas Baptist University
East Texas Baptist University
Hardin-Simmons University
Houston Christian University
Howard Payne University
Truett Seminary
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
Wayland Baptist University
San Marcos Academy
Stark College
Valley Baptist Missions Education Center
Ministerial Scholarships
Admin/Other Related Expenses
& HUMAN
Admin/Other Related Expenses
Buckner Children and Family Services
INSTITUTIONS
Children at Heart Ministries
South Texas Children’s Home Ministries
Baylor Health Care System
Hendrick Health System
Hillcrest Baptist Health System
Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas
Baptist Community Services, Amarillo
Baptist Memorials Ministry
Breckenridge Village Scholarships
Total Health & Human Care
Total Institutional Support
510
530
0 286,071 250,000 400,000 $ 24,225 439,525 293,188 82,750 15,550 49,575 48,275 458,150 20,275 54,725 0 76,125 0 0 0
$1,562,363 $ 524,225 689,525 793,188 582,750 515,550 299,575 548,275 458,150
This budget summary and the detail budget book are available online at txb.org/budgetsummary. 888.244.9400
Every day, God is moving through our network of kingdom partners. His work is worthy of celebration. Join us on social media and email, website and mobile app, magazine and more as we tell the Texas Baptists story and give God the glory. Instagram and LinkedIn at @TexasBaptists Download the mobile app at txb.org/app Sign up for email newsletters at at
