JACLANEL McFARLAND: nominee for first vice president
By Marv Knox,
Associate Editor, Baptist Standard

Jaclanel Moore McFarland, a Baylor University regent and member of South Main Church in Houston, will be nominated for first vice president of the BGCT by former BGCT President Phil Lineberger.

McFarland has made impressive contributions to the BGCT Executive Board and the convention’s special Effectiveness/ Efficiency Committee, noted Lineberger, pastor of Williams Trace Church in Sugar Land, who has served with McFarland on those groups.

“Jaclanel McFarland is one of the impressive young leaders in Baptist life,” Lineberger said. “She has a good grasp of the Christian faith and Baptist principles. She is a leader and very committed to what Texas Baptists are doing in Texas 2000.”

McFarland is a trial attorney in Houston. She earned undergraduate and law degrees from Baylor and studied at Oxford University in England.

In addition to the Executive Board, Baylor regents and E/E Committee, she has been a member of the advisory board of SEEDS, a Baptist hunger ministry, and Union Association’s Center for Counseling.

In the local church, she participates in Baptist Young Women and Baptist Women, partnership missions and various committees.

Her husband, Keith, also is an attorney. They have two sons, Allen, 16, and Linch, 14.

McFarland said, “Texas Baptists always have been courageous frontier people. Their leaders have been forward-thinking risk takers, and I would be honored to help facilitate that attitude as we get ready to enter the next millennium.”

McFarland is a sixth-generation Texan whose mother, grandmother and three aunts have been active members of First Church in Dawson for 50 years. That heritage is important, now and in the future, she stressed.

“I have seen Texas Baptist history, both personally and from studying the writings of our Texas Baptist forebears,” she said. “We must not lose sight of our heritage. Even as we look to the future and take risks, we can learn from our Baptist ancestors. They valued what we value— the priesthood of the believer, a regenerate membership, the autonomy of the church, a free church in a free world, missions and evangelism. I have teen-age sons. I want them to live in the Baptist world with the freedom I’ve enjoyed.”

October 1997