In 1925, Southern Baptists gathered for their annual meeting in Memphis, Tenn., and adopted a pair of foundational structures that still define the convention’s work today.  The Baptist Faith and Message laid a doctrinal foundation for the Southern Baptist Convention’s cooperating churches, while the Cooperative Program provided the unified funding method by which their work would be accomplished.

In 2025, Southern Baptists celebrated the 100th anniversary of this historic event and saw the fruit that comes from generous giving. As Southern Baptists of Texas Convention churches continued to give faithfully and sacrificially through the CP, churches were planted across the state to help push back against a growing rate of lostness. When disaster relief workers mobilized to minister to survivors of floods and fires, they did so with the help of cooperative giving. 

Simply put, the Cooperative Program’s impact has been wide-reaching and significant. 

As churches give through the Cooperative Program, 45% of undesignated receipts remain in Texas to mobilize SBTC churches and 55% is forwarded to SBC entities for national and international missions and ministry. Those gifts support international missionaries serving in some of the harshest mission fields on the planet, church planters in North America, and students attending one of the SBC’s six seminaries.

In February, the Texan featured Acts Fellowship Church in Austin, where more than three dozen people have been sent to seminary to prepare for future kingdom service—including 20 who have trained at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. 

“ … It’s a great way to take part in equipping the next generation of Christian leaders and to partake in the expansion of God’s kingdom,” Acts Fellowship Pastor Charles Lee said.

Caroll Marr, senior pastor of Southcliff Church in Fort Worth, said giving through the CP is personal for his congregation, which supports and sends missionaries around the globe.

“It is easy to think a larger church can make a global impact in a way a smaller church cannot,” Marr wrote in the Texan earlier this year. “Yet because of the Cooperative Program, even churches that do not feel they have a personal connection with missions or are not able to go on a mission trip are just as connected as our church.”

Throughout the year, SBTC churches were encouraged to do three things: pray for record CP giving in 2025, plan a CP Sunday to emphasize the importance of CP giving, and post testimonials to social media to spread the word about how God has used CP to bless individuals’ lives.

“The Cooperative Program is a way that we can make sure not only [our church] is being effective in reaching our neighbors and the nations right now,” said Aaron Kahler, lead pastor of Hays Hills Baptist Church in Buda, “but that we and other Southern Baptist churches will be effective 100 years from now.”

SBTC En Español’s annual Florece retreat is designed to provide women with a place of pause where they can be equipped, encouraged, and renewed. 

“We prayed that Florece would not just be another event, but a true turning point in the lives of those who attended—and that is what God did,” said Arlene Sanabria, SBTC En Español women’s ministry leader. “We have received countless testimonies from women deeply impacted by the Word shared in workshops and general sessions. Many experienced inner healing and freedom from anxiety and depression, while others found comfort and had their faith renewed.”

About 900 women representing 75 churches attended the retreat, continuing a trend of growing attendance at SBTC En Español events throughout the year. The events are not just drawing large crowds, but leading to changed lives. 

At Florece, 14 women made professions of faith in Jesus Christ, while others answered a call to serve the Lord in various capacities. A similar situation happened at the Hombres de Impacto conference earlier this year, where one of the 750 men in attendance trusted Christ after being invited by a participating church.

Over the summer, Youth Week—SBTC En Español’s student camp—saw 675 campers gather to worship, connect, and hear the gospel. One of those campers was a 16-year-old girl who had been taking hormone therapy pills in an attempt to transition her body to having male characteristics. Instead, she heard the gospel, surrendered her life to Christ, and has since stopped taking the medication and started a discipleship process at her local church. She was one of about 50 campers who made a profession of faith. 

SBTC En Español trained more than 650 lay leaders and pastors in discipleship, leadership, technology, church planting, and evangelism through the annual Apoderados conference held in conjunction with the SBTC’s Empower Conference in February, and through Equip En Español in July. The first Hispanic Women’s Ministry Leadership Summit hosted 70 leaders representing 33 churches, and a pastor and wife retreat encouraged 30 couples to strengthen their marriages and remain steadfast in their ministries.

Additionally, more resources became accessible to Spanish-speaking churches this past year through the SBTC’s Church Health and Leadership department. Those included Chosen to Serve, a newly developed deacon ministry training, and Regenesis, a process designed to help churches experience health and renewal. 

The year also saw a new leader called to serve SBTC En Español. Luis González began working as the ministry’s full-time director in August. 

“I’m so grateful to be a part of this team. We want to mobilize our churches to make disciples and to do it with excellence,” González said earlier this year. “[When we do this], we will see more of our churches accomplish the mission of making disciples and see many people come to Christ.”

—Jayson Larson

Tony Mathews, senior strategist for the SBTC’s Missional Ministries department, wasn’t sure what to expect when the convention hosted the inaugural GoSummit on the campus of North Garland Baptist Fellowship in September.

He was thrilled when around 140 people representing more than 20 churches showed up to learn how to be more effective in evangelizing their friends and neighbors. 

“It just exceeded our wildest expectations,” Mathews said. “This event was multicultural and the discussions were just so rich. It was really exciting.”

The summit featured diverse speakers who worked together to break down many of the barriers that hinder personal evangelism. Session topics included how to overcome common hesitations people have when they hear the gospel, effectively reaching younger generations for Christ, and understanding the demographics and diverse cultures in your community. A women’s session encouraged attendees to point other women to Jesus by looking for ways to engage them.

The GoSummit was one of many efforts designed to equip SBTC churches with resources to advance the gospel. In 2025, leaders received training on how to conduct their own evangelism workshops, organize door-to-door evangelism, and cultivate a culture of evangelism within their churches. Multiple grants were provided to support community outreach events where the gospel was shared. Those grants enabled churches to distribute over 1,200 Bibles and 6,000 gospel tracts. 

 An increasing number of resources were also made available online to train churches and individuals. The Stand Firm online apologetics course, with more than 20 videos, equips believers to share the gospel while addressing culturally relevant issues such as human sexuality, atheism, and world religions. Evangelism Connections, a series of live virtual trainings presented by experienced evangelism leaders, served participants around the state and will continue in 2026.

SBTC churches also mobilized for the cause of evangelism in June during Crossover Dallas, the weeklong North American Mission Board evangelistic outreach held in conjunction each year with the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting. About 60 churches participated, delivering the gospel to one of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. 

Some churches did door-to-door evangelism and hosted block parties, while others used a pickleball instruction camp and a Christian comedy show as vehicles to tell others about Jesus. Crossover also included a pair of student rallies—one at Cross Church DFW and the other at First Baptist Church in Rockwall—that drew hundreds of students and led to a number of decisions for Christ.

All told, over 17,000 people heard the gospel through one-on-one and group conversations during Crossover. More than 700 made professions of faith in Christ. 

—Jayson Larson

As you step into this new role as director of Send Network SBTC, what are some of the things that excite you? 

Jason Crandall: I’m most excited about what we’ve already seen happen—more than 200 church plants in the last three years since the partnership began, and I’m excited about those numbers continuing to increase. We continue to see more churches getting involved in church planting and sending guys into our process to go plant churches. Our pipeline is already looking full heading into next year.

I’m also really excited about what’s happening through the Missions Mobilization group here at the SBTC. I really love the idea of M-Link [a tool that matches churches looking to serve one another] helping potential supporting churches come on board with our church plants to develop greater partnerships. A lot of times there’s a willingness of churches to help, but they don’t necessarily know what to do or who they match up with. That’s one of the things I love about M-Link, that it can match a church that can do X, Y, and Z to a church plant that needs X, Y, and Z. 

What are some of the unique needs in Texas that can be addressed through more churches being planted? 

Crandall: Texas is exploding in population. You can look anywhere in almost any of our major cities—and really, even in our non-major cities—and see they’re pushing dirt everywhere. You’re seeing subdivisions go up like crazy. Businesses are coming in. Texas is still booming. When we began talking about this Send Network SBTC partnership back in 2021, there were 29 million people in the state. Now there are almost 31 million people, and what that means is there is so much more lostness here.

The world is moving here. International populations from all over are coming to Texas, and they’re in need of international church plants that speak their language. We’ve seen a huge uptick in that in 2025. We need to make sure there are churches here that are going to bring the gospel to them.

Your church, CityView Church in Pearland, is a plant that has been part of starting 14 churches over the past 12 years. Why has that been such an integral part of your church’s ministry? 

Crandall: It kind of goes back to our founding. We’re specifically a Houston-based church, and we saw how fast Houston was growing and asked ourselves, “If we grew a megachurch in Pearland, how is that going to affect the city of Houston?” The answer we landed on was that a megachurch in Pearland does nothing, but a church that multiplies and plants churches can put churches all over that area. Those churches can embed into those local areas and become flourishing gospel congregations. CityView is a church of about 150 on a good Sunday. On Easter, we might hit 200. But the Lord has been gracious to allow us to see through those churches we’ve planted over 3,000 people worshiping on a regular basis. And some of those churches have also planted churches. By God’s grace, we’ve seen something beyond what we could ever ask, think, or imagine.

How can any church become a sending church?

Crandall: Any church can do this. One of the things I love doing in terms of mobilization is something called a Sending Lab. A Sending Lab is a one-day workshop where a church comes in and we help them figure out how to craft a sending vision. Most churches don’t realize it, but they already have 50, 60, 70% of what’s needed to plant a church.

I like to say it like this: Every church can be involved in church planting, but not every church can be involved in church planting in exactly the same way. Sometimes that means the best thing you can do is be a cooperating church where you’re giving regularly and generously through the Cooperative Program. Sometimes you can become a supporting church. A supporting church is one that’s going to come alongside a church plant and help it—whether that’s through prayer, giving, going, or in some other way. As you do that, you develop a relationship with a church planter and get to know him and then you may want to see your church get involved in a deeper way. 

I firmly believe every church needs to be involved in multiplication, and every step of the way, you’re looking for whatever that next step may be for your church.

What would you say to the pastor who thinks he may be called to plant?

Crandall: I’d say do it! I say that jokingly just because we need more. We need to plant churches everywhere for everyone. If we’re planting 160 churches a year, we might be able to keep up with the growth rate of Texas over the long haul. But for the pastor considering planting, I would say talk to another church planter. Give me a call—I’m happy to talk to you. Talk to one of our local catalysts. We want to hear from you, and we want to help you figure it out and discern that call because it’s a special call.