Fellowship Southwest featured prominently in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s 2021 General Assembly, conducted online again this year due to resurgence of the COVID pandemic.

At the beginning of the opening worship service, Lois Gagne, pianist at Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio, provided special music from the congregation’s sun-dappled Atrium.

This is not the column I wanted to write. Perhaps things are not going as you hoped right now either. I was blessed with the gift of extra time off in the early months of my transition to executive director of Fellowship Southwest and while Marv is still serving as coordinator. The month of July was just about everything I could have hoped it would be.

Fellowship Southwest's immigrant relief ministry has fed, sheltered and protected an estimated 300,000 vulnerable people and committed more than a half-million dollars to the ministry along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The immigrant ministry extends from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. FSW supports a network of pastors who serve refugees amassed along the U.S.-Mexico border, seeking asylum in the United States.

On Tuesday night, Aug. 24, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order that effectively reinstates the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP. Commonly referred to as the “remain in Mexico” policy, MPP is largely responsible (along with Title 42, which facilitates expulsion based on COVID fears) for migrants being forced to assemble at the U.S.-Mexico border to await their opportunity to make an asylum claim in court.

Back-to-school launches the second year of one of Fellowship Southwest’s most productive partnerships—an internship program in the Center for Church and Community Impact at Baylor University’s Garland School of Social Work.

One of Christianity’s iconic pioneer missionaries demonstrated the power of women to propel the gospel, CBF Texas Coordinator Rick McClatchy stressed during First Baptist Church of San Antonio’s Judson Day Celebration this summer.

Fellowship Southwest (FSW) joined hundreds of faith-based, humanitarian, and human rights organizations in a letter asking president Biden to honor U.S. international and domestic commitments to refugees. The document – which also commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Refugee Convention– highlights the organizations’ disappointment with the administration’s recent actions undermining refugee protections.

Immigration is near and dear to Fellowship Southwest, because we believe our love for migrants reflects our love for Jesus. So, we’re delighted to tell you about We the People Ride, a coast-to-coast event sponsored by our friends at Vote Common Good.

Fellowship Southwest will celebrate its fourth birthday this Sunday. How can Aug. 1, 2017—our launch date—paradoxically seem like only yesterday and decades ago? Well, joyful activity seems to make time fly. And we have traversed the pandemic, which made weeks feel like months and months seem like years.

This summer, friends in ministry demonstrate how helping one another in times of need actually helps extend our community ministries to others. Isa Torres, pastor of Cliff Temple en Español at Cliff Temple Baptist Church in Dallas, and Carlos Valencia and Anyra Cano, pastors at Iglesia Bautista Victoria en Cristo in Fort Worth, already were friends and ministry partners in the DFW community.

Misinformation creates mental barriers that affect the lives of many migrant families, immigration attorney Elket Rodríguez told more than 600 refugees stranded in Matamoros, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.

Los cubanos en el exilio han sufrido junto a sus compatriotas en la isla, aseguró el pastor David Deulofeu del Templo Bautista de South Houston.

Texas Impact organized a rally at the Texas state Capitol July 19 to protest the proposed voter suppression legislation. Over 400 people of faith gathered on the south side of the Capitol and listened to a dozen inspirational speakers. The speakers, representing Christians of many denominations, Jews and Muslims, all professed convictions about the importance of protecting the right to vote.

Cubans in exile have been suffering alongside their activist sisters and brothers on the island, reported Pastor David Deulofeu of Templo Bautista de South Houston—Baptist Temple of South Houston.

Can you think of a word more maligned than “politics”?

Some people believe it’s a dirty term affixed to a despicable craft. That’s because, for the most part, it’s practiced so poorly.

Cooperative Baptist leaders expressed disappointment after a Federal Court in Texas ruled that Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is illegal. The ruling prohibits the Department of Homeland Security from approving new DACA applications, but it does not bar new DACA applicants to submit their applications or affect the more than 700,000 recipients who already have applied successfully.

Members of Iglesia Valle de Beraca in Matamoros, Mexico, have helped evacuate more than 600 victims of floods that submerged the city and surrounding colonias, just across the U.S.-Mexico border from Brownsville, Texas.

Pulpit plagiarism has been making the news again.

“Again” is the operative word. This is not new. A couple of friends, now in their 80s, recall making a wager about which swiped sermon a famous Baptist preacher/evangelist would deliver to a captivated crowd at Oklahoma’s Falls Creek Assembly when they worked there as young men. That was at least 50, maybe 60, years ago.

You can understand if Maria Elena De Los Angels feels like Job. She’s one of the victims of the deep freeze that pummeled Texas last February—folks Fellowship Southwest is helping through its close partner, Hearts4Kids.

¡Mírame! Eso me susurró Jesús todos los días que estuve en la gira de Fellowship Southwest visitando los ministerios que componen su red de apoyo a migrantes. Por espacio de dos semanas, fueron muchas las veces que me encontré a Jesús por la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México.