Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas will launch an innovative fellowship to strengthen the social justice witness of progressive Baptist congregations and bridge the gap between seminary education and advocacy work in the public square.
Victoria Robb Powers
Funded by a new four-year, $400,000 grant from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation, the Prophetic Leadership Program will prepare two full-time ministers at a time in staggered, two-year fellowships. They will guide churches and communities to address the challenging issues of the day, Senior Pastor Victoria Robb Powers said.
The congregation will lean into its connections with allies like Christians Against Christian Nationalism, Fellowship Southwest, Faith Commons, the Alliance of Baptists’ THRIVE Network and the Baptist House of Studies at Southern Methodist University’s Perkin School of Theology to help equip fellows for social-justice ministry in multiple settings, she explained.
Royal Lane Baptist Church
Eligible candidates must have earned a seminary degree, but ordination is not a requirement.
“The genesis of the program was seeing more and more people coming out of seminary feeling passionate about justice and advocacy from a place of faith, but not feeling called to traditional church ministry,” Robb Powers said. “Theological education explains why these things matter, but they still need experience in coordinating ministry in the public square to make an impact for justice.”
Royal Lane is ideally suited for the project because of its historic connection to religious and social justice work and as a training ground for emerging leaders, she continued. The congregation currently has six candidates for ordination and all of them are interested in social-justice ministry.
Royal Lane also has relationships with civil and religious rights leaders like Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and lead organizer of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, who is a member of the church.
“We are strongly connected to groups like Fellowship Southwest, which is our largest community partner and our connection to the migrant community,” the pastor said. “And we are closely connected to the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. All this feels very natural for us. It’s part of our core DNA. We have a long history as a church with prophetic ministry.”
“We want to train these folks to be bold and courageous in this ministry.”
Powers currently chairs the board of visitors for the Baptist House of Studies at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology.
According to an official church timeline, Royal Lane in 1981 became fthe irst Baptist church in Dallas to hire a female associate pastor and ordained the city’s first gay deacon in 1998. The congregation became an open and affirming church in 2010, was the first to hire a Baptist gay associate pastor and in 2016 was the first Baptist church in the city to host a same-sex wedding ceremony.
In 2023, Royal Lane called Robb Powers as pastor, the first long-established church in the city to do so. Only one other mission congregation in the city had been led by a female senior pastor before.
“In that spirit, we want to train these folks to be bold and courageous in this ministry, and we want to be a lighthouse for other churches to say, here’s how you can do this for young people who want to engage in justice and advocacy work,” she said.
Victoria Robb Powers with Harry Wooten (right), associate pastor at Royal Lane, and Ariel Merivil and Timothy Peoples from Wilshire on the pulpit and choir exchange day.
She is no stranger to clergy mentorship programs, having been a former member at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, which created one of the nation’s first and most successful pastoral residency programs for senior pastors. While a student at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Robb Powers participated in preaching colloquia at Wilshire.
These are the two most prominent churches in Dallas affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Robb Powers and Wilshire Senior Pastor Timothy Peoples recently did a pulpit exchange that involved the choirs of the sister churches. Royal Lane also is affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists.
The need for such a unique program is urgent both in the church and in American culture, Robb Powers said. “The rise of Christian nationalism challenges what it means to be a Christian and is detrimental to the church as a whole. So, with this leadership program, we are not training people to do traditional church-based ministry because who knows what the church is going to look like 30 years from now.”
“Given the religious violence against minority faith groups and against LGBTQ, immigrant and other marginalized communities, it’s critical for the church to figure out how to promote a different kind of faith and to have leaders who understand these issues and who have the capacity to drive meaningful change.”
Graduates of the program, which is set to launch June 1, also will be prepared for justice ministries within congregations.
“Ideally these folks will work within the church because our churches need to be involved in this kind of work. For me as a senior pastor, I can’t do all these things, so there is a need for a designated justice and advocacy minister to help the congregation engage in these efforts.”
The fellowship initially will prioritize women and LGBTQ candidates “because these are underrepresented voices in the church, and we want to create a pathway for these marginalized communities to contribute to meaningful ministry,” she said.
Applications are now being accepted for justice and advocacy fellows and for a full-time office administrator and program leadership coordinator position.
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