Baylor lands huge donation for campus life
An anonymous donor has pledged $100 million to Baylor University to be used for philanthropic purposes, the Waco, Texas institution has announced.
The gift described by the university as “transformational” will boost its ongoing Give Light campaign, which seeks to raise $1.1 billion.
“A significant portion of the $100 million gift will create a matching fund to launch the Baylor Academic Challenge and also will support other components of the Give Light campaign to be announced in the near future,” Baylor said in a news release.
The philanthropic campaign is designed to support Illuminate, the university strategic plan to strengthen every area of campus life, including spiritual, academics, athletics and more.
The Give Life effort was launched in November 2018 and so far has generated $692 million, Baylor said.
The large, recent gift helped put the university over the half-way mark.
“This is a truly momentous day in the 174-year history of Baylor University, as we celebrate Give Light and this extraordinary $100 million gift from members of the Baylor family that illustrates their powerful belief in the promise of the university’s future and Baylor’s distinct place in higher education,” Baylor President Linda A. Livingstone said in the release.
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CBF delivers checks to Hurricane Harvey victims in Texas
People of faith continue to struggle from the ravages of Hurricane Harvey, the storm that ravaged Houston and other parts of Texas in 2017.
Marv Knox
And people of faith continue to respond to those needs, said Marv Knox, field coordinator for Fellowship Southwest.
“Five congregations ravaged by Hurricane Harvey are taking new steps toward wholeness,” Knox said in a weekly email message to supporters of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship organization.
CBF representatives, Knox explained, recently handed checks totaling $165,000 to help those congregations with ongoing efforts to rebuild from damage caused by the hurricane.
The congregations are: First Baptist Church of Holiday Beach in Rockport; Iglesia Casa de Dios Centro De Avivamiento in Corpus Christi; Primera Asamblea de Dios in Corpus Christi; Primera Iglesia Bautista in Sinton; and Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church in Corpus Christi. They sustained severe wind damage when Harvey struck.
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Alliance: Baptists must embrace responsibility that comes with privilege
The Alliance of Baptists’ 2019 Annual Gathering was held April 26-28 in Washington D.C. and focused on the theme “What is Liberty Without Liberation.”
Brent Newberry
The organization’s board of directors also held its spring meeting where it formalized a pledge to dismantle racism in the Alliance.
Event co-chair Brent Newberry, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Worcester, Massachusetts, addressed the theme of the gathering.
“Especially for Baptists in the U.S. there’s a lot of privilege,” he said in remarks shared by the Alliance online. “We like to talk about our history of persecution, but we’re in this Protestant majority now.”
But Baptists must also embrace the service that comes with privilege, he said.
“We’ve gotten comfortable with the freedoms that we have, but we aren’t looking at the responsibility that comes with that,” Newberry said. “We need to come together and focus on what liberation looks like for a lot of different people.”