South Texas laywoman a nominee for
BGCT vice presidency in Waco
By Marv Knox
Editor, The Baptist Standard
HOUSTON—Debbie Ferrier, a layperson with extensive involvement in church and denominational endeavors, will be nominated for second vice president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
”She is a great, great lady. She represents the very best in Baptist local church leadership,” said her pastor, Duane Brooks of Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, who plans to nominate her when the BGCT meets in Waco Nov. 11-12.
”Her grandmother gave the land for South Texas Children’s Home in Beeville,” Brooks said. “She is the daughter of a Baptist preacher. She grew up loving the Lord and serving the local church.
“She has been a widow for eight years, and she has invested her life in the church and given her time and energy and, I am sure, her resources to advance the cause of missions. ... She is a great champion of missions. In the great tradition of Phoebe in Romans 16, she is a great servant in her church, a commendable servant.”
Ferrier is Tallowood’s director of
women’s ministries, an umbrella that coordinates
the work of 33 groups. She also
serves on the church’s missions committee and committee on committees and is a
church greeter.
Through her missions leadership, she
oversees the church’s program that helps
teenage girls obtain statewide certification
in the Acteens missions program, Brooks
noted, adding she has helped countless girls
receive college scholarships through
Acteens.
Ferrier is chairperson of the BGCT Committee on Nominations for Institution Boards and is a member of the Missions Review & Initiatives Committee.
She is a member of the boards of directors for Hispanic Baptist Theological School and the Texas Baptist Laity Institute, and she served on the BGCT’s Strategy Committee.
In Union Baptist Association in Houston, she has served on the missions long range planning committee and other committees and has worked on associational Woman’s Missionary Union committees.
She was chairperson of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s general assembly steering committee in 1998, and she is on the Texas CBF coordinating council.
If elected to convention office, Ferrier will help the BGCT maintain its focus on missions.
“Texas Baptists always have been a people with a heart for missions, and that’s where my heart is,” she said.
“But the world is right here with us,” she said, pointing to the racial and ethnic diversity that is changing the complexion of the state. “I would look forward to serving with Texas Baptists as we reach the lost here in our own state, as well as across the nation and throughout the world.”
Through her work on the Committee on Nominations for Institution Boards, she has enjoyed the opportunity to meet the presidents of the BGCT’s 23 institutions and to examine the ministries of those institutions.
“They reach people all over this state with the gospel, and the majority of Texas Baptists have no idea about the extent of the reach of our institutional ministries,” she said. “I want to help educate them.”
She also wants to build support for Hispanic Baptist Theological School and for the statewide ministry of the Texas Baptist Laity Institute.
“There are many avenues Texas Baptists have to reach Texas, and Hispanic Baptist Theological School is one of them,” she explained. “I would like Texas Baptists to consider supporting HBTS—putting the school in their church budgets as Tallowood has, sending teams to help the school and pledging to pray for (HBTS President) Albert Reyes and his staff.”
She also wants to encourage Texas Baptists to learn more about missions and to be personally involved, she said. “I have been in the Baptist church since the womb,” she added. “It is wonderful Texas Baptists are willing to nominate a woman for second vice president.” Ferrier’s daughter, Catherine, is a senior at Baylor University.
October 2002