Fellowship Southwest inaugurates new era at fall board meeting

Fellowship Southwest launched a new era this week, conducting its first board of directors meeting under the leadership of Executive Director Stephen Reeves in San Antonio.

The board elected Reeves, who has guided the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s advocacy program, early this year. Since mid-March, he has overlapped with Fellowship Southwest’s founding coordinator, Marv Knox, who will retire late this year. 

In his report to the board, Reeves said compassion, justice and connection will guide FSW’s activity, noting those qualities complement the organization’s values—faithful, agile, ecumenical and kind. 

Reeves has been traveling across the region, he reported, noting his goals for FSW mirror what Southwest pastors have told him. “We want to focus outward,” he said, describing collaboration in a range of missions, ministry and advocacy causes. “Fellowship Southwest can provide an opportunity for all of us to lift our gaze and to invest our energy outside ourselves.”

During the coming year, a major priority will focus on providing opportunities for individuals and groups to visit and volunteer in FSW’s immigrant relief ministry on the U.S.-Mexico border, Reeves said. “There is so much to do and experience,” he explained. “It changes you to see the border firsthand.”

And across the coming five years, Reeves hopes FSW will become “a truly ecumenical, multiracial organization.” 

“Both of those (aspirations) are difficult and rare. They require a lot of strategy and intention,” he conceded. “But we can agree on what we ought to be doing in the world together—hands-on missions and advocacy. Few organizations can do both, but Fellowship Southwest is called to tie those things together,” which can bind people of faith.

At a dinner on San Antonio’s Riverwalk, Reeves and Communications Director Cameron Mason Vickrey announced FSW had named its Knox Fund for Immigrant Relief after the organization’s founder, thanks to his faithful work in cultivating donors and resources for the ministry. Since 2018, the organization has invested more than $550,000 in its network of pastors, churches and faith-based nonprofits that minister to refugees amassed on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In his final remarks to the board, Knox expressed thanks, optimism and hope. “I want to express my deepest, most profound emotion today—gratitude,” he said. “This is the right time for an organization like Fellowship Southwest—avowedly ecumenical and often interfaith, focused on delivering physical, emotional, tangible and spiritual Good News to people, particularly the most vulnerable and at-risk.

“I’m ecstatic you have called Stephen to be our leader. With his skills, training, expertise, networks, personality, maturity and work ethic, he’s the perfect executive director for this time. He will take Fellowship Southwest much further than I could go. And I could not be more delighted.”

The board discussed potential new partnerships that would expand its ministry to immigrants already in the U.S. 

Considering Fellowship Southwest’s future ministry, the board discussed four strategic “faith collaboratives”—mission- and advocacy-focused task forces—it will launch in 2022. They will focus on eliminating hunger, promoting racial justice, providing immigration ministry and advocacy, and supporting ministries with First Americans, Reeves announced. 

The board also elected a slate of officers:

• Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry from Abilene, Texas, chair

• Michael Mills, pastor of Agape Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, chair-elect

• Amy Jacober, co-pastor of Harbor Church in Phoenix, vice chair

• Kristin McAtee, associate pastor of Spring Creek Church in Oklahoma City, secretary

It re-elected four members to additional three-year terms:

• Jewel London, a campus minister and the pastoral assistant at The Church Without Walls in Houston

• Mark Newton, pastor of First Baptist Church in Lufkin, Texas

• Victoria Robb Powers, executive pastor of University Park United Methodist Church in Dallas

• Andy Stoker, senior minister of First United Methodist Church in Dallas

The board approved a 2022 budget of $502,293, an increase of $149,479, over the current budget. The new spending plan will enable FSW to add an associate director to serve alongside Reeves, emphasizing immigrant relief ministry and faith collaboratives.

In addition to the budget, the board committed to maintain its support for the immigrant relief ministry, which involves a network of pastors who feed, shelter and protect refugees, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. 

The board also previewed three new videos:

• A documentary on the FSW Immigrant Relief Ministry

• A brief overview of FSW and its mission, priorities and values

• The trailer for a new video series called Amplify, which provides advocacy training for congregations