SAN ANTONIO – The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship joined Buckner Children and Family Services in partnering with Kids Hope USA to match church volunteers with school students in a one-hour a week mentoring program in San Antonio.
On the first day of the We Love Missions conference at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, CBF Global Missions Co-coordinator Barbara Baldridge, Buckner Children and Family Services Vice President Felipe Garza and Kids Hope USA founder Virgil Gulker signed a three-year agreement that calls for the Fellowship to provide mentors from churches to 150 children in San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth, Waco and Lufkin, Texas.
“This agreement really exemplifies our commitment to partnerships missions,” Baldridge said. “It is a partnership involving churches and organizations to combine resources to reach out to a neglected group.”
Founded in 1995, Kids Hope USA began as a pilot project among three churches and 30 students in southwestern Michigan. Now, Kids Hope USA has more than 271 churches providing mentors for 4,700 children across the country.
“One of the great blessings of our work comes when a public school calls us and asks ‘Do you have a church that will help us love our children?’” Gulker said. “Because of this partnership with Buckner and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, more and more we will be able to say ‘yes.’”
The Fellowship currently partners with Buckner in the Rio Grande Valley, El Paso, Texas, and in Nairobi, Kenya..
“I am so grateful to Kids Hope USA and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship,” Garza said at the conclusion of the signing ceremony Thursday night. “We will be able to reach children, show them the love they need and share Jesus.”
Gulker said churches across the country have responded to the ministry because it allows them to better serve their own communities. The volunteers range in age from 16 to 84, with more than half coming in the 30-50 year-old range.
“It’s biblical,” Gulker said. “God has created the opportunity for us. All of this love in us has to find expression. This is the need in America, and if we’re going to redeem the American church, we need to love.”
Kids Hope USA is seeking to strengthen its presence in the South and Southeast, traditional strongholds for Fellowship churches.
When Buckner was established as an orphanage in 1879, its purpose was for the “care, custody, treatment, maintenance and education” of “underprivileged, destitute, dependent, neglected and needy children.” Today, 125 years after R.C. Buckner founded Buckner Orphans Home in Dallas, the primary goal of Buckner Children and Family Services is still to strengthen individuals and families.
Located across Texas, Buckner offers services ranging from parenting classes for incarcerated women to residential treatment for abused and neglected children to extensive non-residential services in surrounding communities.
CBF is a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.
Photo information:
From left, Felipe Garza, vice president of Buckner Family and Children Services; Barbara Baldridge, CBF Global Missions co-coordinator; and Virgil Gulker, founder of Kids Hope USA, signed a new partnership among the three organizations to mentor school children during the We Love Missions conference at Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio.
Photo by Russ Dilday/Buckner News Service