Stories to inspire, challenge and educate.

To find stories related to FSW’s four priorities, click on the category below.

Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

CBF Oklahoma selects Kyle Tubbs as next coordinator

Kyle Tubbs, a national leader in church starting, has been elected coordinator of the Cooperating Baptist Fellowship Oklahoma. He will succeed Steve Graham, who will retire the end of May.

The CBF Oklahoma Coordinating Council elected Tubbs following a national search for a leader to follow Graham, coordinator since 2012.

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El Paso/Juarez Cameron Vickrey El Paso/Juarez Cameron Vickrey

With FSW’s help, immigrants build better lives—one concrete block at a time

Thanks to a clever idea and willingness to work, three Cuban immigrants are supporting themselves and their families while living in a refugee shelter supported by Fellowship Southwest in Juarez, Mexico.

Shelter Director Rosalío Sosa knows his Cuban friends well and appreciates their strong desire to work. So, when he realized a concrete fabrication machine was for sale, he saw a path to financial independence. And with Fellowship Southwest’s support, he bought the machine and moved it to Juarez.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

CBF, Fellowship Southwest leaders welcome administration’s immigration initiatives

CBF and Fellowship Southwest leaders have expressed appreciation for President Joe Biden’s tone toward immigrants and gratitude for affirmative steps taken by his administration on immigration policy.

“As Christians, we have heard Jesus’s call to welcome the stranger. In response to that calling, we as Cooperative Baptists will continue to witness the love of God to immigrants and refugees through our missions and advocacy work,” CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley said.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

La toma de posesión de Biden despierta esperanza entre los inmigrantes mientras las nuevas caravanas hacen cola

La toma de posesión de Joe Biden despertó la esperanza entre los inmigrantes de ambos lados de la frontera sur de los Estados Unidos cuando se convirtió en el cuadragésimo sexto presidente de los Estados Unidos.

Los indocumentados, inmigrantes, solicitantes de asilo y refugiados que viven en los Estados Unidos estuvieron a la expectativa de los primeros pasos del presidente hacia la reforma migratoria. Mientras tanto, en Centroamérica, las personas que viven bajo el yugo de la pobreza y el sufrimiento ponderaron si ellos también deberían considerar migrar al norte.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

Biden’s inauguration sparks hope among immigrants as new caravans queue 

Joe Biden’s inauguration sparked hope among immigrants on both sides of the United States’ southern border as he became the nation’s 46th president Jan. 20.

In the United States, the undocumented, immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees anticipated the president’s early steps toward immigration reform. Meanwhile, in Central America, suffering people considered whether they, too, should consider migrating north.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

New law designed to make southern border safer

On Dec. 31, 2020, the U.S. government passed a law with bipartisan support that offers practical safety measures to reduce the dangers immigrants face when crossing the border through the Arizona desert.

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spanish Cameron Vickrey spanish Cameron Vickrey

Lista de deseos de Fellowship Southwest para una nueva era

Con la inauguración presidencial de los Estados Unidos a tan solo seis días, el Congreso ya en sesión y con las legislaturas estatales preparándose, Fellowship Southwest mira hacia el futuro con esperanza. Por supuesto, nuestra máxima confianza está en Dios y no en el gobierno. Pero nos comprometemos a orar y a trabajar por una cooperación que resulte en justicia, y en una compasión compartida por las personas necesitadas.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

Fellowship Southwest’s wish list for a new era

With the U.S. presidential inauguration just six days away, Congress already in session and state legislatures gearing up, Fellowship Southwest is looking toward the future with hope. Of course, our ultimate trust is in God and not government. But we pledge to pray for and promise to work toward cooperation that results in justice and in shared compassion for people in need.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

Pastores e iglesias regalaron su amor a lo largo de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México

Cientos de niños y familias pobres a lo largo de la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México fueron abrazados por el amor de Cristo durante estas fiestas navideñas gracias al corazón y el esfuerzo del Fellowship Southwest y sus colaboradores. Junto a a la Red Latina de CBF y Hearts4Kids, Fellowship Southwest sembró alegría en albergues para migrantes y campamentos de refugiados, así como en las colonias y barrios marginados del sur de Texas, dejando una estela de sonrisas en las caras de algunas de las personas más vulnerables en Norteamérica.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

Una declaración sobre la oscuridad de nuestra nación

Es triste e irónico que en este año el Día de los Reyes o la Epifanía, fecha en que se celebra la revelación de Jesús como la luz del mundo, coincida con uno de los días más oscuros en la historia de los Estados Unidos.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

Pastors and churches deliver holiday love along the U.S.-Mexico border

Hundreds of families along the U.S.-Mexico border felt loved by Christians during this holiday season, thanks to Fellowship Southwest and its partners. They spread the joy of Christ in Mexican migrant shelters and refugee camps, as well as South Texas colonias, putting smiles on the faces of some of the most vulnerable people in North America.

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Cameron Vickrey Cameron Vickrey

Fellowship Southwest matures, expands responsibilities

Fellowship Southwest has taken the next steps in its organizational maturity, maintaining its historically close relationship to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship while embracing its responsibility for long-term vitality and expanding its regional, cultural and ecumenical outreach.

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Jay Pritchard Jay Pritchard

"Fearing not" with love

Remember back to last year when the words “quarantine” and “pandemic” felt like words out of a historical fiction novel, and no one had ever spoken the words “social distancing?” This year has given us new vocabulary and new meaning for old language as well, like “fear” and “love.” “Don’t live in fear” and “Love your neighbor,” both phrases that my brand of Christianity prescribes closely to, now associate with two opposing camps—maskers or anti-maskers.

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Elket Rodríguez Jay Pritchard Elket Rodríguez Jay Pritchard

For International Migrant Day, nine immigrants’ stories

This Friday, Dec. 18, is International Migrants Day. To help us understand immigrants, Fellowship Southwest’s Elket Rodríguez interviewed nine Christian immigrants in different stages of their immigration process.

These immigrants represent different countries, races, ethnicities and religious traditions. Some are asylum seekers living in migrant shelters in Mexico, just across the southern border of the United States. Others have legal status in the United States and wait for completion of their naturalization process. Most have immigrated to the United States and joined the fabric of this nation. One of them lives under the uncertainty of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. All of them are migrants willing to share the role that faith and the church play or played during their migrant journey.

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