Full Articles December to January 2014

Transcription

2014: I Am Wilshire
I AM WILSHIRE - JOE GRONER
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | DECEMBER 18TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Joe Groner made a public profession of faith on Pastor George
Mason’s 25th anniversary last August. “I knew that I was ready,
but I was waiting for the right moment to join,” he said.
“Something about having a rabbi in the pulpit—since my paternal
grandfather was Jewish—made me feel certain that it was the
right time, but I didn’t know I was going to do it until that
morning.”
He was baptized in late September by the pastor and is now a
member of the Foundations of Faith Class.
Joe grew up in a nonreligious household. His mother had attended a Methodist church
when she was young, and his maternal grandmother was a non-practicing Catholic.
His first exposure to Christianity occurred during high school. “I had several Baptist friends,
and I occasionally attended church with them,” he said. He later discussed religion with his
college roommate, also a Baptist.
“About two years ago I started to search the world of faith more,” Joe said. “I had been
through some negative experiences, and I felt that something was missing in my life. I tried
to find it in various ways, such as through work, but I couldn’t fill the hole.
“I started talking to my college roommate again, and at the end of last year, I began to
attend a Bible church in northeast Dallas,” he said. “The pastor had officiated at my
roommate’s wedding in Austin several years before.
“My habit was to sleep in on Sunday mornings until it was time to get ready for church,” Joe
explained. “My radio was programmed to WRR-FM, and I found myself staying in bed to
listen to George’s sermons.
“After a few weeks I decided to investigate by checking the WRR website. When I did, I
realized I’d been driving by Wilshire on the way to my church. One Sunday last March I
stopped in, and I never went back to that church.
“The first person I saw every Sunday was Paul Skelton,” Joe said. “My second week at the
church, I attended coffee with George. I got to know Tiffany Wright through the Wilshire
Welcome class.” Tiffany, Wilshire’s minister for care ministries, invited him to be part of the
Grow Team that is part of Wilshire’s 20/20 initiative.
He has jumped right in to do other volunteering. With high school experience on the light
crews for musicals, he helps with live streaming of Sunday worship services. On days when
he assists, he attends both services: one to help with the live streaming and one to worship
undistracted.
Beyond participation at Wilshire, Joe has contemplated other mission work. “As a single
person it’s easier” to find time to participate, he said. “CitySquare is a possibility.
“The No. 1 strength of Wilshire is the people,” he said. “They’re sincere witnesses. Wilshire
also strikes a good balance between traditional and modern styles. I like the traditional
worship style, the type of music and the hymn singing.”
Joe grew up in Arlington and graduated from Arlington High School, where he competed in
computer-science programming competitions, foreshadowing his professional career. “I’d
wanted to do something related to computers since grade school,” he said. In fourth grade
he learned Logo, a programming language for children, and continued to study it in the sixth
grade.
During high school he participated in Quiz League academic competitions similar
to Jeopardy!, competed in UIL academic events in computer science and current events,
and wrote for the student newspaper. As a senior he was president of the National Honor
Society.
Qualifying for early dismissal as a senior, Joe went to work afternoons in the drafting
department at an oil equipment company. He got a jump-start on his career by interning for
a software consulting business for several summers while in college.
A National Merit finalist, he entered Oklahoma University in 1998 on a scholarship. “I took
the best deal on the table and majored in computer engineering,” he said. Unfortunately, by
the time of his 2003 graduation, the unemployment rate for computer engineers had shot
up. “It was hard to find an entry-level position, so I initially did contract work,” he said.
The next year Joe entered graduate school at Mississippi State University. As a research
assistant for the Visualization Analysis and Imaging Laboratory, he was able to use his
research in his master’s thesis. However, for family reasons he returned to the Metroplex in
March 2006 before completing his degree. He’s lived in Dallas for several years.
Frequently augmenting permanent staff for clients, he worked in software consulting for
Martex Software and then for RBA Inc. for the next few years. In May 2013 Joe took a
position with Gainsco, an auto insurance company in Uptown. He’s an application architect
involved in higher-level software-development tasks, such as how and whether systems
should work together. He thrives on the fast pace. “The challenges are always changing,
and the work is not repetitive,” he said.
I AM WILSHIRE - WALTER KISNER
Not everyone who makes up the mosaic of Wilshire’s
life is a member of the church. Through communitybased programs like Stephen Ministry and the New
Song senior adult choir, those who identify as part of
“Wilshire” come from diverse backgrounds.
Wilshire’s Stephen Ministry program, under the
leadership of Minister for Care Ministries Tiffany Wright,
has provided an avenue of service not only for Wilshire
members but also for Stephen Ministers who are
members of other churches.
One of these is Walter Kisner, who has been a Stephen Minister since 2010 and involved
through Wilshire since 2012. After being involved in Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church’s
divorce recovery class, he joined there in 2008. He facilitated that church’s adult
DivorceCare program for four years and had led a similar one, DivorceCare for Kids, for two
years. He also has taught Sunday School there for five years.
He has joint custody of his children, and the Stephen Ministry training at his church, Preston
Hollow Presbyterian, conflicted with his custody schedule with his two children—Avery, 11;
and Owen, 9.
“I became involved at Wilshire when I found out that Wilshire met on Tuesday evenings,” he
said. “I love that Wilshire has a very well-run Stephen Ministry, and I can’t say enough good
about Tiffany.” He has had one care receiver so far while at Wilshire.
“I like that Wilshire is a very involved congregation, and there’s incredible support for its
programs,” Walter added.
He has had a varied denominational background. His mother had grown up Baptist but also
attended a charismatic church, where he was baptized. His father had a Methodist
background but didn’t attend church regularly. “I went to an Episcopal school and attended
chapel there for 12 years,” he said. “That contributed to who I am.”
His former wife, Ashley, had both Baptist and Episcopal roots. “When we were expecting
our first child, we began to have thoughts about having a church home and wanted our
children to be raised in the church,” he said. They attended Schreiber Memorial United
Methodist Church until they divorced in 2007.
Walter was born in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1968 while his father was stationed there with the
Air Force. After stays in Monroe, La.; Memphis; and Salem, Ore., the family settled in Baton
Rouge when he was 7. He was involved in a variety of sports until high school, when he
focused solely on competitive power lifting.
He also participated in academic quiz bowls, took AP classes and was a National Merit
finalist. Interested in creative writing, he received honorable mention for two poems he
submitted. Because French is required from elementary school through high school in
Louisiana, he is fluent in French.
Following graduation in 1987, Walter attended Trinity University and Tulane University
before settling in at Louisiana State University, where he earned an undergraduate degree
in French and English with a minor in logic. “I was an avid reader, so English was a natural
choice,” he said, and with his background in French, getting a double major also made
sense.
Through LSU he spent two summers in France as well as his last semester before
graduating. “I lived in Paris with a French family for seven months, and I’ve always
encouraged others to have this kind of experience,” he said. He also traveled via Eurailpass
in several European countries, slept in train stations and on the upper deck of a ship on the
way to Corfu and backpacked by himself in Spain.
Graduating in 1992, Walter taught high school French at a private school for a year, then
began the master’s program in French literature at LSU. He was a graduate assistant and
spent a summer in France as a teaching assistant in the same program he’d participated in
as an undergraduate and earned his master of arts degree in 1995.
After moving to Dallas in 1994, he spent some time finding his niche. After earning an MBA
at Southern Methodist University, he became a project manager there, implementing
PeopleSoft enterprise-wide and documenting business practices.
In 1999 Walter took a position implementing software systems with IBM and then with
another company for a year. Since 2001, except for a year with the University of Texas at
Arlington, he has been business-development manager for Sierra-Cedar, which provides
management consulting, system implementation and hosting for clients including the
University of Texas system, Texas Christian University and Southern Methodist University.
“I enjoy the travel and variety,” he said. “I enjoy meeting new people and being involved in a
variety of locations, people and situations.”
Walter is very involved in his children’s lives. The children participate with him in High
Adventure Treks, an outdoors program with a Christian emphasis that involves children
through ninth grade. Originally organized to forge relationships between dads and
daughters, the program has added a dads-and-sons component.
To learn more about Stephen Ministry, either becoming a caregiver or a care receiver,
contact Tiffany Wright at (214) 452-3107.
I AM WILSHIRE - MELODIE ELLIOTT
Melodie Elliott and her husband, Terry, live
in North Carrollton, but their location has not
deterred them from keeping their church
membership at Wilshire.
“We love Wilshire,” she said. “Our goal is to
move closer because it’s important to us.”
Meanwhile it’s worth the drive every Sunday
morning.”
When the Elliotts joined in 2003, they lived
close to Wilshire, but they moved to
Carrollton in 2006 to be closer to her aging parents while thinking of starting a family. “We
tried to find a church closer to home but didn’t want big screens, rock bands or old-style
preaching,” she explained. However, they couldn’t find one with a pastor and music
program like Wilshire’s or with the same congregational warmth.
Melodie was born in Dallas and graduated from R.L. Turner High School. Growing up, she
participated in ballet, tap and baton at a premier dance company in Carrollton. At R.L.
Turner High School she sang in the a cappella choir, serving as women’s director; played
French horn in the band; and was captain of the flag corps her sophomore year.
While working at Sam’s Club in Addison and participating in extracurricular activities, she
kept her grades up and was a class officer.
Melodie’s family attended Bellaire Baptist Church in Carrollton until she was 8, then joined
First Baptist Church in Farmers Branch. Her mother was the church organist, her father was
a deacon, and she was involved in children’s and youth activities.
“I appreciate that my parents instilled faith in my foundation,” she said. “In high school I
branched out on my own by going to Highland Baptist, which offered more youth activities,”
she said. “I had accepted Christ at age 10, but I made a public profession of faith and was
baptized there at 15.”
Melodie went to Texas A&M University after graduating from high school in 1993. “I was the
first one in my family to go to college,” she said. “My four scholarships paid for my academic
expenses, and I was lucky to continue working at Sam’s Club in Bryan to pay for my living
expenses.”
Initially planning to be a lawyer, she majored in journalism with a minor in marketing and
quickly found a passion for public relations. As president of A&M’s Public Relations Student
Society of America, she created a job-fair summit for students in her major.
“We tried to help expose liberal arts students to real-world experiences and arranged onsite corporate and agency visits,” she said. “I essentially secured four job interviews in the
process and landed a paid internship with Sprint Business near the Galleria in Dallas.”
Melodie often had driven by the building in Dallas where Publicis Bloom had its offices, and
“my ultimate goal was to work there,” she said. “After I graduated in May 1997 and
completed my internship, I landed my dream job there and became an assistant account
executive. I became an account executive after six months and worked on well-known
consumer brand campaigns. After the company’s 2000 merger, I went with my boss to
Sunwest Communications.”
She is now managing director of the company’s consumer division. “My niche is home
improvement and garden products,” she said. “Most of my clients rely on public relations, as
they have no advertising budgets. I love my job. I help my clients get editorial placements
online and in print.”
Melodie and Terry met at a college roommate’s pre-wedding party and were married in
2002. “We visited Park Cities Baptist and Wilshire while we were dating,” she said. “I didn’t
want to go a church where I’d gone before, and I wanted a place where Terry felt
comfortable,” she added. “We liked both churches, but he liked Wilshire more initially than I
did. Ultimately it was a great decision for both of us and has furthered our faith journey.
“I was not used to a liturgical setting, but I love the hymns at Wilshire and the reverence of
the music. Wilshire feels more down to earth, and I didn’t mind that Wilshire had split from
the Southern Baptist Convention.”
Although the Elliotts live in Carrollton, the church staff has been attentive. “When our son,
Tyler (now a first-grader), was born, Laurie Taylor, then minister to families with children,
brought us flowers and a goodie bag,” she said. “That touched my heart.
“When my parents died three months apart in 2012, Wilshire kept us connected,” Melodie
added. “Up to that time, I was juggling being a full-time working mom with Tyler as a
preschooler and caring for my mother during her two-year illness, and both Laurie and
Minister for Care Ministries Tiffany Wright were very helpful before and after my parents’
deaths,” she said.
“Tiffany knows how to keep people connected, and she encouraged us to try Avodah Class
in the fall of 2012, sensing it was a critical time to plug back into the Wilshire fellowship,”
Melodie said. “We really enjoy the class, and we also participate in Marriage Connections
once a month.
“After such trying years, I’m taking steps to get back into things,” she emphasized. She is
involved in the Dallas chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, serves on her
son’s PTA board, and will be involved in Woodrow Wilson High School’s new mentorship
program.
I AM WILSHIRE - CAROLE DUVAL
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | NOVEMBER 26TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
“Looking at the three faith communities I’ve been involved in,
Wilshire has been the best fit,” said Carole Duval. “I like the
inclusivity and diversity.
“George is very intentional about going back to the formative
roots of the church,” she emphasized. “At Wilshire we
connect with the past and do outreach through missions, and
we have a more-inclusive theology.”
Carole remembers that when Wilshire was considering
women for ordination, someone came to her Sunday School
class to discuss the proposal. “I thought there might have
been a big fight, but there wasn’t,” she said. “I was glad to
see it pass that hurdle. I also appreciate that George had no compunction about staying in
the Southern Baptist Convention and respect his leadership as Wilshire became a part of
the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.”
During her years at Park Cities Baptist, where she grew up and was married, she was
involved in a parachurch organization, Christian Concern. “The group did Bible studies, and
we learned about community,” she said. “We held ecumenical retreats, which I loved. The
organization’s interests fit with Wilshire’s approach to missions and its ecumenical nature.”
A native Dallasite, Carole had a “life-shaping” English teacher at Highland Park High School
who recognized her writing skills and asked her to join the staff of The Bagpipe, the school’s
newspaper.
“From that experience I determined to go to the University of Texas at Austin because of its
journalism school’s reputation,” she said. There she worked on the Daily Texan. She did
“something of everything,” including campus news, feature articles and interviews of
professors. “I also enjoyed political news and sometimes covered the Texas legislature,”
she said. She received a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1961.
Carole met her husband, Jerry, on a blind date the summer after her freshman year at UT.
“The date was arranged by a friend I’d known since first grade. Her date was Jerry’s
roommate,” Carole explained. After that she “did a lot of long-distance driving to Dallas to
see Jerry.” They were married in January 1962.
After graduation, she returned to Dallas to work for Zale Jewelry Co. Working for the head
of public relations for two years, she oversaw the publication of the corporate newsletter
and did the layout, picked the photos and wrote the lead stories.
The Duvals lived in Austin from 1962 to 1965 while Jerry worked on an architecture degree.
She was office assistant to the journalism school’s director. “It was a very congenial, closeknit staff,” she said.
Carole and Jerry have three daughters. Their oldest, Dana, studied dance, Carole said.
“She now works for a production company in Dallas, where she designs leather bags,
among other things. She’s very creative; she can make anything.”
Their second child, Amy, was involved in gymnastics through her college years at Louisiana
State University. “She had a full scholarship but was injured during her sophomore year,”
she said. “She now has a degree in government, lives in Austin and has seven children.”
Their youngest daughter, Alexia, studied studio art at the University of North Texas and is
married to Bobby Louder. The Louders are very involved at Wilshire, along with their four
children—Peyton, Lydia, Levi and Silas.
“We were members at Park Cities until Alexia was about 8,” Carole said. Then, through the
invitation of friends, they joined Fellowship Bible Church in Plano and were members for
about seven years.
“It was a different approach and a different culture from what I’d grown up with,” Carole
said. “Eventually, because of the long drive and the church’s contemporary style, we
decided to find another church. We were on the fence about joining Wilshire because Bruce
had retired” and the church was between pastors.
“One day a member of Wilshire’s pastoral search committee saw me at the grocery store
and told me that George Mason was about to be approved by the congregation,” she said.
“We came the first Sunday of George’s tenure and stayed. We’ve made Wilshire our home.”
“Wilshire was absolutely fantastic—praying and sending cards—when Jerry recently was in
the hospital,” she said. “He was there for six months, in rehab for two months, and then had
home care for about another two months.”
A member of Bright Fellowship Class, Carole also has taught a senior women’s class full
time and is on Wilshire’s adult Sunday School teacher substitute list. “I prefer to focus on
Scripture,” she said.
She has served on the Adult Education Committee several times, and her favorite role is
with the Wilshire Adventurers, where she’s been involved in planning senior adult activities.
She also spent a year helping with the Kids Hope USA mentoring program, stepping in for
Kathy Malesovas when her late husband was ill.
A lifelong learner, Carole was involved in Companions in Christ (small-group studies) and
led two of the studies, and she took classes through the Laity Institute, which previously
operated at Wilshire. She also has enjoyed some of the classes Wilshire offers on
weekdays for senior adults.
I AM WILSHIRE - ELLEN JAMES
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | NOVEMBER 21ST, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Ellen James grew up at Wilshire, so the congregation is
like a family to her. She was active in the youth group,
sang alto in the Youth Choir and especially remembers
the influence of Janice Jernberg’s Sunday School class.
This year she became part of a team that teaches an
11th- and 12th-grade Sunday School class. She also will
begin service on the Churchwide Social Committee in
January.
“Wilshire feels like home,” Ellen said. “I’ve always been
sure of Wilshire and knew that I fit here. I feel safe here,
and it’s always been a refuge. It’s a rare thing to have a
church like Wilshire. I hope people don’t take it for
granted.
“I love that my son, Riggs, who’s 2-and-half, walks in like he runs the place,” she added.
“He once locked himself in George Mason’s office.
“Music has always been in my family,” said Ellen, whose father, James Feltenberger, directs
Wilshire Winds. “I remember sitting around the piano singing Christmas carols with my
parents, and I grew up listening to all kinds of music.”
She studied piano with the late Karen Austin, beginning at about age 4 and continuing
through high school. She began ballet, tap, jazz and modern dance at about the same time.
She wanted to be a ballet major, but a serious fracture when she was a teenager dashed
those plans.
Ellen began playing flute in elementary school. At Lake Highlands High School she sang in
the a cappella choir and began playing French horn.
“My favorite memory of Wilshire is Wilshire Winds rehearsals when I was a child,” she said.
At the same time “it’s hard to watch, listen to and play now because my mother is no longer
there playing the flute,” she said.
Ellen’s mother, Glenda, suffered from cancer for much of Ellen’s life and died when Ellen
was 21. “My mother was very much a fighter. She had a kind spirit, and she loved Wilshire.
“Her illness was a huge part of my childhood. It totally changed my life. It was a really tough
time, partly because I had no friends in similar circumstances,” she said.
“I didn’t have the same experience as my peers had after high school, either,” Ellen added.
“It was a very isolating time. After I graduated in 2001, I was in the dance program for a
year at Richland College. After my mother passed away in 2004, my life was turned upside
down.”
But she also found her calling that year when she decided to attend culinary school. “Food
has always been important in my family, and my mother and I enjoyed cooking together,”
Ellen explained. “We enjoyed the preparation and the trial and error, and it was a wonderful
way for us to spend time together.”
She took courses at El Centro College and the Art Institute of Dallas, graduating from El
Centro in 2007 with degrees in bakery and pastries, in food and hospitality, and in culinary
arts.
While attending classes, Ellen worked in the kitchens of several local restaurants and taught
cooking classes at Sur Le Table, a culinary store that offers specialty food items and
cooking equipment.
She and her husband, Travis, went to high school together and had known each other since
elementary school. “We ran into each other in 2007 and caught up,” she said. “We had a lot
in common, as he was managing a wine shop. We started dating in 2007 and did catering
together. We were married in 2010.”
Ellen began her catering career by doing events with chefs at Sur Le Table, but she couldn’t
use her own recipes, so she began building a customer base and teaching classes in
people’s homes. “Travis and I did wine and food classes together, pairing food and wine.”
The drawback to this arrangement was that “we had to pay a babysitter,” she said. “I now
cook for five families. I prepare three or four meals per week for them, so I can cook at
home and be with Riggs.
“I never knew that the private chef world was a possibility,” Ellen said. “It’s an evolving
profession—not glamorous, and very challenging. I provide menus for my clients a week
ahead so they can choose options.”
She prefers spicy foods over sweets. “I love Indian and Thai cuisine, and I could almost live
on bread and butter,” she said. She loves nostalgia, antique shopping and antique kitchen
items, including her 1930s oven. “I also love items with a story, such as old restaurant signs
and old cookbooks with names in them.”
Minister for Care Ministries Tiffany Wright is like a sister to Ellen. “She’s a huge part of my
life. She’s the family I was able to choose,” she emphasized. “We both love food and talking
about food, and she does cooking classes with me. Her daughter, Cayton, treats Riggs like
a brother.”
I AM WILSHIRE - BISSER OVCHAROV
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | NOVEMBER 7TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Bisser Ovcharov became a Christian through the example of his
former wife, Maria; through the influence of a pastor; and through
an answered prayer—in which he asked God to help him find a
workplace tool.
An only child, he grew up in Varna, Bulgaria, his birthplace. The
death of his mother when he was 4 greatly affected him. “She was
killed in a work accident, and the family never really recovered,”
he said. “My parents’ bed and mine were in an L shape, and the
memory that she would hold my hand when we went to bed has
stayed with me all my life.
“My father remarried when I was 7. I found love through my
maternal grandmother and my mother’s sister and the rest of my extended family, who
taught me to be the person I am today. They provided a safe haven because my father and
stepmother’s relationship was violent and abusive, and I had no sense of belonging.”
Life was difficult in other ways. “We lived in one room until I was 18,” Bisser said. “Since I
grew up in a communist country, our lives were controlled. I belonged to communist youth
organizations, which were required in order to go to college.
“I didn’t know anyone who practiced Christianity,” he said. His only connection with
Christianity was his paternal grandmother’s candle with an Eastern Orthodox icon that she
lit on holidays and for celebrations.
After training to become a refrigeration technician, Bisser followed that profession for 13
years. He also served a mandatory stint in the military and earned a bachelor’s degree and
later a master’s degree in economics.
He met his former wife, Maria, on a backpacking trip in the Bulgarian mountains. “In my
heart I was an atheist. I had never wanted to go to church, but I was impressed by her silent
witness,” he said.
The Ovcharovs were married in 1987. Their son Mitko, 26, is a student at Dallas Baptist
University and works as a valet. Daughter Yoana, 23, is a waitress; and son Philip is 13 and
is active in Wilshire’s student ministry.
“After we were married, Maria burst into tears one day, saying, ‘I care for you, but what will
happen to you after you die?’ That really touched me emotionally because at that time I was
looking for something foundational,” Bisser said.
“I began to search what Christianity is about,” he said. “A pastor who had been persecuted
by the communist regime made a great impression on me. When I went to his church, I saw
warmth and something special. He wrote a book that had a great impact on my worldview
and answered some of my questions. Gradually I became open and started praying.
“One day in 1988 I looked for my best tool, which wasn’t where it was supposed to be,”
Bisser recalled. “It was difficult to get or replace good tools, and I prayed for help to find it.
When I found it, I was shocked, and I said to myself, ‘God, I’m yours.’ Two days later Maria
could see that something was different, and she asked what was going on. We prayed, and
I turned to Christ.”
He became involved in his church’s youth ministry and helped launch youth ministries in
other Bulgarian churches. Realizing that he needed more education to continue his ministry,
he accepted an opportunity to attend Spurgeon’s College in London in 1993.
After completing his divinity degree in 1997, he started a church in Dobrich, Bulgaria. “I also
helped develop a ministry to work with schools and agencies to provide for the poor,” he
said.
Bisser’s younger son, Philip, has Down syndrome. “Because of the stigma, we found it
difficult to raise him. We needed to relocate, so we came to the U.S. in 2006,” he said. He
obtained a student visa and enrolled at Dallas Baptist University, where he earned a master
of arts degree in Christian education and worked as a part-time online instructor.
“It was very difficult for us at first,” he said. “We arrived with five suitcases and no credit
history. We needed a huge down payment to rent an apartment. We slept on the floor
before getting help from a church.”
The Ovcharovs first attended a Baptist church in Grand Prairie, which they eventually found
to be theologically incompatible. “When we visited Wilshire, we liked it right away,” he said.
“We began attending when we moved to Richardson, and we joined in 2010.
“I love the spirit of freedom, the room to be yourself at Wilshire,” Bisser said. “We can share
values and beliefs without being judged.” He is a member of Mosaics Class and has taught
the class in rotation.
He works as a chaplain at Methodist Dallas Medical Center and is pursuing supervisory
education so that he can train chaplains.
“I like being with people and walking with them in joy and sorrow,” he said. “I enjoy helping
them focus on their strengths and discover values and attitudes, and helping them become
better persons.
“I have experienced personal growth as a chaplain,” Bisser added. “My past has shaped
what I am today, and I can use my experiences to live life more fully.”
I AM WILSHIRE - MICHELLE RODEN
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | OCTOBER 31ST, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Michelle Roden loves to go to work. “It’s not an easy job,
but it’s a good job,” she said, partly because of the
Christian culture of her employer, Interstate Batteries.
Since 2011 she has been the company’s senior tax
manager in charge of income tax. “It’s a wonderful privately
held company,” she said. “Its purpose and values align with
mine. We have devotionals at staff meetings, and prayer
requests are sent out by email.”
Born in New Orleans, Michelle lived in Mississippi,
Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas, as her father worked for
an oil-field service company. She spent her first two years
of high school in Spring, Texas, and her last two years in
Aurora, Colo. “I went to a top-rated school in Aurora, and skiing was a P.E. class,” she
said. “I’ve skied most resorts in Colorado.
“I had a great childhood,” she said. “My parents really believed in extracurricular activities. I
took piano, ballet and jazz and was involved in soccer and my church’s youth group. At
school I was involved in drama, choir and the drill team.”
Michelle applied to Baylor University because she wanted to get back to Texas and some of
her friends from Klein High School were going there. She met her husband, Rob, her first
day there. “We were friends as freshmen and started dating seriously as sophomores,” she
said. They were married in 1993 and have two children.
Henry, 15, is a sophomore at Bishop Lynch High School. Emma, 13, is an eighth-grader at
First Baptist Academy, where Michelle has done extensive volunteering. She has been a
room parent and president of the Parent Teacher Fellowship. She ran the annual fund
campaign one year and served as treasurer for two years. “It’s a big part of my life,” she
explained.
Michelle decided to major in accounting after taking an accounting class in high school.
“Accounting fits my personality, and it came pretty naturally,” she said. She gained valuable
practical experience as a tutor in Baylor’s accounting lab and also did some private tutoring.
“These experiences really solidified my understanding of accounting.”
Upon her graduation in December 1990, she began her career at TXU in Dallas, starting as
an associate accountant and leaving as a tax specialist. “I first worked in a capital-intensive
department keeping track of the electric company assets,” she said. While there she helped
develop a fixed-asset system and became a Certified Public Accountant.
“TXU has a job-rotation program that allows employees to learn different areas of the
company,” Michelle said. “We could choose where we’d like to be. I asked to be in any
department except tax—but I was sent to tax. I cried every day for the first month,” she said.
“I was there for 11 years.”
After 15 years with TXU, she took a position with Atrium Companies, a door and window
manufacturer, and after a year she became the company’s tax director. “At TXU I had
worked with only federal taxes, so I broadened my horizons at Atrium by working with all
types of taxes. The company went through a quick bankruptcy, but the company didn’t go
out of business. It was the hardest thing I’ve done in my career.”
Michelle grew up in the Methodist church. “I have a long lineage of Christians in my family,”
she said. “Dad was a Baptist, and my mother grew up Methodist.”
After their marriage the Rodens went to First Baptist Church in Garland, where Rob grew
up. They knew about Wilshire through the radio broadcasts and began attending in 1997
after moving to Lake Highlands.
Michelle was baptized by immersion at Wilshire in 1999. “Since I had been baptized and
confirmed in the Methodist church, I considered the idea of being immersed very seriously,
but I ultimately agreed to be baptized. However, I probably would’ve joined sooner if the
new baptism policy had been in place then.”
The Rodens are pleased to be at Wilshire. “First and foremost we love the people,” she
said. “They are really genuine and caring and truly living their faith. I love George’s sermons
because they challenge us to be our best selves. Wilshire’s theology is totally in line with
mine, and we don’t have to leave our brains at the door.”
Michelle has taught 4-year-olds in Sunday School and served on the Children’s Education
Committee. She is a founding board member and former finance chair of the Grief and Loss
Center of North Texas. The Rodens are members of Journey Class.
She also participated in Wilshire’s recent fundraiser for CitySquare. She has been making
greeting cards since Henry was born. “I have more than a thousand rubber stamps that I
use to create them,” she said. “I had never done a craft fair before, but I participated in
Wilshire’s Makeshift Mission because it benefited CitySquare.”
I AM WILSHIRE - JULIE OWEN
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | OCTOBER 24TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Julie Owen has spent a lifetime teaching art, and she has
generously shared her artistic and teaching talents in many
ways since joining Wilshire.
She was born in Wichita Falls and grew up in Jacksonville,
Texas. She won her first art contest in second grade. Her
still life in charcoal won the State Fair of Texas’ Best of
Show in the 7-14 age group, and it also won Picture of the
Day every day during the fair, she said. In high school she
was a cartoonist on the school newspaper.
Julie took lessons in piano, French horn and accordion,
and she played piano for weddings and funerals. As a
teenager she sang in a group called Three Hits and a Miss
and had a solo role in a production of Brigadoon.
She graduated from high school in 1967 and entered the University of North Texas on a
piano scholarship. After her freshman year, she spent the summer in Europe. “I traveled
alone but met up and traveled with other people periodically,” she said. She backpacked,
hitchhiked and traveled by train, and her many adventures included sleeping in a train
station with a group of Swedish hippies.
When Julie returned, she was surprised to learn that her mother had transferred her to
Baylor University.
“I majored in German at my mother’s wish,” she said. “I had fallen in love with German, and
piano was not my passion. In my senior year I convinced my mother to let me major in art. I
took all of one professor’s classes in art in a year and a summer. She had taken me under
her wing earlier and was a major influence on my life.”
Julie graduated from Baylor in December 1972 with a bachelor of fine arts degree in art and
a minor in German. She student taught at Preston Hollow Elementary School and W.T.
White High School. “I had no supervising teacher, but Jean Patteson, the most fantastic art
teacher I’ve ever been around, was an important influence,” she said. ”We built a kiln on
campus, and on National Native American Appreciation Day, the dung kiln exploded while
Iola Johnson was filming for Channel 4 News.”
From 1974 through 1976, she taught stagecraft and seventh-grade art at Boude Storey
Junior High School in Dallas, then moved to El Paso, where she taught fourth- through
eighth-grade art at “the best elementary school in El Paso” from 1976 through January
1978. “We filmed animated cartoons, did silk screening and made T-shirts for the school,”
she said. “It was really gifted education.” She was named teacher of the year there.
Julie was married in 1978. Her daughter, Mela Sarajane Dailey, who has sung opera
worldwide, now performs mostly in Canada and resides in Austin.
She met her second husband, Jeff Owen, on a date with someone else. “He came to a
fellowship at my home the next evening, and we were married in 1982 after three weeks,”
she said. Their son, Jeffery George Philips Owen, born in 1983, is a percussionist and band
director. Julie has a grandson and a granddaughter.
In 1981, Julie completed a master’s degree in gifted education from the University of Texas
at Tyler. She took every class from Rita Bryant, another major influence. From 1981 through
1983, Julie taught K-6 art and a fourth grade class for gifted students in the Tyler
Independent School District.
In 1984 the Owens moved to Jacksonville, where she was the high school art teacher until
1994. “Then I was ready to leave East Texas,” she said. “I wanted more opportunities for
my son and daughter, so we moved to Dallas.”
Julie taught art at Titche Elementary School in Pleasant Grove and then Dan D. Rogers
Elementary School from 1994 to 2010. She was named teacher of the year at both schools.
Growing up in Jacksonville, she and her family were active at Central Baptist Church, but
when the Owens bought a house near Wilshire in 1994, she didn’t visit at first. “I said I’d
never go to another Baptist church. However, I went by myself one Sunday.”
Once she visited, she kept coming back. “I’m now in Discovery Class because of the lively
discussions,” she said.
Minister for Care Ministries Tiffany Wright invited Julie to Wilshire’s women’s retreat in
2012. “I had a wonderful experience, and not long afterward I made a mad dash down the
aisle, which was a surprise to George Mason, and transferred my membership,” she said. “I
asked Tiffany to baptize me, as the earlier one didn’t count—my mother had insisted on it.”
Julie began teaching church art classes at a Wilshire senior adult camp at Camp Buckner
several years ago. That was such a rousing success that she now offers similar adult
classes twice a year at Wilshire. She has also helps with the children’s cooking and music
camps and sings alto in New Song, the senior adult choir.
“I love that Wilshire practices what it preaches, and I feel closer to God in the building,” Julie
said. “Everyone is kind, helpful and passionate. I love the writing and literature classes I’ve
taken, and I love working on Bible skills with first graders on Wednesday evenings.”
I AM WILSHIRE - TIM CRUISE
Tim Cruise, who began a year-round internship in student
ministry at Wilshire this fall, is another in a line of talented
musicians with deep faith who have served in youth ministry at
Wilshire.
As a child, “I played on pots and pans,” he said, and in fourth
grade he began playing drums. Since ninth grade he played
guitar in a quartet. “We’ve played at First Baptist Church of
Sunnyvale, where I’ve gone since I was a toddler. We’ve also
played at other venues, such as birthday parties, and we’ve
played at The Door in Deep Ellum.”
Tim worked at the Sunnyvale church’s daycare center for two summers when he was in
high school. After his freshman year at Oklahoma Baptist University, he served as a youth
intern there, teaching, developing relationships with students and leading the music for the
youth group’s worship services on Sundays and Wednesdays.
Born in Dallas and raised in Mesquite, he was a wide receiver and captain of the football
team at Mesquite Horn High School. He served on the leadership team of the Fellowship of
Christian Athletes in both middle school and high school. “FCA gave me a way to express
my faith and be connected to other Christians in my school,” he said.
After graduating in 2010, Tim enrolled at Oklahoma Baptist University, which he chose
through the advice of Tyler Skidmore, a counselor at DiscipleNow whom he met when he
was in high school. “He called every few months as I processed my experience there,” Tim
said.
Another of his mentors was Jeremy Fisher, who previously was the residential director at
OBU and now is the youth minister at Sunnyvale. “He believed in me and encouraged me to
pursue ministry,” Tim said.
Tim began college as a religion major but changed to English with a minor in religion.
“It was a poetry class that convinced me to change my major,” he explained. “By majoring in
English, I found a way to understand my faith in a deeper way. I learned more about my
relationship with God by studying the human experience and the way in which that has
been articulated in various historical and cultural contexts than by only pursuing an
academic study of the Bible, which became the emphasis of my minor.”
Nineteenth-century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and twentieth-century English poet
Philip Larkin are among his favorites.
One of his English professors at OBU was Karen Youmans, sister of Wilshire Minister to
Students Darren DeMent. When Wilshire was looking for a summer youth intern in 2012,
she helped make the connection with Tim, and he served at Wilshire that summer as well
as this past summer.
At OBU Tim was resident assistant for two years, and as a sophomore and junior, he
served on a student committee that planned chapel services. “We selected the speakers
and chose themes for the semester, and I sometimes led the music,” he said. He was a
member of a Baptist church that is dually aligned with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
and the Southern Baptist Convention.
As a junior he wrote for the faith section of the campus newspaper, The Bison. “The
columns I wrote provided ways of wrestling with tough questions of faith,” he said. ”The
stories were interviews with students and professors about where they found God in their
lives.
“I had a conservative faith in high school, but I’ve been able to come to terms with my
background and to pursue a liberal arts path,” Tim said. “I appreciate the open-minded and
thoughtful people who’ve allowed me to continue to grow in my faith.”
His role at Wilshire includes leading Watershed, the youth service on Wednesdays, and he
teaches a Sunday School class of juniors and seniors. “I also take students out to lunch and
coffee,” he said. “We discuss how God fits into our lives, their struggles and joys, and how
faith plays a role in navigating teenage life.
“I love the diversity of ideologies and the accepting nature of Wilshire,” which he describes
as “a thoughtful community.” He appreciates the relationships with students and staff at
Wilshire as well as the educational experience. ”I’m always learning something new about
how to lead a community of faith.”
In August he began work on a master of divinity degree at Brite Divinity School at TCU in
Fort Worth. “I wanted to stay in the Metroplex, and George Mason recommended Brite,” he
said. “I haven’t declared an emphasis, but I know that I want to do ministry in a
congregation rather than being in academia.”
I AM WILSHIRE - STEVEN MURRAY
Although still young, Steven Murray already has made a
number of life-changing decisions (besides marrying Katie,
Wilshire’s Christian advocacy specialist) that involved
baseball, music, college choice, major, career path and faith.
He was born near Houston, and his father’s work in the
cement industry took the family to a number of locations,
including near Allentown, Pa.; Birmingham, Ala.; Tulsa, Okla.;
and then the Ann Arbor, Mich., area during his junior year in
high school.
Steven played trumpet through high school and also was a
promising pitcher. “In high school in Oklahoma I had to make a choice between baseball
and band. I chose band,” he said. As a serious trumpet student, he attended music camps
in Arkansas, where he studied with a professor at the University of Arkansas. “When he
took a position at Baylor University, I decided to study with him at Baylor.”
He considers his trumpet teacher an important role model. “He has been a great example to
me,” Steven said. “He taught me demeanor and professionalism. He loves teaching and has
such joy in what he does. He is such a kind person, and his love for his wife is also a great
example to me.”
Steven enrolled at Baylor University on a scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree in
music. “I wanted to belong to a professional fraternity, so I was active in a music fraternity,
Phi Mu Alpha,” he said. He sang tenor in its singing group, which performed at venues such
as nursing homes and churches.
He played in the Golden Wave Band for two years and also in the wind ensemble, orchestra
and jazz ensemble. “The wind ensemble took recruiting tours to Texas high schools, and we
played once in Bass Hall in Fort Worth,” he said.
In the summer before his junior year, he was a member of the Cavaliers Drum and Bugle
Corps, which played in venues across the country, including the Meadowlands in New
Jersey and what is now Sports Authority Field at Mile High in Denver.
Steven met Katie in Baylor’s music building, where she also was studying music. They
began dating as sophomores and were married in July 2009.
He became a Baptist during his Baylor years, and not solely because Katie grew up Baptist.
“I grew up as a Catholic in a good Christian home and was active in the youth group in
Oklahoma,” he said. “However, I started asking questions in junior high school, such as why
we always said the same prayers.”
At Baylor Steven attended churches of several denominations, and “when Katie and I
became more serious, it was important for us to have the same faith,” he said. “We tried to
figure it out together. We explored each other’s faith backgrounds,” and eventually they
found their place together as Baptists.
“The priesthood of the believer was the most important thing to me, and I wanted the ability
to ask questions and to be mad at God sometimes,” he said. He was baptized at First
Baptist Church in Waco his senior year at Baylor.
“At the beginning of my senior year, I decided not to pursue a music career,” Steven said. “I
had wanted to be a studio player in California, but I realized the difficulty of being a
professional musician.
“This was a transformative year for both of us,” he said. “Katie felt the call to go to seminary,
and I had decided to go to business school after we graduated.” After his 2008 graduation,
he spent a year opening new accounts and doing loan reviews for a Waco bank, then
began work on an MBA at Baylor, finishing in December 2010. The summer before
graduating, he interned on the sales and trading desk at First Southwest Company in
Dallas.
In 2009-2010, when Katie was a resident chaplain, the couple lived in Ruth Collins Hall, the
largest all-girls dorm on campus. “I also worked at the front desk for a little extra money,” he
said.
Steven was hired by First Southwest in Dallas after he graduated. He spent a year in the
treasury department, then worked in sales and trading in Houston from December 2011
through November 2013.
At that point the Murrays returned to Dallas, where he now works for BOSC Inc., the
investment banking arm of BOK Financial. “I was looking for a job in public finance,” he
said. “As a public finance analyst, I work with school districts and municipalities in Texas. I
especially enjoy helping school districts build facilities and improve conditions.”
The Murrays rejoined Wilshire in 2013, are members of Labyrinth Class and are involved in
the student ministry. This summer, he was a chaperone to Wilshire’s youth camp.
“Wilshire has all the things we were looking for in a church,” Steven said. “We can come to
the door with questions. Also Wilshire’s commitment to missions is at a different level. With
so many different opportunities, there truly is something for each person.”
And, of course, he enjoys Wilshire’s music.
I AM WILSHIRE - JEFF ELLISON
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | OCTOBER 3RD, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
This past Aug. 17 was an especially meaningful day for Jeff
Ellison and his family. At the 11:00 worship service, he and his
wife, Stephanie, dedicated their nine-month-old son, Judah.
That afternoon, Jeff was ordained to the gospel ministry by
Wilshire.
“My son’s birth changed the way we related to one another in
my family,” Jeff said. “Stephanie and I both work, so we had to
make some sacrifices to ensure Judah would always be with
either Stephanie or me. Stephanie is a special-education
teacher, and I work as a chaplain at a hospital in Fort
Worth. Fortunately, I work 12-hour shifts on Fridays, Saturdays
and Sundays and am home the rest of the week. It has really
been a blessing how our schedules have worked out.”
Because Jeff works on Sundays, he makes Wednesdays his chief time for participation in
Wilshire activities.
He grew up in Rowlett, where he played French horn in Rowlett High School’s band and
orchestra. As a child he was baptized and confirmed in a Methodist church, but growing up
he was involved in many Protestant congregations.
“The Methodist church shared a parking lot with the Baptist church next door, and our youth
groups did many events together,” he said. In junior and senior high school, he worked as a
youth worship leader for the Methodist church and played for churches of other
denominations.
An Eagle Scout at age 16, Jeff already was beginning to demonstrate his heart for people.
His Eagle Scout project was a prayer memorial garden for a family whose son had died of a
brain tumor. “We were in the church youth group together, and everyone involved with the
project considered it a gift for the community,” he said.
He also was president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which hosted a concert to
raise money for a girl in his graduating class seeking leukemia treatment.
Upon graduating from high school a year early in 2004, Jeff enrolled at Ouachita Baptist
University. “I chose Ouachita because of its outstanding music program. At the time I was
planning to major in music,” he explained. There he played in the orchestra, wind ensemble
and marching band.
As he began his first semester, Jeff’s academic advisor recommended that he major in
biblical studies. “I trusted him, and that advice eventually led me away from music studies to
seminary in Chicago,” he said.
During college he took several significant overseas trips. “I was in Turkey for a month with
several peers majoring in biblical studies. The trip was a study of Paul’s missionary
journeys, including stops in cities like Ephesus, Tarsus, Philippi and Istanbul.”
Another time Jeff spent a month in the Middle East. “Some of my family members were
living in Jordan at the time,” he said. “We decided to stay in Jerusalem for a while and then
spent Christmas in Bethlehem.”
He also spent a semester studying Spanish in Alicante, Spain, a coastal town on the
Mediterranean. “Afterward, my soon-to-be wife and several friends backpacked around
Europe,” he said. “One night I told everyone I was going to make some money playing
music as a street performer. They were so embarrassed they all left me alone out there
(including Stephanie). Then I made so much money I paid for all our hotel rooms for the
nights we were in Salzburg, Austria.”
Jeff graduated college in 2008, and he and Stephanie were married that July. “Ironically,
Stephanie grew up in Rowlett a few hundred yards from my home, but in 20 years we never
met. I met her in Arkansas our first year of college. She went to private schools, and I was
in the public school system,” he said.
The following fall he began graduate study at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago.
He worked in marine sales and for a children’s ministry at their church, Christ Church Lake
Forest, an Evangelical Free Church. “In grad school between Steph and I, we had five parttime jobs,” he said. “I even worked as a snow-plow driver in the winters.”
The majority of students there were Lutheran, Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian. “It was a
very theologically diverse campus,” Jeff noted. “As a result of this diversity the school taught
me how to learn, not what to think. My thesis used narrative and historical criticism to study
a particular narrative in the Synoptics. The title of the thesis was “The Beelzebul
Controversy: A Literary Critical Analysis In Mark and Matthew.”
“I wasn’t planning to be a pastor, so I focused on New Testament research, which would
jump-start me into Ph.D. studies.”
After his graduation in 2011, the Ellisons moved to Dallas. Jeff completed a two-year
pastoral residency as a chaplain at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. He now is a
staff chaplain at Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth. “Stephanie works in Dallas, so we
work and live across the Metroplex,” he noted.
Through the invitation of chaplains at Baylor, including Alan Wright, Victoria Powers and Tia
Jamir, the Ellisons joined Wilshire about a year ago. They are members of Labyrinth Class.
“The Wilshire community has a better balance between head and heart, and the church was
not afraid to ask difficult questions,” Jeff explained. “It took two years for us to find Wilshire.
It was exactly what we were looking for.”
I AM WILSHIRE - KEVIN KORONKA
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | SEPTEMBER 19TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Kevin Koronka has a story to tell about his Polish great-greatgrandmother that is hard to match. As the story goes, she got to
the United States from Poland by herself at age 12 by stowing
away on a boat headed for Galveston. “Both her parents had
passed away, and her sister had already come to America,” Kevin
explained.
His father, who is 100 percent Polish, grew up Catholic. He
married his high school sweetheart, a Southern Baptist from
Houston.
“I believe he was converted and baptized before they walked
down the aisle,” he said. “His mother was not very happy that he
was marrying outside the Catholic church and apparently made some threats that she
wouldn’t attend the wedding, but she eventually came around to the idea and had a good
relationship with my mother.”
Born in Houston, Kevin grew up in Brenham and attended Brenham’s First Baptist Church.
“Our next-door neighbor worked for Blue Bell and always had the latest flavors,” he said.
“We spent lots of time at her house enjoying ice cream.”
At Brenham High School he played baseball, football and tennis and was a member of the
Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the National Honor Society.
As a teenager Kevin also served as a Little League umpire, worked on a landscaping crew
and clerked in the men’s department of a local JCPenney. “My primary memory of that job
is folding all the shirts at closing time so they looked good for the next day. Because of it, I
still hate to do laundry and would rather do any other chore around the house,” he joked.
Although he was accepted at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University,
he decided that a smaller university would be a better fit for someone from a small town. “I
chose St. Edward’s University,” he said. “I liked Austin and had several friends who were
going to UT.”
Considering a career in law enforcement, Kevin first majored in criminal justice. “I was
intrigued by the possibility of becoming a special agent for the FBI—until I found out that
agents can’t be colorblind,” which he is. “My uncle and cousin are lawyers, and I decided
that would be a good route. St. Edward’s did not offer a pre-law degree, so I majored in
sociology.”
He graduated magna cum laude, a significant achievement for someone who worked a 30hour week as a bank teller all four years of college.
After graduating, Kevin chose to attend Baylor Law School because two of his three
younger brothers were Baylor undergraduates at the time. An avid Baylor fan, Kevin and his
brothers have had season tickets to the football games for more than 10 years.
He now practices employment law for Husch Blackwell (formerly Brown McCarroll). By
coincidence, Wilshire member Bob Coleman was one of the people who interviewed him
when he joined the firm in 2006.
“I started in commercial litigation, representing banks in commercial disputes, then had the
opportunity to represent Dr Pepper in an employment discrimination case,” Kevin said.
“Employment law is never dull. Discrimination and harassment claims typically involve
complex relationships and therefore have a very human component that is often lacking in
other types of litigation.” Much of his time is spent advising employers on how to reduce or
eliminate the risk of litigation.
He met his wife, Megan, in 2008 while playing on the firm’s softball team. “Even though we
both knew it was not the best idea to date someone at work, we decided to give it a go
anyway,” he said. The Koronkas married in 2011 and have a 1-year-old son named Luke.
They began visiting Wilshire in 2010. “We were invited to Wilshire by former member Chad
Johnson, one of my law partners,” Kevin said. “We had visited a variety of churches” but
hadn’t found a church home.
“When we first visited, everyone was so welcoming. We joined in 2013 after the bylaws
were changed to allow people from other denominations, like my wife, to join without being
immersed,” he said. “Once that happened, we knew that it was a no-brainer.
“Our favorite thing about Wilshire is the people—it’s one big family,” Kevin said. “I enjoy the
traditional worship services and singing out of a hymnbook. George is also one of the main
reasons we joined—he’s a phenomenal teacher and speaker.” The Koronkas are members
of Labyrinth Class.
Kevin has served for the past two years on the Perot Museum’s Exhibits Committee. “We
evaluate options for traveling exhibits and make decisions concerning future exhibits,” he
said. He is also involved with For the Love of the Lake. A passionate outdoorsman, Kevin
helps keep White Rock Lake clean by picking up trash via his fishing kayak.
I AM WILSHIRE - CAMI WELCH
Now in her twenties, Cami Welch has packed more into her life
than some people have the opportunity to experience in a
lifetime, partly because of her experiences as a musician and
partly because of her family’s influence and experiences.
She grew up in Dallas and graduated from Lake Highlands High
School. There she was a member of Espree, a selected pops
ensemble, and sang in the A Cappella choir for two years.
Cami also was a member of Wranglers, a country-and-western
dancing group that performs locally at various venues, including
nursing homes, NorthPark Mall and elementary schools as well
as at Lake Highlands High School’s pep rallies. “We also
performed in London on New Year’s Day 2008,” she said.
She began attending music camps as a preschooler. After her vocal abilities drew the
attention of teachers, she took voice lessons for several years. Beginning in fourth grade,
she sang in the children’s chorus of the Dallas Opera for seven years. Besides gaining
valuable experience and having a good time, she became friends with Wilshire member
Lyndsey Jones.
Baylor University was Cami’s inevitable choice for college, as three of her four
grandparents, all of her aunts and uncles, and several cousins were Baylor graduates. “I
grew up going to homecomings and football games,” she said.
As a senior she was nominated for homecoming queen, and through her sorority, she and
her best friend fed the homeless every week for a year. She also participated in Baylor’s
famed spring Sing, when fraternity and sorority members compete in seven- to eight-minute
singing and dancing productions.
Through a Baylor program, Cami did her student teaching in Brisbane, Australia, with six
other students and a supervising teacher. Highlights included visiting the famed opera
house in Sydney and attending a performance by Maoris in New Zealand.
“My mother is a teacher, and I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was a child,” she said. “I
majored in special education partly because one of my cousins has a disability, and I often
took care of her.” Through this experience she met other families of children with
disabilities. “I was a care provider in high school and off and on during college as well.”
Cami grew up at First Baptist Church of Dallas. As a member of the church’s youth choir,
she had the opportunity to visit Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
Her family began attending Wilshire in 2005, when she was 15. “I went to Wilshire’s youth
camp with Lyndsey Jones and decided to transfer my membership,” she said, and her
family followed her. She felt right at home immediately, became active in Wilshire’s youth
group, participated in Watershed and sang in Shekinah and Youth Choir.
“I loved the fact that the youth group was not too big,” Cami said. “It was huge at First
Baptist, and I couldn’t connect. At Wilshire I made friends right away, and they made me
feel at home. I never felt like an outsider.” She was also drawn by everyone’s “love for each
other.”
Wilshire’s music program, especially the level of musicality, also was an important factor in
her decision to join. She now sings alto in Sanctuary Choir. She is also a member of the O
Brother/Sister Where Art Y’all? class.
Since graduating from Baylor in 2012, Cami has been a resource teacher at Merriman Park
Elementary School, teaching children with autism and learning disabilities. “I consider it a
calling,” she said.
“I teach the core subjects—reading, math and writing—and my favorite activity is working
with autistic children in social-skills groups,” she said. “I try to model how to interact with
others. We work on saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and on how to ask for help. We try to
mainstream the children.”
Cami is especially close to her maternal grandfather, who is now pastor emeritus of First
Baptist Church of San Marcos. “He is everything a person should be—kind, nonjudgmental
and gracious to everyone,” she said.
He also introduced her to hunting. “He’s been deer hunting his whole life, and four years
ago I also started hunting,” she said. “We hunt deer and hogs after Christmas, and that
provides food for the year.”
Cami continues to participate in choral groups beyond the church setting. She is currently a
member of Contemporary Chorale, a Richardson-based community choir that sings two
concerts a year, at Christmas and in the spring.
I AM WILSHIRE - SUZY MCLAUGHLIN
It’s always wonderful to welcome former members back into
the Wilshire fellowship. Suzy McLaughlin rejoined in July,
transferring her membership from First Baptist Church in
Austin.
“I returned to Dallas in May after I finished my commitments
there,” she said. She became a deacon in Austin in 2007 and
served as deacon chair in 2012. She also served on several
committees and taught a class similar to Wilshire’s
Connections Class.
“Previous pastoral resident Tasha Gibson lived with me when
she first moved to Austin,” Suzy said. “I was fortunate to get to know her.”
Suzy’s connection to Wilshire goes back several years, however.
“When my daughter, Courtney Leal, and I were living in Allen, we decided to look for
another church,” she said. “My dad had heard about Wilshire and Dr. Mason, and he
suggested I visit, even though it was a bit of a drive. My cousin, Kellye Magee-Brim, was
also a member. The drive has always been worth it.”
As a Wilshire member, Suzy served on the Family Life Committee and taught a
kindergarten Sunday School class. After Courtney married, Suzy served with Margaret Self
as a wedding coordinator at Wilshire.
“I love George’s preaching, which challenges us to think,” she said. “I also love Wilshire’s
music and friendliness, and I enjoy the community of church.
“I moved to Austin in 2004, just after Minister of Music Doug Haney was hired,” Suzy said. “I
met him at get-acquainted functions. Even though I was in choir with him only a short time,
I’ve been impressed that he has always remembered me. I hope to be back in choir soon.”
An Austin native, Suzy grew up at First Baptist. “Most of my really good friends now are my
church friends from then,” she said.
“I went to UT Austin. Growing up in Austin, where everything was about the Longhorns, I
wanted to be one, too,” she said. “I majored in elementary education.”
In 1967 Suzy took a job in reservations for Braniff Airlines at Love Field in Dallas. After her
marriage in 1968, she and her husband attended Christian and Presbyterian churches. “My
husband grew up in a Disciples of Christ church,” she said. “We had trouble finding a
Baptist church where both of us were comfortable.”
Her husband’s work involved several moves across the United States and as far away as
Singapore. The couple were living near San Francisco when he took a job in Dallas in 1978.
The family settled in Plano and joined First Christian Church in McKinney.
After her daughter was born, Suzy left the workforce but did volunteer work for the Boy
Scouts and was a Girl Scout leader. In 1985, she and Courtney moved to Fairview.
For nine years Suzy ran a celebrity amateur golf tournament. This experience led to a
turning point in her professional life.
“The tournament became known as the Danny White Invitational,” she said. “When I began,
Danny was the Dallas Cowboys’ backup quarterback and was on the Boy Scouts’ board. I
asked him to be the celebrity host. When he became the Cowboys’ primary quarterback, his
fan mail increased and the tournament’s celebrity list grew. I went to work for him, handling
his fan mail, scheduling personal appearances and working on endorsements.
“Once when I was in Nashville, I met Louise Mandrell’s husband, songwriter R.C. Bannon, a
big Cowboys fan,” Suzy said. “I asked him to play in the golf tournament. He and Louise
came the next year and entertained at the after-golf party.”
Having gained experience making White’s travel arrangements, she became a business
partner for a travel agency in 1983. She went to work full time for the agency in 1989 after
having been the marketing director for Bent Tree Country Club for several years.
At the travel agency Suzy specialized in group travel and developed a special interest in
Israel. “I organized trips and sold them to travel agencies, and I made about a dozen trips to
Israel,” she said.
In 2004 she returned to Austin to care for her father. “I was fortunate to be able to do that
for about three years,” she said.
“My parents were wonderful role models,” she emphasized. “He held the number-two spot
for the Department of Public Safety, but he always made time for family. He taught Sunday
School for 50 years and was chair of deacons at First Baptist in Austin. My parents helped
start a church in Austin, where he led the singing and she played piano.”
Suzy’s primary reason for returning to Dallas was to be close to Courtney and her family,
which includes son-in-law Gabe and three grandchildren (Nicholas, 12; Jordan, 9; and
Brooklyn, 18 months).
She also continues to do caregiving for family. “My mother’s sister is 98 and lives in
McKinney,” she said. “She had no children, so I’m taking care of her now.”
I AM WILSHIRE - SARAH ROSE
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | AUGUST 29TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Sarah Rose’s early life was focused almost entirely on
music. She began playing flute in sixth grade in her
hometown—Brevard, N.C., near Asheville. In high
school she was first chair in the all-district band,
played in the Brevard College band and was a
member of the pit orchestra for her high school’s
musicals.
To win a Girl Scout Gold Award (similar to the Eagle
Scout award), she gave flute lessons to children. She
played in the Asheville Youth Symphony and for three
years was named to North Carolina’s all-state band.
She was also a member of a statewide auditioned
group, the Governor’s School Orchestra.
Sarah entered the University of North Carolina as a music major in 1997. “The flute teacher
had taught famed flautist James Galway’s wife,” she said. She was a University of North
Carolina teaching fellow. “This scholarship, which required service and summer activities,
funded most of my college expenses.”
She was a member of UNC’s marching band, the wind ensemble and the symphonic band,
where she played piccolo. However, while doing student teaching in an elementary school
as a junior, “I decided that I couldn’t be a music teacher, so what was I to do?
“I decided to switch to psychology. I had enough credits to graduate on time and thought
that maybe I’d be a counselor.” She graduated in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in
psychology and a minor in flute performance.
Sarah met her husband, Patrick, at UNC. He also was a music major, and they were in
marching band together. “After college he returned to Dallas, and I followed shortly after
that,” she said. They were married in 2004.
She went through the Dallas Independent School District alternative certification program,
took some graduate courses and started teaching in 2002. She has taught fourth, fifth and
sixth grades and is beginning her second year teaching fifth-grade reading and math at Alex
Sanger Elementary School in Forest Hills.
“I’m never bored, and the day goes by quickly,” Sarah said. “I teach mostly low-income
children. Some of them begin on a second-grade level, and it’s really rewarding to see
students move up several levels in one year.”
Her father grew up Baptist, and the family attended Disciples of Christ churches, the
denomination in which her mother had grown up. “Most of them were small start-ups that
my parents were involved in, so going to a large church is different for me, as is having a
youth group that is not just my brother and me,” she joked.
At the previous church the Roses attended in Dallas, “we never knew where we fit in and
were never involved in a class,” she said. “Many of the members had gone to the same
college, so we always felt out of place. No one ever called or checked on us after we left
that church.”
When the Roses moved to Lakewood, they started visiting nearby churches. “After we first
visited Wilshire in 2005, we got a mug and a hello,” Sarah recalled. They continued to
attend Wilshire as non-members until the bylaws on baptism were changed. “I had been
immersed, but for Patrick, baptism was an issue,” Sarah said. “We were among the first
who joined after the change.”
“Wilshire is a warm, welcoming and accepting church,” she said. “People at other churches
may not even say hello or shake hands. There’s also good communication between
generations.”
The Roses joined Genesis Class, whose members were in their age group, and, like them,
some didn’t have children at that time. “It was a good fit,” she said. “Keith Avallone was our
teacher then. He wore jeans, and Patrick liked that we didn’t have to dress a certain way.”
She and Patrick now are class directors.
They both play in Wilshire Winds, and at rehearsals their two daughters—Ella, 6, and
Emory, 2—“use the piano as a fort,” she said. “I’m so glad we have Wilshire Winds,” she
said. “It provides an outlet for people like me, who aren’t professional musicians.”
Before Emory’s birth, Sarah was on bed rest for 18 weeks, six of them in the hospital.
During that time Wilshire’s staff provided welcome assistance, she said. “Tiffany Wright
often took Ella after church and (once) made her an Easter basket, and Joan Hammons put
together craft baskets,” she said. Wilshire members were also very supportive. People
brought food and mowed our lawn.”
Sarah considers her maternal grandmother, her only surviving grandparent, her mentor. A
member of the Disciples of Christ, her grandmother has a strong faith and is active in a
prayer group, Moms in Touch.
“She is the most productive, industrious woman I’ve ever met,” Sarah explained. “She was a
military wife with five children. She made some of her children’s clothes and my mother’s
wedding dress, and when she comes to visit, she hems my clothes and cleans my
refrigerator. Someday we’re going to fight over who gets Grandma!”
I AM WILSHIRE - CHRISTINE WICKER
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | AUGUST 22ND, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Christine Wicker, a brand-new Wilshire member, may be
familiar to Wilshirites through her work years ago as a
religion writer for the Dallas Morning News. During her
time in this position, she and George Mason developed a
warm relationship.
Born in Oklahoma City, she lived in South Carolina and
Alabama before her family settled in Arlington when she
was 16. After graduating from Sam Houston High School,
she entered the University of Texas at Arlington as an
English major.
One day at registration, the English line was long, but
journalism didn’t have a line, so she signed up and
changed her major.
After graduating in 1974, she became a reporter for the Arlington Daily News. “One day I
made a factual error, and I was devastated,” she said. “I called UTA’s director of student
publications, crying and complaining that I wanted to quit, and she said, ‘Just keep going to
work.’ That advice changed my life.”
Soon afterward Christine enrolled in UTA’s School of Urban and Public Affairs, finishing in
1976 with a master of arts degree. After working briefly for the U.S. Department of
Education, she taught journalism at McLennan Community College for three years.
Her next professional stop was the Arlington Citizen-Journal, where she was managing
editor. “I also freelanced for the News’ Sunday magazine, doing feature stories,” she said.
“That was really my big break.”
The News hired her as a copy editor, and in 1985 Christine became a staff writer for the
features section. “I was so ambitious that I often worked until after midnight and was
sometimes up at 4 a.m.,” she said. A couple of years later she began writing generalinterest columns for the News’ Sunday magazine.
When the News launched a six-page religion section (George was involved in the planning),
Christine was tapped to be one of the writers. “I didn’t want to cover church news,” she said.
“It was not a prestigious beat.
“I was fairly cool toward religion at this point, even though I’d grown up Southern Baptist
and was a big churchgoer as a child,” she added.
“I asked, ‘Why me?’ and was reminded that I often wrote about moral, spiritual and ethics
issues.” Seeking advice about accepting the offer, she was counseled, “If you say yes, they
will never forget that you did what they wanted you to do.”
She and the section were extremely successful. “It turned out that I just loved reporting on
religion because it allowed me to ask questions that had always interested me the most,”
she explained. “George was one of my favorite sources. He was fearless and never
complained, and he understood what we were trying to do.”
Christine has written several books about religion, beginning when St. Martin’s Press asked
for a book “about what I knew that others would be fools not to realize,” she said. “My
premise for that book was that anybody can reach God if they want to.
“I told my own story, how I had grown up in church and why I left. It included my loss of faith
and my post-modern journey.” The title, God Knows My Heart, came from an experience
she’d had as a teenager.
“George reviewed the book and was very kind,” she said. “We went to lunch afterward, and
I said, ‘When I looked at the review, I thought I could see Jesus in it.’” The look on his face
was a reward of its own, Christine emphasized.
Among her other books is the story of Lily Dale, N.Y.—home to the oldest spiritualist
community in the country—which made the New York Times’ extended best-seller list.
She’s currently working on a book about Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s faith.
Prior to joining, Christine visited Wilshire occasionally. One visit years ago was especially
memorable. During the sermon she realized that George was talking about her book God
Knows My Heart. “He said, ‘The author felt that she was so far from God, but she actually
never was. Christ was there all the time.’
“George hadn’t realized I was in the congregation until he passed me during the baby
dedication,” she recalled. “My being there seemed extraordinary to us both, beyond
coincidence. After that Wilshire had a special meaning for me.
“There’s something about Wilshire that is really different,” Christine added, “and I said to
myself, ‘If I ever joined a church, it would be Wilshire.’
“I joined because I wanted more community, and every time I came, I loved being here.
Wilshire allows a person like me to have a place, and these are my kind of people.”
Besides, she added, “Nothing has shaped my values more than Christianity. Where else
could I go?”
I AM WILSHIRE - ARACELY PÉREZ
Aracely Pérez joined Wilshire in July, and following Wilshire’s
penchant for getting new members involved right away, she was
asked to read the call to worship two weeks later.
Jerilynn Armstrong, who works with her at Buckner International,
invited her to Wilshire several months ago. “Wilshire is a part of
who I am now,” Aracely said. “It’s a safe space, and I feel
accepted and welcomed. I feel like I have a lot to share, and we
have great conversations in Avodah Class.”
A Fort Worth native, she graduated from Dunbar High School’s
magnet program for science and engineering professions in
2001. She is the youngest of four children.
“My siblings set the standard” for higher education, she said. They went to Harvard
University, the University of Pennsylvania and Brown University, so “I thought I had to go
out of state as well,” she said.
Aracely’s parents and two of her three siblings were born in Mexico. “My father never
attended school, and my mother finished middle school,” she said. “We became a middleclass family by the time I was in the first grade,” she said, but after her father lost his job,
“we went from being a middle-income family in the 1980s” to having to rely on food pantries.
“My parents divorced because of financial issues, and my mother then worked three jobs.
We moved seven times, once living with an aunt. We had no gas for heat in the winter, and
we had to cook outside. We had no car for about two years.”
“I wanted to make sure my mother didn’t have to worry about me going to college,” Aracely
said. “I was accepted to Brown and had several scholarships besides what Brown offered. I
had won my first scholarship, for $2,500, in eighth grade.
“I wanted to be a doctor—maybe specializing in child psychology or pediatrics—because I
wanted to help people. I started as a premed major and passed every class, but it was
harder than I’d anticipated,” she recalled. “The second semester of my junior year was a
hard moment for me,” as she realized that medicine was not in her future. She wondered
how she could still help people.
She switched to Latin American studies. “I focused on government, literature, history,
Spanish and Portuguese.”
Before graduating in 2005, she had lined up a job with People en Español in New York City.
However, while home for spring break, Aracely went to a Hispanic youth and singles rally
sponsored by the Baptist General Convention of Texas—and felt a call to missions. “I tried
to ignore the call from God,” but after “an internal struggle,” she made a public commitment.
“I had no idea what this meant, except that it was about helping others.”
Returning to Fort Worth after graduation, she gave herself three months to find a job. She
worked for BlackBerry in Fort Worth for six months before taking a position in the Baptist
General Convention of Texas’ service center in 2006. “I directed calls and answered phone
calls from Spanish speakers,” she said.
Needing a degree in order to carry out her call, Aracely attended Dallas Baptist University at
night, earning a master’s degree in global leadership in 2010.
In 2007, while working on her degree, she became manager of donor giving programs for
Buckner International’s foundation. After a year she transferred to international operations,
working with NGOs in other countries. “I enjoyed meeting people, seeing what their physical
and spiritual needs were, and determining how Buckner could meet that need,” she said.
Aracely’s travels to Egypt, Israel, Russia, Honduras, Peru, the Dominican Republic and
Guatemala have shown her how Buckner teaches people to rise from poverty.
In 2012 she was asked to lead a new department, Organizational Effectiveness. “Its
purpose is to help meet the needs of employees and show them recognition and
appreciation,” she explained. She is involved in the onboarding of new employees, monthly
training sessions and professional development, employee engagement and volunteer
activities, and promotion of organizational health overall.
“God is helping me meet the needs of other people,” Aracely said. “In my first job I helped
donors; then I worked with clients; and now I’m helping employees by being a bridge
between the organization and employees.”
She left her home church, Gethsemane Baptist in Fort Worth, last September, and for
several months before visiting Wilshire, she tried nine other churches in the area. “I started
visiting Wilshire in February, and it took me several months to join,” she said. In October
she will be involved in Wilshire’s medical and VBS mission trip to Lima, Peru.
Aracely’s avocations are baking desserts and helping high school students with college
preparations, followed by travel. “I have a lot of friends from different places, and my family
is scattered, with some in Oregon, Mexico and England.”
I AM WILSHIRE - ANNETTE THORNBURG OWEN
Annette Thornburg Owen’s life has been marked by a series of
transitions—“a series of small revelations”—that have confirmed her
call to pastoral ministry. As a current Wilshire member, she is in the
unique position of being a former pastoral resident, having served in
that role from 2011 to 2013.
She grew up in Akron, Ohio, and was a professional mashed-potato
maker at an Amish-style restaurant from age 16 through her
sophomore year in college. She was on her high school’s academic
team and played viola from junior high school through college.
Annette is a graduate of Denison University, a liberal arts college in Granville, Ohio. “In
seventh and eighth grades I was involved in a writing competition, and the state finals were
held there,” she said. “I decided that this was where I wanted to go.
“I wrote an essay for a full tuition scholarship and had already qualified for a half-tuition
scholarship,” she said. “I prayed for a full tuition scholarship, and I received a three-quarter
scholarship,” she said. “God has a sense of humor.”
Annette double-majored in English, with a concentration in creative writing and religion. “I
planned to study how people outside the church think about religion. I wanted to study it
from a secular point of view,” she said. Her college advisor, an American Baptist, pointed
out that her writing skills and interest in ministry suggested that the pastorate might be her
calling.
While at Denison she worked at a transitional housing development. “I ran a children’s
program during the week and helped with a weekly game night at a senior citizens’ home,”
she said.
Annette’s “crisis of conscience” occurred in a sociology class, where she was shocked to
learn that it was possible to work 40 hours a week and still live in poverty. She asked
herself, “What is the church doing about this?”
Her desire to bring together her faith and this social-justice awakening led her to two postcollege experiences. After graduating from college in 2005, she spent a year working in
West Virginia for VISTA, an arm of AmeriCorps.
Annette worked statewide for The Wellspring Center of Mission West Virginia. “The
organization provided funds to grassroots organizations, did training and built its capacity to
do programs such as literacy and health ministry.
“I planned training for programs such as computer skills, organized a statewide funding
conference and brought in speakers,” she said. “I also did grant writing, which blended my
English skills and my pull toward community service.”
Annette spent the next two years setting up computer labs across the state through another
AmeriCorps program.
She was raised in the Assemblies of God, and in West Virginia she became a Baptist. “In
college I had gone to a nondenominational church, and in West Virginia I began attending
Genesis Fellowship.
“At first I didn’t realize it was a Baptist church,” she explained, because the word “Baptist”
wasn’t part of its name. “I stayed with the Baptists in divinity school because the West
Virginia Baptist Convention gave me a small scholarship. This was a way to repay what I’d
received.”
However, “the more I learned about Baptist polity—such as soul freedom—the more I think
I’ve always been Baptist,” Annette noted.
Realizing that she wanted to help churches become agents of change, she enrolled at the
University of Chicago to pursue a dual degree in divinity and social work. “I was terrified of
the big city, but Chicago was where I needed to be,” she said. “This was where I changed
and grew the most.”
At first Annette wasn’t sure she wanted to be a pastor, but “the job description resonated
with me,” she said. “I really liked encouraging people to be agents of change. At the end of
the second year, I admitted that I was being called to the ministry and wanted to be
ordained.” She graduated in 2011 with a master of divinity degree.
She interned at the First Baptist Church of Chicago, an African-American church and the
oldest Baptist church in Chicago.
Among the people who have most influenced Annette is one of that congregation’s pastors,
Jesse Brown, who met with her for an hour every week. Another was a female minister in
Chicago, who was one of the first ordained women Annette knew.
“Wilshire was a place to refine my gifts for ministry,” she said. In October 2011, shortly after
coming to Wilshire, she presided over Wilshire’s communion table for the first time. “I felt
overwhelmed by that role. I told my mother that the more I do this (pastoral ministry), the
more I want to do it.”
Wilshire has been “super-supportive,” and she appreciates “what George Mason has taught
me and shown me,” Annette said.
She met her husband, David, online, and they were married last fall. He is a fourth-year
ob/gyn resident at Parkland Hospital, pursuing a maternal fetal medicine fellowship.
Annette is now in another transitional space, serving as a Clinical Pastoral Education
resident chaplain at Methodist Hospital in Dallas. “It’s been good to see what David’s world
is like,” she said. “I’ve learned so much; nothing will faze me as a pastor. My experience
confirms that I miss being a pastor.”
I AM WILSHIRE - CHRISTIE MICHIE
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | AUGUST 1ST, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
During a job interview in 2004, Christie Michie was
asked what her greatest regret was. She replied that
she and her husband, Iain, had decided not to have
more children after the death of their first child,
Ziggy, who lived only two days.
“He had a rare condition, ‘vasa previa.’ When my
water broke, a blood vessel on the umbilical cord
broke,” she explained.
When this tragedy struck, Iain and Christie were
members of Fellowship Church and were looking for
a new church home. “Fellowship was not as good for
married couples as for singles,” she said.
“We quit going to church, and I couldn’t be anywhere
where there were children. Church was a very dangerous place for me; I was afraid of
comments people might make.”
In 2005, the Michies were blessed with a son, Duncan, and then in 2008 fraternal twins,
Claire and Finn. “I was nervous about having twins, but the situation with Ziggy was so rare,
and I had a good therapist who was very careful with me and reassured me every step of
the way,” Christie said.
The twins were born at 36 weeks, “so they didn’t have to stay in the NICU,” she said. “It’s
been a fun ride watching their relationship with each other.”
When the Michies’ oldest, Duncan, was a newborn, the family came to Wilshire through
Christie’s involvement in the Mothers of Preshoolers program, or MOPS for short.
“It was hard for me for a really long time, and it has taken me a long time to get to the place
where I feel like I’m worthy of what I have,” she said. “MOPS was a big part of that. Hearing
about other mothers and their struggles, I found out how much we had in common. I was
involved in MOPS for six years and was coordinator for two years.
“When Diana Hardin invited me to MOPS, I was also invited to church,” she said. She had
gone to Oak Cliff Presbyterian Church for most of her life and was uncertain about
becoming a Baptist. However, after talking to George Mason, she was baptized in 2006.
Christie and her family lived in Oak Cliff until she was in third grade, when her family moved
to Ramsey, N.J. “I loved it up there,” she said. “I didn’t want to move back because I had
great friends there.”
The family returned to this area just in time for Christie to begin ninth grade at Duncanville
High School, where she was a member of the flag corps. Graduating in 1983, she chose
Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches because she loved the campus.
Christie began as a fine arts major but soon realized this wasn’t her calling. After taking an
elective as a sophomore, she conferred with an academic advisor and settled on a criminal
justice career path. To gain experience, she did several internships with attorneys in
Nacogdoches.
After graduating in 1987, she went to paralegal school in Houston. “I had to choose
between the corrections system and the legal field,” she explained.
Christie then worked for several law firms until taking a job as volunteer coordinator for
Scottish Rite Hospital in 1992. A cousin who worked there had provided the link to the
hospital, and Christie knew she didn’t want to continue working in the legal field.
“I supervised junior and senior high school volunteers and planned their events,” she said.
“I loved working with that age group and felt like I had more flexibility.”
In 1994 Christie met Iain through a singles Bible study group at Fellowship Bible Church.
They were married in 1998.
In 1995 she began work on a master’s degree in counseling at the University of North
Texas while working part-time jobs. “A supervisor of mine at the FDIC talked me into
returning to school while I was single and had no children,” she said. “I graduated the week
before we got married, then became an academic advisor at the University of Texas at
Dallas.”
Now spending her days taking care of her children, Christie is thinking about returning to
part-time work at some point. She currently serves on the PTA board at Mohawk
Elementary School in Richardson and is in charge of the programs.
She teaches 3-year-olds in Sunday School, and she is serving her second year on the
Churchwide Social Committee, which plans events such as the annual Thanksgiving dinner
and the Fourth of July celebration. The Michies are members of Seekers Sunday School
Class.
Christie appreciates Wilshire’s level of commitment to children and preschoolers, the
attitude of the pastoral staff toward people on “different levels in their beliefs,” and the
traditional worship service.
I AM WILSHIRE - GINA WATERMAN
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | JULY 25TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Gina Waterman experienced two life-changing crises in
less than three years. After a major car accident in
2003, followed by spine surgery, extensive therapy and
post-traumatic stress disorder, she “felt grateful to be
alive,” she said. “The first few years were a struggle
trying to separate myself from the accident. Day-to-day
was just about survival.”
Almost immediately after the accident, she discovered
she was pregnant. “It was astonishing that we both
survived,” she said.
However, that isn’t the end of the story. Her son, Kenneth, who has just turned 10, has
autism. “It’s been a struggle for the whole family, and in the beginning I had no church
community,” she said.
Because of her experience, Gina has made it her mission to work with special-needs
families.
“I had planned to stay home for the first four or five years after Kenneth was born,” she said.
“I had some contract jobs, but I couldn’t make it work; I needed to focus on him. I’ve now
accumulated lots of information and expertise, and Ken (her husband) and I have decided
to stay in Dallas and develop roots.”
She now works as a consultant for other families dealing with autism. “It’s my duty to give
back to parents experiencing the same thing,” she explained. “I’m part of several groups in
the area. My goal is to develop a gathering place where caregivers can meet face to face;
it’s so important in this age of social networking.”
When she and her husband moved to Dallas, they visited several large churches, and they
eventually “landed at Wilshire through MOPS,” she said. “I was speaker coordinator for a
year. Paula Woodbury invited me to Sunday School, and I kept coming.” The Watermans
are members of Seekers Class, and she currently serves on the Children’s Education
Committee.
After meeting with George Mason several years ago, she was baptized. “I really wanted to
do it,” Gina said. “There was no pressure to join. Members were very inviting and
comforting, and people were always there to answer questions. Although I hadn’t practiced
my religion for a while, they invited me to come and sit at the table. And they have loved
and embraced my child and worked with us; that speaks volumes about the church.
“I love George’s style,” she added. “He makes things fresh.”
Born in Long Beach, Calif., Gina grew up in Queens, N.Y., and northern New Jersey. When
she was in seventh grade, the family settled in Hopatcong, N.J., west of New York City.
She grew up Catholic in a family with Mexican and Spanish backgrounds. “My mother was
one of the main influences in my life because of her love, generosity and open heart,” she
said. “To her, people’s backgrounds, including race and religion, didn’t matter.”
Gina began playing clarinet at age 10. “In high school I played in pit bands for plays, in
competitions and in marching band,” she said. At age 16 she was a member of a nationally
recruited band that toured several European countries.
“I thought I would go into music, but I also was interested in photography,” she said. “I took
classes in college and was a stringer photographer for an independent organization.”
After two years at the County College of Morris in New Jersey, Gina finished her bachelor of
science degree in technical communications, with a minor in photography, at Rochester
Institute of Technology in 1992. She met Ken there, and in 1995 they were married on a
boat on the Genesee River.
They ran a computer consulting and software-training company for businesses until
deciding to leave the snow and ice for Wichita, Kan., where his sister lived. While there,
Gina was a technical writer and software trainer at the University of Kansas School of
Medicine.
After 15 months there, the company transferred Ken to London. “I worked for the BBC
World Service as a software trainer,” Gina said. “I was the only American in my office
working with people from all over the world. I got a taste of being an expatriate and loved
being exposed to other cultures.”
Returning in 1998, the Watermans moved to Houston. “It was a hard move; I didn’t know
anyone there, and I didn’t take a job right away,” she said.
Gina worked at Dynegy as a technical writer, eventually becoming lead technical writer. “It
was my first foray into the large corporate environment,” she said. “I did everything from
developing online documentation for the IT department and traders to helping the CIO build
presentations.”
In 2002 the Watermans relocated to Dallas. “It was a difficult time, as my mother had just
passed away, and we didn’t know anyone here,” she said. Now, thanks to connections at
Wilshire, they do.
I AM WILSHIRE - PAUL ALLOWAY
Prior to Paul Alloway’s move to Dallas with his family
in 1956, his pastor in Atlanta, Bill Rittenhouse,
suggested that he look up a wonderful preacher of a
Baptist church—Ralph Langley (Wilshire’s second
pastor), but he didn’t mention the name of the church.
Upon arrival in Dallas, one of the owners of the
company that had hired Paul, Dub Threat, and his
wife, Fredna, invited him to go to church with them, he
recalled. “My family was not yet in Dallas, so I
accepted their invitation. The church was Wilshire, and
to my amazement, the preacher was Ralph Langley.
The next week he greeted me by name.
“My family was here in Dallas by the end of the
month,” he continued. “Paula was 6, and the twins were 2-and-a-half years old.” The rest of
the story is obvious—the Alloways joined Wilshire, and reading between the lines of Paul’s
story, it is evident that he believes that God led the family to Wilshire.
Born in Madisonville, Ky., he moved with his family to a small town in the eastern part of the
state when he was about 13. “I delivered newspapers and in the summers went to my
grandparents’ home in Madisonville and worked on their farm,” he said.
A basketball, football and baseball player in high school, Paul volunteered to become a
cadet in the Army Air Force after graduating in 1943.
“I was in training when the quota was filled, and I became an aerial gunner assigned to a B29,” he said. “Eventually our group was sent to Okinawa. I was there for a year. I flew all
over the Pacific and Japan but didn’t see much combat.”
After the war ended, he returned home in 1946.
“I attended the graduation of my brother Sam from high school in Kentucky. Also graduating
was my future wife, Sue,” whom he noticed during the commencement exercises. “She was
a freshman in high school when I was a senior. I decided to ask her for a date when the
occasion arose. It didn’t appear for a year.”
Paul began his college education on the GI Bill at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
“Sue was pursuing a music degree at the opposite end of the state at Western Kentucky
University in Bowling Green,” he said. “I majored in mechanical engineering, as I had
always been interested in construction.” He worked during college building coal temples, the
buildings where coal is stored.
“The following summer Sue and I began to see each other, and we were married a year
later,” he said. “Our daughter Paula was born 18 months after that. In 1954 we welcomed
twin babies, John and Jane, to our family.” Jane is a member of Wilshire.
After Paul’s graduation, the family moved to Louisville, where he began his career in the
window department of Reynolds Metal Company. “We made all kinds of aluminum windows
and patio doors,” he explained.
“Due to my experience at Reynolds Metals, a position was offered to me at Metal Arts
Company in Atlanta” several years later, he said. “We enjoyed Atlanta very much and
attended Sylvan Hill Baptist Church, which was across the street from our home. I was
fortunate to become friends with the young pastor, Bill Rittenhouse.
“After 18 months a very exciting opportunity came,” Paul said. “I was asked to help start a
new residential window company in Dallas, Southwest Aluminum Inc. In 1957 I had the
opportunity to start my own window-manufacturing company, American Aluminum Products
Inc. God blessed our efforts in every way, and we built a facility in Hutchins in 1973.
“Our family was at Wilshire for 18 years, with our children involved in many activities,” he
said. “Sue and I taught Sunday School, and I served on the Building Committee and was a
deacon. Our pastor and dear friend was Bruce McIver.
“Sue and I have built and enjoyed five homes in Dallas and the suburbs,” he said. “We built
a home on a few acres in Lancaster in 1975. We joined Hampton Road Baptist and were
there for 18 years, enjoying many friendships. I served as a teacher and on committees. I
was deacon chair, and Sue was involved in the music program and teaching.”
In 1986 the Alloways built a home in DeSoto. Paul retired in 1992 and sold the company
two years later. At that time the Alloways returned to Dallas and Wilshire.
“I have truly taken root in Texas and believe that God opened the doors that led me here,”
he said. “We have enjoyed our pastor, George Mason, our Sunday School class (Open
Bible), and the teaching of our first teacher, Asa Newsom, and our present teacher, Craig
Keith. We also enjoy the friends, old and new, and the fellowship. We also enjoy Wilshire’s
worship services.
“We pray for God’s continued leadership in our lives and thank him for the many blessings
He has given us in our lives and those of our family.”
I AM WILSHIRE - SHIRLEY ANN LOPEZ
Shirley Ann Lopez has a unique connection with Christian music
through her father’s profession and her early experiences.
“My father was a linotype operator, and he hand-set the notes for
the Stamps-Baxter Quartet,” she said. “I went to their music school
at Cliff Temple Baptist Church. They taught us the rudiments of
music, including the basics of how to read music. They did this for
two weeks in the summers, and the classes were open to anyone. I
did that for a couple of years just before becoming a teenager, at
about age 11 or 12.
“I was always interested in music,” she added. “I took piano lessons
for four or five years as a child.”
Shirley Ann has sung in Wilshire’s community choir, New Song, since it was organized. “We
sing good worship songs and also popular music from the past,” she said. “We have 20 or
more churches represented. It’s wonderful how music brings everyone together.
“We sing at nursing homes and retirement centers, and we enjoy having a beautiful leader
in Sarah Stafford. I enjoy the fellowship with the other choir members, and I’ve learned a lot
from other people.”
Shirley Ann sings tenor in the choir. “I always sang alto in church, and this is the first choir
I’ve sung in,” she explained.
She began life in Iowa Park, near Wichita Falls, and after living in Irving for a short while,
she grew up in Dallas. She learned from her mother that her great-grandmother on that side
of her family was from Spain.
Shirley Ann is one of those people fortunate to have had friends who she went to school
with from elementary school through high school. She graduated from Adamson High
School in 1953. “I’d taken typing and shorthand in high school and went to two business
schools the next year, taking courses to become a secretary,” she said.
Her first job was as a bookkeeper operator for a bank for about a year. “I input statements
into a machine that recorded deposits and withdrawals.”
Then Shirley Ann took a position as a secretary for Fireman’s Fund, an insurance company.
“When they closed the Dallas office, they asked me to move to New Orleans,” she said. “I
was there three years. It was my first time away from home and the first time in my own
apartment. I lived in the French Quarter above a cleaners run by a couple who watched out
for me and took me under their wing.
“My dad wanted me to return to Dallas,” she continued. “After pounding the street, I took a
job as a secretary in the personnel department of Mobil Pipeline in Dallas. I worked my way
up to the human resources department as a benefit adviser and was able to retire at age
57.
“I took early retirement in a package deal. Two years later I went to work for a temporary
company that hired out to Mobil. I worked part-time there for several years.”
Her early retirement enabled Shirley Ann to take care of her parents for the rest of their
lives. “I lived in their house and paid it off. My father lived to be 95,” she said.
She has a brother who is 90, and she is now a caregiver for her sister, who is 10 years her
senior and lives with her. “I try to take her out so that ‘s she not stuck in the house,” she
said. She attends the 8:30 worship service and Discovery Class and then takes her sister to
her church in Seagoville.
Shirley Ann grew up at Clarendon Drive Baptist Church in Oak Cliff. “At age 15 I felt the call
to become a Christian at a Billy Graham crusade, and I gave my heart to the Lord,” she
said.
She came to Wilshire through the influence of two members. Don Watson lived across the
street, and Mozelle Madden invited her to visit about 1982. “My parents had moved to
Northeast Dallas, not too far from Wilshire, but I didn’t join the church until 2000,” she said.
“At first I didn’t go regularly, but after I started attending regularly, I also started going to
noon meals on Wednesdays.”
She has enjoyed making neck pillows in Wilshire’s sewing group, and she also has been a
recipient of the group’s ministry. They knitted a shawl for her when she was ill. “That was
really touching,” she said.
Shirley Ann appreciates the “openness and friendliness” of Wilshire, and “George and his
staff are all so outgoing,” she said. “It’s a beautiful church to belong to,” and of course she
enjoys the music.
I AM WILSHIRE - GUY SMITH
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | JULY 3RD, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Mission trips to the Amazon have been life-changing for Guy
Smith and his family.
“Connie and I went on our first mission trip to Russia,” he
said. “Former member John Ross then recruited us for trips
to the Dominican Republic. We then became involved with
Amazon Outreach and did 12 medical and dental trips there.
When we first told our kids—Cable, Jansen, Kendal and
Christopher—about the trip, they were less than excited and
suggested we do a local Habitat for Humanity project if we
were insistent on doing a family missions project.
“At the end of that trip, we were all in tears as each of us
shared the significance of what we had experienced.
Thereafter they were ready to go, and we were fortunate to be able to include many of their
friends on later trips. Wilshire members played an important role in supporting us through
prayer and by donating money and supplies.”
Typically, these trips involved living on an open-air boat, sleeping in hammocks and
traveling to villages on the river, Guy explained. “We provided medical and dental care, a
hair salon and eyeglasses. We concluded the day with a worship service. Our sons also
developed a soccer ministry. After the games someone gave a testimony. Kendal was
involved in VBS for the children and took photos of families.”
Guy, who is an attorney, served as a “pharmacist” and “optometrist” and did a magic show
for the VBS kids. “We took Frisbees with John 3:16 printed on them, and we often saw
villagers using them as plates.”
A Fort Worth native, Guy was his ninth-grade class president. At Carter-Riverside High
School he played on the baseball team, which went to the state playoffs. He also worked on
the yearbook staff, served on the student council and was elected to the National Honor
Society.
During high school he worked for a construction company, and later he was an electrician’s
helper. “I can wire a house if have to,” he said.
Guy grew up at Riverside Baptist Church. Current Wilshire member Gwin Morris was the
church’s youth director when Guy was a teenager. “One of our members owned a ranch in
northern New Mexico where our youth group held summer camps. We were treated like
guests. It was the first time I’d had prime rib and Cornish hen.”
After graduating high school in 1971, Guy went to Baylor University. “I didn’t have a clue
about a major, but after my sophomore year I began thinking about law school,” he said.
Guy met Connie his first week at Baylor. “She was walking in front of me, then stopped and
introduced herself,” he said. “By our sophomore year we were dating exclusively, and we
were married in 1975. We became caretakers of a restored mansion operated by the Waco
Historical Society. One room upstairs was our bedroom, and we gave tours on weekends.”
By the time he graduated in 1977, Connie had decided to enter dental school, so the Smiths
moved to Dallas. He took a position with McMullen & Porter, where he eventually became a
partner.
“I stayed until the late 1980s, when I started my own practice,” he said. He mainly does civil,
commercial and business litigation, along with some personal-injury work. “I enjoy
interacting with clients to help them solve or prevent problems.
“When we moved to Dallas, we visited several churches,” Guy said. “When Bruce McIver
visited us, we discussed that we had both had open-heart surgery. As he was leaving, I
asked him again what his name was. I hadn’t recognized him, and his name hadn’t
registered with me. The next Sunday we joined.
“Soon Margaret Davis shanghaied us into the youth department,” he said. “I knew Neal
Jeffrey from Fort Worth and Baylor, and when there was an opening for youth minister,
Margaret mentioned him. After he came to Wilshire, he and his wife became our best
friends. We taught a high school Sunday School class and chaperoned ski trips and
summer camps. When Neal left, I was in charge until we called someone else.
“Wilshire is a unique church due in large part to the way Bruce and George have let it not be
their church,” Guy said. “The messages are always on point, and there are many
opportunities” to serve.
A deacon, Guy has served on several committees over the years and currently serves on a
care team. He is a member of Whosoever Wilshire Class but can’t usually attend. “I go to
the 8:30 worship service so that I can take my mother to her church for its 11:00 service,”
he said.
For nearly 30 years Guy has enjoyed men’s backpacking trips organized by Wilshire
member Tim Morgan. “We now take the kids along,” he said. And for 33 years he has been
Santa Claus for Highland Park’s tree-lighting ceremony.
I AM WILSHIRE: BILL VAUGHT
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | JUNE 27TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Bill Vaught’s outreach involvement through the church has taken
place not only at Wilshire but also as far away as Namibia, in
Southwest Africa.
“I was married in the Anglican church, and I became involved with
the Anglicans in the anti-apartheid movement there and
participated in ministries for miners,” he said. However, “trying to
run a company and be socially active in ministry was difficult.”
Bill was born in Sea Isle City, N.J., while his father was a Coast
Guard commander. When the family returned to Texas, they
moved several times as his father opened Goodyear service stores
in West Texas and Oklahoma. “When I reached school age, we returned to Fort Worth,
where my grandparents lived,” he said.
“I lived my school years in East Fort Worth and graduated from Eastern Hills High School. I
participated in Junior Achievement, served on the yearbook staff, played baseball and
tennis, and was named to the National Honor Society.
“My family went to Broadway Baptist Church, where I remained a member until joining
Wilshire,” Bill said. “My mother was the secretary/administrative assistant to the pastor
before and during World War II. My father’s family were strong Methodists, but my mother’s
grandfather founded the Indian Creek Baptist Church west of Mineral Wells, so I was
religiously a hybrid.”
During the summers after his junior and senior years, he participated in Junior Achievement
academic and business competitions.
“I decided then that I wanted to attend college outside Texas if possible,” he said. “I
received early acceptance from Washington University in St. Louis and received the same
scholarship that my uncle had received.”
In college Bill was active in university activities and worked with the police commissioner in
St. Louis in city/university relations during the Vietnam War. He received a bachelor’s
degree in economics in 1966 and a master’s degree in economics and education in 1967.
“Deciding that I did not want to teach economics at the university level, I went to the Gavin
School of International Management in Phoenix,” he said, there earning an MBA in
international business.
Returning to Fort Worth, he taught Spanish, economics and history for two years. “In 1970 I
became a contract negotiator and later a regional operations manager for American
National Enterprises, which produced animal/nature films in its Dallas regional office,” he
explained.
While visiting friends in Colorado, Bill decided to relocate there, first working on a businessdevelopment project and then becoming acting controller for the Office of Economic
Opportunity.
“We funded a tanning operation for individuals settling out of the migrant stream when the
sugar beet business went downhill, and I was involved in the Head Start and Colorado
Migrant Council operations.”
He then moved to Denver as the pricing analyst for Honeywell’s Consumer Products
Division, eventually serving as national service manager until the division was dissolved.
During his time in Colorado, he met his wife, to whom he was married for 10 years.
In 1977 Bill moved to Namibia to be the controller and auditor of Bethlehem Steel’s tungsten
mining operation. “I was the first American to be sent there,” he said.
When the operation was closed, he joined a company in Johannesburg, South Africa, as
vice president of international business development.
“Besides handling contract negotiations in southern Africa, I lived in Chile, Peru and
Colombia on projects; and I did business with European/American contractors and Latin
American governments,” he said.
Ultimately returning to the United States, Bill earned a legal certificate at Southern
Methodist University and was legal administrator/senior litigation paralegal for several firms
in Austin and San Antonio. After that he did contract legal work for both firms and
individuals.
Before joining Wilshire in 2006, he drove to Fort Worth on Sundays to worship with his
parents at Broadway until they could no longer attend.
“I started looking for a church in 2004,” he said. “I tried several denominations and tried
Wilshire on the suggestion of an acquaintance.” He is an active member of Whosoever
Wilshire Class and a volunteer receptionist for the church on Thursdays.
“I’m helping low-income people in the African-American and Hispanic communities with
legal concerns, including immigration,” he said. “I’m also working with Wilshire’s payday
lending group.”
Bill appreciates Wilshire’s progressive theology, its acceptance of “all sorts of people” and
“the attitude that we’re still learning and growing.”
I AM WILSHIRE: SHARON WORTHY
“God gave me this job,” Sharon Worthy said in describing
her work at The Vogel Alcove, where she has been office
administrator since January 2009. “It’s really a special
place. It was a godsend.”
The nonprofit organization provides weekday earlychildhood development programs for more than 100
children of homeless parents. Started by two Jewish
women 27 years ago, it serves homeless children who
need a place to go during the day.
“Volunteerism was a big part of my life for more than 20
years,” Sharon added. She previously served as
coadministrator of a daytime Bible discussion group of
about 35 women. Now that she has returned to the workplace, she is coadministrator of the
nighttime group.
Her other community activities have included service as a Cub Scout den leader at
Merriman Park Elementary and extensive PTA participation and leadership, for which she
received district recognition. She also served as copresident of the Lake Highlands High
School Wildcat Booster Club and president of the Lake Highlands Women’s League, which
raises funds for scholarships for seniors graduating from Lake Highlands High School, as
well as helping schools with their libraries.
A native Dallasite and an only child, Sharon is the granddaughter of a Methodist minister.
Growing up in Oak Cliff, she took piano lessons for several years and now regrets that she
quit too soon. Even though she won some awards during elementary school in competitions
named in honor of Van Cliburn, “I wanted to play more contemporary music,” she said.
In eighth through 12th grades, she was a member of the school drill team. At Kimball High
School she was a student council representative for three years.
During high school and college Sharon spent her summers working for local government.
“After my sophomore year I started working in the district clerk’s office,” she said. “Starting
the summer before my senior year and continuing through college, I worked in the Dallas
County Child Support Office. My mother worked for the county, so she knew about the
opening.”
Graduating from high school in 1965, she spent her freshman year at what is now Texas
A&M University at Commerce. “I wanted to start on a smaller campus, and I lived on
campus there,” she said. She then transferred to the University of Texas at Austin.
Sharon and her husband, Richard, grew up in the same church (Bethel Temple, an
Assemblies of God congregation) and began dating in their senior year. They were married
the summer after their junior year in college.
“I majored in business,” she said. “In that era I was one of the few women majoring in
business. In one class I was the only female.” She worked as an assistant to a systems
professor and was a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority.
After graduating with a bachelor of business administration degree in office management in
January 1970, Sharon worked as a legal secretary for a law firm while Richard was in law
school in Austin. After he graduated in December 1971, they returned to Dallas.
“I loved Austin,” she said, noting it was difficult to leave. “We enjoyed the football games.
We had season tickets for many years and went to the Rose Bowl one year.”
Back in Dallas, she worked for a small law firm before the Worthys began a family. Their
two sons, Gavin and Brent, live in Dallas, and Richard and Sharon now have two
grandchildren and another on the way.
For a number of years the Worthys were members of Tyler Street Methodist Church in Oak
Cliff. “After our boys got into junior high, we started looking around for a church closer to
home,” Sharon said. “We were living in Lake Highlands and had several friends who went to
Wilshire.
“We joined after George was hired,” she said. “Having come from a church where there was
a split, we decided to wait until a successor to Bruce McIver was named and everything was
harmonious.” She appreciates the fact that there are “lots of opportunities to be involved at
Wilshire besides attending worship services.”
Sharon has volunteered in Wilshire’s library for several years and has served in the prayer
room during the 11:00 worship service for the past two years. She currently serves on
Wilshire’s Social Committee.
She has served in various capacities in the BEST Sunday School Class. “It’s a good
supportive class,” she said. “We pray together and fellowship together.”
Sharon appreciates the “wonderful young men and women in the residency program. It’s
such a fresh approach,” she said.
She also loves the music program and choirs and Wilshire’s inclusiveness, describing the
church as “very friendly and welcoming.”
I AM WILSHIRE: OSCAR CALVILLO
A man of diverse interests and professional experiences, Oscar
Calvillo is a relatively new member to Wilshire but already has
become involved with the Vision 20/20 Grow Team.
At Dennis Smith’s invitation, he agreed to serve “because I’m
interested in opening Wilshire up to other cultures,” he said. And
more specifically, educating them on the Mexican culture and
helping to create cultural sensitivity within Wilshire.
Born in McAllen, Oscar has lived in Dallas since he was six
months old. He was raised by Mexican parents and now lives in
the house where he grew up. He considers himself “completely
bilingual and bicultural,” an American of Mexican descent, not a
Mexican American, “as there is a difference.”
His father, a successful brick mason contractor, taught him the profession. As a youngster
he carried bricks in the summertime for 50 cents a week. “When my father started paying
me $5, it got interesting,” he said. “At about 14 or 15, I wanted to learn to lay brick instead of
being a laborer. Then it got more interesting.”
Oscar played offensive tackle at North Dallas High School. He was placed on the varsity
team as a sophomore and was the team’s only member to be offered a college scholarship.
He attended Kilgore Junior College for one semester and was the only Mexican on the
football team. “I planned to go to college the next year, but I started making money working
with my father, and instead I used it for a large down payment on a custom-ordered 1975
Trans Am,” he said. “The feeling of being singled out by racism at the school also pushed
me to not return the following year.”
Continuing to work as a brick mason contractor, Oscar was involved in constructing
expensive homes until 1976, when high interest rates forced many contractors out of
business. “I worked for Fox & Jacobs at an hourly wage, then began working in the
restaurant business about 1980,” he said.
He worked his way up in the business, becoming a cook, then a waiter—and ultimately
moving into management.
“I eventually became operations manager of five restaurants—most locally owned Tex-Mex
restaurants,” he said. “It took about three or four years, and I moved past others with much
more experience. I then began to design restaurants from dirt to operations.” He still
consults on restaurant design and helps owners with service protocol—serving customers
properly.
About 2002 Oscar began his current consulting business—installing sound systems. He
learned the business “on the street,” he said. “I can develop any kind of concept.”
He also is a disc jockey. “I became a DJ in 1990-91, when I was general manager of a
Greenville Avenue restaurant. At the eleventh hour a friend called, asking me to be a DJ,
which I’d always had an itch to be,” he said. He’s now a weekend DJ at Casa Milagro in
Plano. “I play very eclectic and sophisticated music, including blues and salsa.”
Oscar also does private DJ jobs, such as today’s event inaugurating the pedestrian bridge
next to the Margaret Hunt Bridge in downtown Dallas. He will be there at 5 p.m. for about an
hour.
After two previous marriages, he reconnected with a high school and neighborhood friend.
“Patricia contacted me via our high school website,” he said. “We reconnected and have
never looked back.” They were married in 2010, and he has three stepdaughters.
Oscar grew up Catholic. “My mother was heavy-duty and made me go to church,” he said,
“but I wanted to pursue faith on my own. In my 20s I became disillusioned by Catholic
women who dressed inappropriately for church, and I was out of church for a long time.
“Patricia is a Baptist and asked me to go to church with her. Eventually I did,” he said. At
Ridgecrest Baptist Church in the M streets area, he “learned a lot” from the pastor and
began attending “because I wanted to.”
“The church’s interim pastor, Bill White, suggested that we try Wilshire,” he said. “The first
time, I met Jim and Vicki White at Wilshire; they were sitting in front of me and invited me to
meet George Mason after the service. Soon afterward I had coffee in George’s office. He
answered questions in a way that captivated me.
“What impressed me the most at first about Wilshire was that everyone dresses respectfully
for church,” he said. “We joined last spring, and I reaffirmed my faith. Now I can’t wait for
Wednesdays and Sundays.”
Oscar’s several near-death experiences, including a harrowing one-car crash when he was
a teenager, have strengthened his faith. “That time, the car flipped six times, and I landed in
a ditch. Every time I flipped, I’d think that this would be the turn when I’d go to heaven,” he
said.
I AM WILSHIRE- SHELLIE HARRISON
Shellie and Nick Harrison joined Wilshire during Advent
2012, and she has hit the ground running—matching the
involvement that some people can point to only after years
of membership.
She served on the women’s retreat committee this year and
currently serves on the Weekday Education Committee and
on the team that is working with Minister to Preschoolers
Joan Hammons to write preschool curriculum. “It’s a threeyear cycle based on the Scriptures in the lectionary,” she
explained.
Shellie will be teaching 4-year-olds in this year’s Vacation Bible School. “I prefer working
with little children,” she said. “I now help out with grandchildren and am still looking for other
ways to be involved,” she said.
When she and Nick moved to Dallas after 30 years in San Antonio, “Wilshire helped make it
sweet,” she said. “I feel blessed to be at Wilshire. I like Wilshire’s more-formal service, the
music and the residency program.”
The Harrisons are members of Cord of Three Class, which “has made us feel very
welcome,” she said.
Shellie grew up Baptist and as a student at Texas Tech University was a member of First
Baptist Lubbock. In San Antonio the Harrisons were members of Trinity Baptist Church. She
sang in the choir, directed children’s choirs, worked with a children’s missions program and
helped with high school students’ mission trips. She also decorated the church library’s
windows for years, served on the women’s ministry team, helped plan retreats and became
a deacon.
She was born in Kearney, Neb., and moved to Amarillo at age 6. “I was the oldest of five
children and was my siblings’ chauffeur,” she said.
Music always has been important to Shellie. She took piano lessons and sang in the chorus
of high school musicals. She also sang alto in a girls’ trio that entertained at local social and
civic clubs.
The summer after she graduated in 1968, the trio performed on the Ted Mack Amateur
Hour. “We were also paid to perform in a private club that brought us in through the
kitchen,” she remembered. “It was a great experience. We sang music of the ’40s and
’50s—we were born a generation too late.”
Shellie also worked in her father’s bedding store and was a hostess on Saturdays and
Sundays in a restaurant owned by a friend’s father.
She enrolled at Texas Tech as a music major. She had a partial music scholarship and was
planning a career in music education. She was a member of Texas Tech’s touring choir and
Madrigal Singers.
Shellie also was a paid choir member for several Lubbock churches. “I was assigned to a
different church every year,” she said. “That experience exposed me to other faith traditions,
and I’ve always appreciated it. I learned the creeds and sang the Gloria Patri every week. I
also sang for bar mitzvahs for a small Jewish congregation.”
Changing her major to interior design as a junior, she finished her bachelor’s degree in
interior design in 1973.
The Harrisons met at First Baptist Church of Lubbock through a mutual friend and were
married in 1972. They have a son and two grandsons in Dallas, and their daughter lives in
Brownwood.
Over the years Nick’s career took the family to a number of cities (some more than once)—
Plainview; Beaumont; Tulsa, Okla., Reston, Va.; Minneapolis; San Antonio; and Lubbock.
“We spent 30 years in San Antonio, so it felt most like home to us,” she said.
Over the years Shellie has worked for the Texas MHMR association and as an interior
designer. When the Harrisons lived in Lubbock, she worked in Second Baptist Church’s
preschool. “I began as a music teacher, then became a teacher of 4-year-olds as well,” she
said.
In 1990-1991, during their first stay in Dallas, after teaching for a year at Highland
Academy, “I made a proposal to teach music for pre-K through eighth grade, mostly boys,”
she said. “It was a great experience. One year we did the musical All That Jazz.”
In San Antonio, Shellie taught 4-year-olds at an Episcopal school for 12 years. The next five
years, she was assistant to the head of the school and helped the school secure
accreditation from the Southwestern Association of Episcopal Schools.
“It was really a high point to recognize that I could contribute to the accreditation process,
and I cherish my relationship to the head of the school,” she said. “I also grew to love the
Episcopal church.”
I AM WILSHIRE - MATTHEW HOWLAND
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | MAY 30TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Matthew Howland and his wife, Ashley, were first led to visit
Wilshire by a banner on Abrams Road. One of several signs that
routinely appear there, it said, “You Don’t Have to Check Your Brain
at the Door.”
“It took Ashley and me a long time to find a church in Dallas,” he
said. “We live three blocks from Wilshire but visited Methodist and
Presbyterian churches before finding out what it was really like.”
Before joining in 2013, the Howlands missed “the Baptist ways of doing church.” Matthew is
grateful that “Wilshire is not a judgmental place but one where everybody is open to others’
ideas and where it’s OK to have your own ideas.”
He appreciates that Wilshire sings traditional hymns, but “at the same time it’s appealing
that Wilshire is not stuck in old ways.”
“After I was married, I didn’t feel like I was part of a church, but now I feel at home and
enjoy coming to Wednesday-night suppers,” he said.
The Howlands are active members of Avodah Class. “I feel comfortable there and don’t
worry about saying something ‘wrong’—we’re all in it together,” he said. The Howlands also
enjoy outside activities with class members. “We recently had a crawfish boil, and last
October we got together for a pumpkin party.”
Born in Pine Bluff, Ark., Matthew grew up in Monroe, La., from about age 3. As a boy he
played a variety of sports, and in junior and senior high school he earned pocket money by
mowing lawns.
He grew up in a Baptist church in Louisiana. “I really loved Sunday School and Vacation
Bible School and had many friends there,” he said. “In about fifth grade I was baptized, and
I remember I didn’t do it out of fear. The Baptists I knew were old-fashioned in their view of
salvation.”
In high school Matthew was an all-state linebacker and president of the National Honor
Society, and he graduated valedictorian. He also was involved in the Fellowship of Christian
Athletes.
Upon graduation in 1999, he turned down several football scholarships, accepting an
academic scholarship to Louisiana Tech, where he spent a year in the industrial
engineering program. “I picked engineering because I always loved physics and math, and
as a kid I loved to pick things apart and put them back together,” he said.
“I then switched to the University of Louisiana at Monroe to major in computer information
and accounting,” Matthew said. “The school was offering this double major, and I could sit
for the CPA exam. I fell in love with the computer side because it was more about how to
solve problems with computers and build applications and software.”
As an undergraduate he worked in the mortgage division of JP Morgan Chase. “I started as
a call center operator and learned a lot about customer service, then moved into the IT
department as an application developer,” he said. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in
December 2004.
“I met Ashley in junior high, and we were friends for a long time before dating,” Matthew
said. “After high school we stayed in touch, and we started dating in college. Since we
already knew each other well, we had a quick romance and were married in November
2004 and moved to Dallas after graduation.
“We moved to Dallas because there were a lot of opportunities,” he said, and he has so far
spent his career in health care.
“My first job was with a hospice company, Odyssey Healthcare,” he said. “I started as an
applications programmer and was vice president of business intelligence from 2005 through
2011.” Ironically, he added, “I love working in health care but don’t like hospitals or sick
people. But I felt like I made a positive difference for people on hospice.”
Matthew’s next position was with CCS Medical, a mail-order durable-medical-supply
company. He began as vice president of IT and was in charge of apps and business
intelligence. After later being named vice president and general manager of operations, he
was in charge of the warehouse, the distribution center and the call center from 2011 to
May 2014. A recent company downsizing has left him seeking a new position.
He enjoys spending time with sons Ethan, 6, and Lucas, 6 months.
“I’m learning about baseball by helping coach Ethan’s baseball team,” he said. “Ethan also
likes playing golf with me. I didn’t want to be pushy about that, but golf is very special to
me.”
I AM WILSHIRE - TERI WALKER
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | MAY 23RD, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Teri Walker, a relatively new member of Wilshire, serves on
a Vision 20/20 committee that is working on diversity and
inclusion. One of her concerns is how critical it is to make
churches accessible for everyone with disabilities. “I also
want to make people feel like insiders like Jesus did. I
believe I can help people feel like insiders,” she said.
She lived in Dallas until her family moved to Van Zandt
County when she was 8. Living in a rural community, she
became a member of 4H. “That’s where I learned to love
politics, citizenship, leadership and county government,” she
said. “In high school I went to a state competition where I
learned what precinct chairpersons do. I was president of the
county 4H as a senior and took a team to a state event on
decision-making.”
Teri played French horn in the Canton High School band and was student body president
as a senior. One summer during high school, she worked at a Baptist youth camp near
Paris. She wasn’t a counselor; she cleaned animal pens in the camp’s on-site zoo and
worked in the kitchen.
She was married right after graduating in 1994. “I fell in love with the president of the
Henderson County 4H, and we went to A&M. He was a member of a Disciples of Christ
church, and we thought we were being called to the mission field,” she said. “After a year
we transferred to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, Mo.
“A year later we returned to Dallas, and I finished my BA in Spanish at UTA in 1999. I chose
Spanish because I had friends who were migrant farm workers, and I thought it would be
cool to be able to talk to them.”
Teri paid her way through UTA by working in the IT department of a growing home-security
company. “I did software implementation there for seven years beginning about 1997,” she
said.
“As we were church-hopping, trying to figure life out, we found CityChurch, which Wilshire
helped found, and started attending in 2000,” she said. There she was a member of the
board that made the church’s financial decisions, served as the children’s minister for
several years and helped with the music.
“I also played the banjo,” Teri said. “My dad is a banjo player, and my parents once had a
bluegrass gospel band. I also played in a folk band, Trinity River Folk Band, for two years. I
love to sing bluegrass harmony.”
One Sunday at CityChurch, the preacher was a woman professor at Perkins School of
Theology. “Her text was Matthew 24 and 25, which helped me see the world differently,”
Teri said. “Even though I hadn’t gone into missions, my sense of call was still there. I
became aware that social justice and advocacy were what I felt called to.
“It was a time of transition for me,” Teri said. “I decided to move into the nonprofit world. I
first worked with the Girl Scouts, then developed a passion for adult education. Working for
a group that mostly helped women get strong English skills, I became a walking, talking
soapbox about adult education.”
She now heads another nonprofit, Reading and Radio Resource, which creates radio
programming and makes audio versions of printed materials for people with issues such as
dyslexia and vision impairment.
“We have our own radio station here and in Austin as well as a phone app,” she said.
Volunteers record materials from books, newspapers and magazines.
Teri decided to visit Wilshire because she missed Sunday School and Bible study. She
“popped in” one Sunday in 2012, then tried Sunday School classes. Since joining Wilshire,
she has become a member of Compass Class.
She appreciates Baptists because of their congregational model and their support of the
separation of church and state. She loves the church and is concerned about people
leaving the church, no matter the denomination.
What Teri loves most about Wilshire is its budget. When she went to a Wilshire business
meeting, she saw the “clear transparency” of the way “Wilshire puts its money where its
mouth is,” she said. “That’s such a rarity.”
She also values the Pathways to Ministry program. “It’s really meaningful and so needed,”
she said.
Teri loves hosting dinner parties—especially when they feature Southern “comfort food,”
and she enjoys sitting around the table with her guests—making them feel included.
I AM WILSHIRE - PRICE TINSLEY
Born and raised in Garland, Price Tinsley achieved the
rank of Eagle Scout at age 16. “My project was helping
to start a library at Buckner Children’s Home,” he said.
“I placed boxes around Wilshire in the early 1990s” to
collect books. “It was neat to utilize the church in my
project.”
For four years in his teens, he went to Philmont Scout
Ranch in New Mexico, the first two as a camper. In the
last two he served on the staff at a camp in the
backcountry. “The camps have different themes,” he
explained. “The first was a Mexican settler camp; the
second involved rock climbing. In my last year I did a
21-day trek, and I was crew chief for two treks.”
Price played clarinet in the marching band for four years at South Garland High School. For
three years beginning in his junior year, he worked at a book store. Influenced by his father,
Sam, he is a baseball fan and enjoys going to professional games with his father.
When he graduated from high school in 1994, Price “had no idea” what to major in. “I
started at Richland College, where my dad was a math professor,” he said. “Then I
transferred to the University of North Texas, where I majored in psychology and minored in
communications. I found the subject interesting, but by the time I finished my BA, I had
decided I didn’t want to go to graduate school in psychology.”
After Price had worked for six months as a bank teller, his brother, Steve, an engineer at
Texas Instruments, asked him whether he was interested in the semiconductor industry.
“In circuit design there’s an integrated-circuit layout design specialist,” Price explained, “and
Texas Instruments sponsored a two-semester layout certification program. Steve showed
me what these specialists do.”
Finding it interesting, he enrolled in the program at Eastfield College. “The electronics
classes, which were taught by a lab designer at TI, provided hands-on experience with the
real world. I really enjoyed the program.”
As Price neared graduation, TI offered him a paid internship. “At the same time a company
in Madison, Wisc., asked me to come up for an interview,” he said. “I took the job in June
2000. I loved the town and the job, and I got to travel to Germany.
“At Christmas my brother told me that TI was forming a new group. I didn’t plan to accept
the job, but it offered twice the salary that I was making, so I couldn’t turn it down.” A few
months later he began the job as a designer, which means he took an electrical schematic
and placed microchips on it to create the optimal designs.
Laid off in 2010, Price began doing the same work for a company that supplies contractors
to TI. That job lasted until May 2012.
Three months later he began “the best job I’ve ever had,” he said. He works for Freedom
Park at DFW Airport, a reservations-based company whose valets park flyers’ vehicles and
deliver them upon their return. “I’m a quality-assurance manager and dispatcher, and I
teach the training class for new employees.
“The work is different from one day to the next,” he said. “I get to interact with valets and
hear their stories, including one guy from Iraq. I’ve discovered that I enjoy being a people
person.”
Price and his wife, Sara (who grew up at South Main Baptist Church in Houston), met in a
singles class at Wilshire right after he returned from Wisconsin, although he’d seen her
before he moved away. They were married in June 2002 and have two daughters, Gillian,
who is 8, and Anabelle, who is 4. The Tinsleys are members of Avodah Class.
He has served on the Early Childhood Education Committee and on the search committee
that brought Tiffany Wright to Wilshire. “I’ve also played in Wilshire Winds off and on,” he
said.
Having been raised at Wilshire, Price describes his involvement here as being “like putting
on an old pair of gloves. I like the fact that Wilshire is open-minded and is willing to accept
people’s ideas and that the staff is so forward-looking. I also like the blend of more
conservative and more liberal Sunday School classes,” he said. As the father of two, he
appreciates the high quality of Wilshire’s children’s programs.
In his leisure hours he coaches a girls’ volleyball club in Dallas and has been a volleyball
referee for five years.
I AM WILSHIRE: ADAM COX
“Wilshire for me always felt like a family,” said
Adam Cox. “When I first started coming with my
wife (Kate Rosamond, who grew up at Wilshire), I
saw what it was like to have deep roots in a
church. I’d never experienced the notion of a
church family before. I felt really welcomed. That was most powerful to me.”
Adam’s parents were Methodists, and he was confirmed at age 12 and then baptized by
sprinkling, as he hadn’t been baptized as an infant.
“A couple of years later I began going with friends to First Baptist Garland, and I attended a
Baptist church in Austin,” he said. “After Kate and I started dating, I started coming to
Wilshire with her.” He officially joined Wilshire after the new membership policy was put into
place welcoming those baptized in other Christian traditions.
In 2005, he and Kate helped start the FaithPlus Class and were the social leaders. They are
now members of Labyrinth Class, and he’s part of the teacher rotation. “We just finished
studying the bookTwenty-Four Hours That Changed the World, and we also do Bible study,”
he said.
Adam was born and grew up in Garland. He played several sports in middle school and
high school, but “my biggest athletic venture was playing Ultimate Frisbee. It’s a little like
playing football with a Frisbee,” he explained. At South Garland High School he was a class
officer every year, including president of his senior class.
A member and president of the debate team, he “enjoyed competing and meeting people
from other schools as well as applying my intellectual side,” he said. He was also an
editorial writer for the school newspaper.
For several years during high school, Adam helped his father, who was the commissioner of
an adult coed softball league. “I helped with the schedule, worked at a concession stand
and kept score,” he said. He also ran a lawn care business for several years.
Upon graduating in 2001, he went to the University of Texas at Austin. “It was close to
home, a girlfriend and several friends were going there, and it had a good business
program,” he said. There he earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and a bachelor’s degree
in economics. He also played on an Ultimate Frisbee team one year and was involved in a
Christian fraternity.
Adam was a teaching assistant in a statistics class and a research assistant for a professor
who studied juries and related legal issues. “He simulated jury deliberations, and I
transcribed them,” he said. “It was quite fascinating.
“One summer I was a fellow interning at the Census Bureau in Washington, D.C., as I was
interested in governmental statistical analysis,” he said. “Another summer I worked for
Baker’s Furniture, a family-owned furniture store.
“I started dating Kate in my junior year, which was her freshman year at A&M,” Adam said.
“We met though mutual friends in Ultimate Frisbee during Christmas break.” They were
married at Wilshire in 2007. They have two daughters: Ellen 2, and Rosalie, who was born
in April.
After college graduation in 2005, he came to Dallas to begin working for a managementconsulting firm that works on strategic issues with large companies in a variety of industries.
In 2008 a job transfer took him to London for six months.
“It was our chance to explore the world,” Adam said. “The first week, I made out a calendar
for exploring. We spent time exploring the United Kingdom, Scotland, Ireland, France, Italy
and Spain.”
During that time he decided to go to graduate school, choosing the University of Chicago,
where he earned dual master’s degrees: an MBA and a master’s degree in public policy.
“Public-education policy is a passion,” he said, and “my long-term goal is to work in public
education.
“Chicago was an awesome city,” Adam said. “In our three years there, we learned to live
with the cold. One summer I worked in the Chicago public schools’ Office of Special
Education to improve the processes of supporting parent complaints. I helped design a new
process.”
He also spent a year as an executive coach for the principal of a charter school and worked
with an organization called Renaissance Schools Fund, which provides seed funding for a
variety of education projects. He also began and sits on the board of a nonprofit, First
Principals, which provides executive coaching to school principals.
Adam has returned to his initial employer as a general management consultant working on
a variety of strategic issues. He also volunteers to do pro bono work for the company.
I AM WILSHIRE: MARK MURPHY
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | MAY 2ND, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Mark Murphy is happy to be at Wilshire because “I never
have felt out of place here,” he said. “Wilshire boosts me
every time I go. No matter how stressful my life is, I
always come away rejuvenated. It’s a place of respite.
“There’s a place for everyone at Wilshire,” he added. “I
appreciate the love and friendliness at Wilshire—people
talk to you. We also enjoy going to supper on Wednesday
nights so we can get our thoughts together.”
Mark was born in Statesboro, Ga., near Savannah, and grew up in the nearby town of
Guyton. “My father was the last of 12 children, so I had lots of cousins,” he said. Growing
up, he enjoyed hunting and fishing and summer-league basketball and baseball.
In his county high school, he played several sports. On the intellectual side, he participated
in Quiz Bowl, a statewide competition similar to Jeopardy!, as well as Model United Nations.
“We were given a country to research, sponsored bills based on positions, gave speeches,
served on committees and learned to negotiate,” he said.
Mark also participated in extemporaneous speaking competitions. “We studied current
events and were given one to speak on,” he said. “We had five minutes to prepare our
presentations.”
An industrious teenager, he ran a small grass-cutting operation and worked as an
electrician’s helper for his uncle.
Graduating eighth in a class of 400, Mark enrolled at Georgia Institute of Technology in
1996, planning a career in engineering but initially unsure which discipline to choose. After
taking a few classes, he decided to major in electrical engineering because of its
“imaginative nature,” he said. “In electrical engineering, you don’t see electrons moving
around; you don’t see how things physically work,” unlike specialties such as mechanical
and civil engineering.
At Georgia Tech he was a member of Alpha Phi Omega, a service fraternity started by the
Boy Scouts. “We did service projects such as working at a rescue mission for cats, cleaning
parks and working on Habitat for Humanity projects,” he said.
One summer Mark had an internship with Amoco, and he had two summer internships with
BP, where he worked on electrical systems in BP factories.
For a month in the summer of 1999, he studied business German in Dusseldorf, Germany.
“We studied for eight hours a day, then did a side project—research on how to implement a
renewable-energy system,” he said. “The hardest part of the project was conducting an
interview in German.” He also visited several cities in Germany, including Berlin and
Cologne.
Mark met his wife, Ellen, at Georgia Tech in 1998. Both of them lived in the language dorm.
“We lived there to immerse ourselves in the language,” he said. “She lived on the Spanish
floor, and I was on the German floor.”
When she graduated (a year ahead of him), she took a job in Jacksonville, Fla. He
proposed in March 2001, and they were married the following August. They have three
sons: Joshua, 7; Paul, 5; and Richard, 3.
After Mark’s graduation in December 2001, he also found a job in Jacksonville. “The
company does engineering for architects—designing and installing generators, lighting, firealarm systems and communication systems,” he said.
He was raised Baptist, but because the churches in his area kept splitting, the family
eventually joined an independent church and then went to a Methodist church. “Ellen and I
found a CBF church in Jacksonville,” he said. “We were baptized together there before we
got married and were later married there,” he said.
“We wanted to move to Texas, and I was able to transfer to Dallas in 2008,” Mark said. “The
recession hit hard in Florida, and our two boys were young. We wanted to move before they
got older.”
They found Wilshire through “the network of Baptist pastors,” Mark explained. “Kyle Reese,
our pastor in Jacksonville, knew George Mason through the Cooperative Baptist
Fellowship.” He told the Murphys that Wilshire was the only church in Dallas they should
consider joining.
A transfer with the company took the family to San Antonio in January 2010. Returning to
Dallas in March 2011, the Murphys joined Wilshire on Palm Sunday. “We joined Avodah
Class after trying a few other Sunday School classes,” Mark said. “We enjoy the openness
of the class.”
The Murphys enjoy camping, kayaking and exploring, especially in the Florida Keys. “My
uncle and dad had a one-eighth-acre vegetable garden,” he said—which may explain his
current enjoyment of yard work.
At Wilshire, Mark serves on the Building and Grounds Committee.
I AM WILSHIRE: PETER SEFZIK
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | APRIL 25TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
It was Peter Sefzik’s dream to attend Baylor University. “I liked
its mission and that it was a Baptist university,” he said. He
made it happen, partly through a large measure of hard work.
“I never thought I could afford it, but student loans and work
helped,” he said. “I was a teller at Central National Bank in
Waco. After closing the bank, I went straight to Wilkirson-Hatch
Funeral Home, where I was the night attendant. From 6 to 10
p.m. I hosted visitations, answered the phone from 10 p.m. to 7
a.m., then hosted visitations from 7 to 8 a.m.”
He is grateful that the schedule allowed him to study and take care of other business.
“On campus I joined the Baylor Chamber of Commerce because it had the cheapest dues
of any fraternity,” he joked. More seriously, he enjoyed being involved in the events it
hosted, including the homecoming parade, parents’ weekend and the spring carnival, Dia
del Oso (Day of the Bear).
Peter also was a member of the Student Court, which hears appeals by students for
infringements such as those related to student elections.
His bachelor’s degree in international relations included courses in political science, French,
history and religion, a curriculum that suited his broad range of interests. His coursework
included a semester in Caen, France.
“I took half my classes in French and half in English, and when I returned, I did much better
on the required language-proficiency exam than I would have otherwise,” he said.
A native of Midwest City, Okla., Peter moved to San Antonio at age 4. “I worked almost from
the day I turned 16,” he said. “I shingled roofs, worked for a landscaping company and was
a grocery store courtesy clerk.”
He played Little League baseball and continued playing baseball through high school, in
addition to playing basketball, soccer and football.
“I was lucky to walk on as a baseball player at Ranger Junior College in West Texas after
graduating from high school in 1993,” Peter said. “After a year, I went to summer school at
Texas A&M Commerce before transferring to Baylor in 1994.”
After graduating, he stayed at Baylor to work on an MBA in international management.
Finishing in 1998, he briefly worked as a stockbroker, and in October 1999 joined Comerica
Bank in Houston, first as a credit analyst and then as an officer dealing with bad credit. In
2001 he joined Comerica’s energy lending group in Dallas.
After nine years he transferred to the wealth management department. “I have a great
group of people working for me,” Peter said. “My team of about 150 people in Arizona,
Texas and Florida works with high-net-worth individuals. I enjoy seeing the ways they’ve
grown businesses, made investments and given away wealth.”
When Southern Methodist University revived its nighttime law school, he began working on
his law degree, finishing in 2009. “The bank and my boss were very supportive,” he said.
Peter met his wife, Robin, through friends at Comerica. They were married in 2003 and
have two sons: Jake, 8, and Levi, 4.
Peter, whose surname is of Czech origin, grew up Baptist. “We were active through middle
school, and then the family drifted a little,” he said. “I went to several Baptist churches in
college but never found a church home.”
In Houston he was a member of South Main Baptist, “but when I moved to Dallas, I had a
hard time finding a church,” he said. “When Robin and I lived downtown, we joined First
United Methodist Church. After we moved around the corner from Wilshire, a downtown
church was too long a commute, and we discovered Wilshire, which gave us a chance to
return to our Baptist roots.” They joined in 2009.
“We really like Wilshire’s children’s programs,” he added. “We couldn’t be more pleased
with the tenderness and lessons of the teachers. We also have enjoyed Journey Class. It’s
a great group of welcoming people.
“We also like the formality of the worship service and that we sing entire hymns.”
I AM WILSHIRE: KELLYE MAGEE-BRIM
As the parent of a child (Meredith Magee) who is
now in college, Kellye Magee-Brim is grateful for
the foundation Wilshire has given her daughter.
“Wilshire is the main consistency in her life,” she
said. “The youth program has been very important,
and Meredith has eight friends she’s known since
infancy.”
Baptist life has been a similar influence for Kellye.
Born in Dallas, she moved to Rockwall—where
she again lives—at age 9, and she grew up at First
Baptist Church of Rockwall. “My dad was a
minister who came from a long line of Baptist
General Convention of Texas ministers,” she said.
A lover of water sports, she enjoyed sailing with
her father. During elementary school she took dance lessons, piano and violin. In middle
school she participated in UIL choral reading competitions, was a member of the drill team
and played flute in the band.
At Rockwall High School Kellye sang in school musicals, was a member of the drill team
and competed in speech and debate tournaments. “That led to my involvement in Youth in
Government for three years,” she said. “At our yearly conventions we wrote legislation, had
a mock legislature and held elections.”
As a teenager she worked as a YMCA receptionist, was a summertime lifeguard at Wet and
Wild in Garland and gave YMCA swimming lessons.
Upon graduation in 1985, Kellye planned to be a TV news anchor and wanted to major in
radio, TV and film. However, she went to Baylor University for two years on a voice
scholarship. Surgery on her vocal cords after a serious car accident affected her singing
voice and changed her plans.
At Baylor she met her first husband, whom she married in 1989. When they moved to
Dallas in 1991, she transferred to East Texas State and then to the University of Texas at
Dallas.
“The TV job market was flooded, so I changed my major to psychology,” she said. “I
finished my bachelor’s degree in 1992, then went straight to graduate school at East Texas
State in counseling. I finished my master’s in 1994.”
Kellye worked in Wilshire’s prekindergarten before becoming a licensed professional
counselor in 1996. She has been a counselor at the Center for Social Success, which does
individual and family therapy, primarily working with children and adolescents on social
skills. She is now preparing to start her own practice in Rockwall.
For 12 years she also has taught one-on-one survival swim lessons for children ages 3
months to 6 years at homeowners’ pools.
While living in Austin, Kellye had been a member of First Baptist Church. “I loved that
church, and I asked my dad to help me find a church when we moved to Dallas,” she
recalled. “He mentioned Wilshire and one other church. Wilshire was closer, so we joined in
1992.
“I love Wilshire’s traditional worship style and that there are no screens in the Sanctuary
and that we use a hymnal,” she said. “Music is very important to me and our family. I don’t
want entertainment. Also, George preaches on an intellectual level, and I want to be
challenged to think more deeply.
“Mosaic, my Sunday School class, which includes both married and unmarried members, is
a very open group of people,” Kellye said. “Anyone can say anything and be safe. They’ll
never be judged, and nothing anyone says ever leaves the room. The class is something so
special and always has been.”
She was a member of the committee that suggested bringing MOPS to Wilshire and a
member of the original steering committee. She has served on the Social Committee, New
Deacon Committee and Family Life Committee and for many years served with Preston and
Mary Lynne Bright in Marriage Enrichment.
Kellye has worked in Vacation Bible School, served in the nursery on Sunday mornings,
directed a young adult Sunday School class and served on the search committee that
recommended that Carolyn Shapard be called as minister to adults.
Most recently she did business solicitations for the Youth Choir’s spaghetti luncheon and
silent auction, and last year she was a chaperone for the Youth Choir mission tour to
Nashville. She twice has taught a Sunday-evening series on couples communication and
recently taught an eight-week series on teenagers for Mosaic Class.
In 2008 Kellye married Lloyd Brim, a longtime Baptist who had been a member of Christ
Church in Rockwall, Wilshire’s former church plant. She and Lloyd have a truly blended
family that includes Lloyd’s daughter, Heather Skeen, in addition to Kellye’s four children:
Meredith, Allie, Kendall and Holden Magee, and Jillian Brim.
I AM WILSHIRE: RHETT MASON
Rhett Mason credits a number of Wilshire members—
including Steve Brookshire, Darren DeMent, Rhonda
Russell and Harry Wakefield (as well as his parents)—
for providing guidance and mentoring.
He was born in Arlington, when his father, Wilshire
Senior Pastor George Mason, was a seminary student.
When Rhett was 4, the family moved to Dallas from
Mobile, Ala.
While Rhett was growing up, no one at Wilshire treated
him differently because he was a preacher’s kid, he
said, but “I put pressure on myself. I knew who I was,
and I wanted to live up to a certain standard.
“My parents did a great job of raising me as ‘not different,’” he added. “I understood that my
relationship with God and church is part of who I am. When I left home, my parents always
said, ‘Remember your name.’ That stuck with me.”
Rhett’s father was his football coach in elementary school. “There I saw a different side of
him,” he said. In eighth grade Rhett began to focus on golf because “that’s where my skill
set was.”
At Lake Highlands High School he was captain of the golf team as a junior and senior, and
he still enjoys his “golf rivalry” with his dad. “He’s more cerebral and careful,” Rhett
explained, “but I take chances and play more for fun.”
A favorite memory of Rhett’s is a seniors-only high school class in radio, TV and film taught
by Wilshire member Rhonda Russell. “Every other Friday we did Saturday Night Live-type
skits for the school,” he said. “We made fun of her all the time, and she gave it right back to
us.
“I never saw church activities as an obligation,” he said. “Youth camps were the most
memorable.” Minister to Students Darren DeMent “is a mentor, has become a lifelong
friend, and is a big reason why I have a deeply rooted understanding of my personal
relationship with God.”
After his 2003 graduation from Lake Highlands High School, Rhett chose Texas Christian
University because, among other reasons, it was “away from home but not too far away,” he
said, “and the football program was better than anticipated.”
Initially undecided on a major, he eventually chose advertising and public relations. “That
wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life and has no relationship to what I do now,” he said. “I
minored in business and English, as I’ve always been interested in English as well as
history.
“Fraternity leadership roles opened me up to people outside my fraternity,” Rhett said. “As a
representative to the Greek council, I got to interact with the administration. I once invited
the chancellor and his family to my house for dinner”—the only time a student had done so,
he noted.
When he graduated, he knew his future lay in real estate. “Wilshire member Harry
Wakefield told me about a job at Dr Pepper, which was looking for someone young to
mold,” he said. He now runs the real estate department. As senior manager of infrastructure
planning, he travels to small towns and large cities; his favorites include the San Francisco
Bay area and New York City.
“Steve Brookshire gave me my best career advice,” Rhett noted: “I should remember that
I’ve never walked down the aisle and made a profession of faith to my company—work isn’t
the end of the world.”
At Wilshire he is deeply involved in Vision 20/20, both as a member of the core team and as
co-leader of the Grow initiative. “This has been an eye-opener,” he said. “As a PK I had
more exposure to the church than most, but this has opened my eyes to the dedication of
lay leaders to Wilshire’s future.”
Rhett and his wife, Callie, met as TCU freshmen, “but we weren’t serious until our senior
year,” he said. “I had my eye on her, and we hung out together frequently in groups. I also
showed up more at the library so I could run into her more frequently.”
When they graduated, he returned to Dallas, and she began medical school in Oklahoma
City. Dating long-distance was no picnic, so he lived in Oklahoma City a year before their
wedding on March 24, 2012.
Rhett participated in a Wilshire mission trip to the Dominican Republic in 2009 and has
served on the New Member Committee. The Masons are members of Labyrinth Class.
“I’m so proud of the residency program and the role of Wilshire as a teaching and nurturing
congregation,” he said.
I AM WILSHIRE: KATIE MURRAY
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | MARCH 28TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
When Katie Murray was working on a master’s degree
from the Baylor School of Social Work, she was an
intern at Wilshire and then later served as the YourCall
coordinator for Minister to Students Darren DeMent. In
her degree program she focused on community
practice with a specialization in church social work, and
her dual-degree program also led to a master of divinity
degree.
After the internship, she and her husband, Steven,
whom she met at Baylor, intentionally stayed at
Wilshire until December 2011, when his job took them
to Houston for two years. There they joined South Main
Baptist Church, where former pastoral resident Amy
Grizzle Kane is minister to adults. “She was my first
friend, and I worked with her on young adult ministry,” Katie said.
While in Houston, Katie worked on a Clinical Pastoral Education residency program in the
Level 1 trauma center at Memorial Hermann Hospital at Texas Medical Center. “It was the
most difficult and life-giving thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “It stretched me, and I’m grateful
I went through it.”
Now she and her husband have returned to Dallas and Wilshire. Katie currently is working
on a part-time contract for Wilshire doing a community needs assessment and other
research on Christian advocacy best practices as part of Vision 20/20. This work is in
preparation for an emerging partnership between Wilshire and the Cooperative Baptist
Fellowship on Christian advocacy issues.
Katie is happy to be back at Wilshire. For one reason, ”Wilshire goes deep and asks difficult
questions,” she said. “Wilshire looks at what God is asking us to do, not to just continue
doing what we’re doing, though we’re doing things well.”
She also appreciates Wilshire’s use of a traditional hymnal. “I grew up with a hymnal in my
hands,” she said. “The hymns bring back memories, and they’re a great expression of faith.”
The Murrays are members of Labyrinth Class. “We’re in the same stage of life, and we
teach each other. We don’t leave our brains at the door.”
Katie was born in Dallas but spent most of her childhood in Austin, where she and her
family were members of First Baptist Church. She was ordained there in April 2013, “where
my foundation was laid,” she said.
Early on she showed a talent for music by sounding out tunes on the piano before she
started school. “I began taking piano lessons at age 5 and took for seven years,” she said.
“Beginning in sixth grade I played drums because most of the percussionists were boys,
and my dad said girls could do anything boys did.”
In high school Katie was a member of the National Honor Society, but the band took up
most of her time. She eventually played every percussion instrument but was a snare
drummer in the high school marching band. When she was a junior, the band participated in
the 2003 Rose Bowl Parade.
As a snare drummer she made the All Region band every year and was named to the
Texas All State Band as a senior. She also played in the state’s top orchestra at the All
State competition. Also a singer, she performed in ensembles at her church during high
school.
Katie comes from “a long line of Baylor Bears—four generations,” so after graduating from
high school in 2004, she headed up I-35 to Waco.
“Baylor was close to home but not at home,” she said. “I majored in music education
because music was my God-given talent. I wanted to be a middle school band director.”
She made the top band ensemble, played in the symphony orchestra, was one of the drum
majors as a junior and graduated in four years (this degree program usually takes five).
“I once took 21 hours and learned to play every instrument, even string instruments, but I
began to feel burnout at the end of my junior year,” she said. As a senior she student-taught
at a middle school and a senior high school. It was a plum assignment—the middle school
was one of the top three in Texas, and the female director was nationally recognized.
While student teaching, Katie encountered real poverty for the first time. One of her seventh
graders, a gifted but poor tuba player, had behavioral issues. “I wanted to do more for him,
but I couldn’t, and I wasn’t satisfied with just teaching him the F major scale.”
Ironically, while there “I realized that I had no passion for teaching band,” Katie said. “I had
denied that for a while. Back in Waco just before graduation, I went to church with my
roommate, and I broke into tears when I heard God’s call to ministry.”
I AM WILSHIRE: JAY PRITCHARD
For someone so young, Jay Pritchard has crossed paths
with a large number of well-known people and enjoyed
experiences that many people will not have in a lifetime.
He was born and raised in Fort Worth and attended
Trinity Valley, a private school. He played football,
soccer and golf, with golf being his forte. “I was allconference in golf in my junior and senior year. My
school was in the Southwest Preparatory Conference,
along with schools such as Greenhill, Hockaday and St.
Marks,” he noted.
The family belonged to Colonial Country Club, where
Jay was a three-time junior club golf champion.
“In 1992 I played against Tiger Woods at a U.S. Golf
Association junior amateur qualifying tournament,” he said. “One guy I beat is now on the
PGA tour.”
He was confirmed in the United Methodist Church, but he later attended University Christian
Church, which “was closest to Colonial Country Club, and after church we could be there by
12:30,” he said.
Upon graduating from high school in 1993, Jay went to Columbia University, which had
recruited him to play football and golf, and “it was the best school I was accepted to.” As a
bonus, he “fell in love with New York City. New York was a wonderful experience,” he said.
“I got to see Rudy Giuliani three times—but I knew I was coming back to Texas.”
In high school, history had been his main focus. “I was always interested in how things
evolved,” he said, and at Columbia he majored in political science. “I was interested in
politics, and the first presidential campaign I followed on TV was in 1984.
“Columbia has a long history of involvement in the civil rights movement; it’s the backbone
of the school,” Jay noted. “I minored in African-American politics, and my favorite professor
wrote Black Power in the 1970s.”
He went to Columbia’s football training camp, but at 5’5”, he decided to concentrate on golf.
A four-year letterman and captain of the team as a junior and senior, he was twice named
MVP.
As a sophomore, he lived in the dorm room previously occupied by Jack Kerouac, whose
novel On the Road helped make him a famous member of the Beat Generation in the
1950s.
The summer before his senior year, Jay interned for Enron. He sat in on many meetings
with later-infamous figures such as Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. “I graduated in 1997 and
talked my way into an investment banking job in Houston. It was not a good fit, so I stayed
only a year.”
About that time his father contracted colon cancer, so he returned to Dallas to keep his
father’s company afloat. Essentially he became CEO of the company, which was the first
U.S. firm to launch a property-tax software program that ran on the Internet.
Jay’s next job was as an account manager with a political consulting firm in Fort Worth. “I
worked for the company off and on for six years,” he said. “During legislative sessions I was
an aide in the capital for two state representatives and a state senator.”
The big break in his career came in 2006, when he was hired to run a grassroots
organization that wanted to block the repeal of the Wright Amendment. “We had a couple of
key wins that gave them an additional eight years,” he said.
During that time Jay was dating his future wife, Katy, whom he had met through mutual
friends. They were married in 2007 and have two children: Link, 4, and Reese, 1.
After working for another consulting firm for several years, he now heads the public affairs
practice for the Richards Group. “One of our clients is the national headquarters of the
Salvation Army in Washington, D.C.,” where he’s just finished a three-month tour, he said.
“It’s been both challenging and rewarding to work with them on human rights issues such as
connecting with the LGBT community.”
When the Pritchards were dating, Jay joined Park Cities Baptist, where Katy was a member.
“We looked for a new church when the pastor left,” he said.
They considered options other than Baptist, but “after I met George at a Mexican restaurant
and talked about football, we had a lunch meeting with Mindy Logsdon. She talked up
Wilshire,” emphasizing that “it’s welcoming to all people. That sealed the deal. I love the
openness and the compassion that’s shown throughout the congregation.”
The Pritchards are directors of Labyrinth Class. ”The members are our new best friends,”
Jay said.
Jay was involved in the Crossings Campaign leadership at Wilshire and currently works with
the Vision 20/20 communications team.
I AM WILSHIRE: VIRGIL MUSICK
Imagine hiring out to a neighbor as a teenager—using a
mule to plow cotton and corn—then doing transportation
consulting in St. Petersburg, Russia, much later in life.
Amazing as it seems, that’s Virgil Musick’s story. He was
born in Wichita Falls and grew up in Palestine. As a
teenager he was a delivery boy for a grocery store and
helped his father build houses.
“When I graduated from Palestine High School in 1945, I
volunteered for the Marines,” Virgil said, “but I was not
accepted” because of a minor physical issue.
Instead he enrolled at Texas A&M University, majoring in
veterinary medicine, which had piqued his interest when he
worked for a veterinarian during high school. “I stayed for a year but had to quit when I ran
out of money,” he said.
In 1947 Virgil went to work for the Cottonbelt Railroad in St. Louis and the Southwestern
Railroad Company, based in Tyler. “I started as a messenger boy delivering mail to several
offices,” he said. After a couple of years he was transferred to Dallas, where he met his
wife, Yvonne.
“She was going to Grace Temple Baptist in Oak Cliff, which a girl I’d known in Tyler
recommended,” he said. He and Yvonne were married five years later and now have two
daughters, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Drafted in 1952, Virgil spent 13 months at a Greenland air base 700 miles south of the
North Pole.
“I was a radar operator for an Army battalion on 24-hour watch looking for Russians to
come over the North Pole,” he said. “There were no women there, but I did see one or two
Eskimos. It once got down to 65 below, and the highest temperature was 35 above.”
Leaving the service as a corporal in charge of a radar unit, he began taking transportation
courses at Southern Methodist University. It took 13 years in night school for him to obtain
bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business.
After that Virgil taught transportation law at junior colleges in Dallas; Fort Smith, Ark.; and
Paris, Texas. From 1955 to 1973 he worked for DeSoto Paint in Garland, then spent the
next two years in Fort Smith as a traffic manager.
Returning to Dallas, he launched a transportation consulting company. “I kind of drifted into
it, and I stayed until I retired in 1993,” he said. The company developed an accountspayable program and negotiated contracts between railroads and trucking companies. “It
was a challenge negotiating with railroads and motor carriers.”
Virgil also represented a trade association of traffic managers for oil companies and was
executive director of the Texas Shippers Oil Field Traffic Association for about 10 years.
In 1968 he was voted transportation manager of the year by the Dallas Transportation Club,
and over the years he served on committees for several trade associations.
Toward the end of his career, Virgil did volunteer consulting for two Russian trucking
companies in St. Petersburg.
“The government gave the companies to employees after the collapse of the Soviets, and
they had no concept of financial accounting,” he said. He and Yvonne also enjoyed
sightseeing there, touring castles and visiting the Hermitage several times.
The Musicks previously were members of North Dallas Baptist Church, where they were
married. After moving to Garland, they were charter members of Calvary Baptist Church in
1963. He was ordained as a deacon there, served as Training Union director and on several
committees, and he taught a young couples Sunday School class.
When they returned to the Dallas area from Fort Smith in 1975, they joined Wilshire. “We
liked the fellowship and loved Bruce McIver,” he said.
At Wilshire Virgil has served as a deacon, and he and Yvonne previously team-taught a
young couples class. They were later directors of the oldest adult department and are now
members of Open Bible Class.
After he retired in 1993, the Musicks moved to Lake Kiowa near Gainesville. At their church
there he was deacon chair and served on a long-range planning committee when the
church purchased 50 acres for future building. They returned to Dallas in 2011 and have
moved to an independent living facility.
One of Virgil’s hobbies is bookbinding. “I’ve restored family Bibles for about 40 years,” he
said.
The Musicks have traveled to Europe, Mexico and Hawaii and have taken several
Caribbean cruises. In 2009 they took a 10-day tour of Israel, where he was baptized in the
Jordan River. “Dr. Bill Tolar led the group and lectured at every place we stopped,” he said.
I AM WILSHIRE: MEGAN KORONKA
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | FEBRUARY 28TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
After graduating from Texas Tech University in December
2007, Megan Koronka chose to “spread her wings” in Dallas,
but two situations changed her life path.
She first became human resources coordinator for the law
firm of Brown McCarroll in Dallas. “I handled new hiring and
worked with benefits,” she said. “It was a small office, and I
also helped plan events and parties.
“After about six months, I realized I didn’t want to do human
resources, because I had to lay someone off,” Megan
recalled. “I realized I’d missed my calling, so while still
working there, I took courses at UT Arlington to get my
teaching certificate in early childhood education.
“I should’ve known that I was destined to be a teacher,” she said, as “most of the women in
my family are educators.” In 2011 she became a fourth grade teacher at Richardson
Heights Elementary School.
The second life-changing situation is that Megan met her husband, Kevin, at the law firm. “I
got to know him when we played on the firm’s softball team,” she said. “When we knew this
was the real deal,” they announced their intentions to the firm.
They were married in January 2011 at Perkins Chapel on the Southern Methodist University
campus. Their first child, Luke, was born last July 4, and Megan is now staying home with
him.
Megan was involved in many activities while growing up in Lubbock, both in school and in
the community. “I’ve danced—ballet, tap and jazz—since I was 3 years old,” she said.
“Frenship High School formed a dance team in my senior year, and we performed at
basketball games and pep rallies.” The highlight that year was the group’s performance at
Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
During high school she also was secretary of the National Honor Society and a class
representative.
One of Megan’s community activities was Symphony Debs, who ushered for Lubbock
Symphony Orchestra performances. “In our senior year we were presented as debutantes
by the symphony,” she said.
She also was involved in the American Cancer Society’s Race for Life. “We raised money
by taking turns walking a track from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m.,” she said. As a junior she was
among the students from area high schools selected by Lubbock Leadership to participate
in field trips to learn more about local enterprises such as area hospitals, cotton farms and
cotton gins.
“As a senior planning for college, I visited Texas A&M, but I thought I would fit in better at
Texas Tech,” Megan said. “I picked Tech because I was such a fan” of the athletic teams. “I
also wanted to stay in my hometown. I was born in Amarillo, but my family moved to
Lubbock when I was 5.
“My major was communications studies, which focuses on interpersonal communications,
and I minored in Spanish,” she explained. “I’d wanted to go into human resources, but Tech
didn’t offer that major. I learned about this field at registration.”
Megan studied in Seville, Spain, for four months in the spring of her sophomore year. “I
especially enjoyed Seville, which is true to the Spanish culture and way of life,” she said. “I
lived with a family, which was a good way to experience Spanish life and food.” She also
had the opportunity to travel to Barcelona, Madrid, Paris and Portugal.
Through her sorority she was involved for three years in Presidents Select, a group that
leads tours for visitors, hosts events such as dinners, serves attendees in the boxes at
football games, and helps with recruiting athletes.
Megan grew up Methodist and was active in youth activities, and Kevin grew up Baptist, so
after they were married, the couple church-shopped for “quite a long time” until one of
Kevin’s colleagues mentioned Wilshire.
“We started visiting in the spring of 2011, then attended off and on until joining in November
2012,” she said.
“We love the people at Wilshire and like the traditional worship style,” she said. “We joined
after the membership policy changed.”
This is Megan’s second year on the Church Social Committee, and she previously
substituted occasionally in fourth grade Sunday School. “I’m ready to start again,” she said.
The Koronkas are members of Labyrinth Class.
She’s also “slowly getting involved in the neighborhood.” She’s involved in MOPS and
Square One, a ministry for new mothers. She has volunteered to help with the social
committee of her neighborhood association and is a member of the Lake Highlands Area
PTA.
I AM WILSHIRE: PAT CRUMP
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | FEBRUARY 21ST, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Pat Crump was influenced to pursue a career in gerontology in
several ways. “I was the youngest child in my family, so my
grandparents were much older” meaning he was more familiar
with the aging process than many other young people, he said.
“Also my dad’s mother and I were very close.”
Another influence was his friend Alan Brown, son of Wilshire’s
A.D. and Monna Brown. “He acquainted me with Baylor’s
gerontology program.
“With my knowledge of demographics, I decided to go into aging services, so I went straight
to graduate school at Baylor University to work on my master’s degree in gerontology.”
Born and raised in Homer, La., a rural area with a small high school, Pat had the
opportunity to play football, run track, play trumpet in the band and serve on the student
council. “It’s so different from Dallas—there we knew everybody,” he added. “My family still
lives there, but the town has dried up.”
Although the Baptist church where he grew up was small, there were many opportunities for
youth, including youth choir, summer mission trips and summer camp.
Pat graduated from high school in 1987 and headed to Baylor. “I had thought about going to
LSU, but my minister of music, who had gone to Baylor, encouraged me to go there,” he
said. “When I visited the campus, everyone was very friendly, and it felt right.”
He majored in business, but “at that time I didn’t realize that there were other things I
could’ve done,” he noted.
In his sophomore year Pat joined the Baylor Chamber of Commerce, a student service
organization, and his participation took up most of his spare time from then on. “We helped
with homecoming and took care of the bears. We always got lots of attention when we
traveled with the bears in a trailer,” he said. He also helped with Welcome Week.
He also participated in Baptist Student Union mission trips to the Rio Grande Valley. “We
did backyard Bible clubs and did cleaning and repairs at a church,” he said.
Pat was involved in mission trips sponsored by Columbus Avenue Baptist Church, and the
college choir sang in various places, including prisons in Huntsville and Gatesville on Easter
weekend, he said. “It was an opportunity to give back. We also had a large, active Sunday
School program.”
He met his wife, Jeana, at Columbus Avenue Baptist when he was a sophomore and she
was a freshman. They began dating in 1990 and were engaged in 1992. They now have
three children: Grayson is 17, Greer is 13, and Caroline is 9.
Pat received his bachelor’s degree in management in August 1991. “I chose management
because it involves dealing with people,” he said.
His master’s program involved a six-month internship in Albuquerque. “I worked for one of
the largest nursing homes in the Southwest,” he said. “I worked with administrators and
spent time in food service, housekeeping and admissions. I supervised staff and was
responsible for care delivery, but most of the time I served as assistant manager of various
wings.”
Just before finishing his degree in August 1993, Pat and Jeana were married, and they
moved to San Angelo, where he served for 10 years as health care administrator for the
Baptist Retirement Community. He ended his time there as president and CEO. “I still have
that title, though we merged with Buckner in January 2010,” he said.
“We moved to Dallas in July 2010, and I assumed a statewide role in overseeing all seven”
of Buckner’s retirement communities, he said. His current title is vice president of operations
for retirement services.
Pat travels every week or so, and his responsibilities include financial oversight, working
with employees and executive directors and overseeing plans for a new full-service highrise facility soon to be built in Dallas. “It will take at least three years to complete and will be
built at the corner of Northwest Highway and Interstate 75,” he explained.
The Crumps have been Wilshire members for about three years. “The pastors of our
previous churches spoke highly of George, and I knew Alan Brown,” he said. “We
appreciate the children’s program and Wilshire’s affiliation with the Cooperative Baptist
Fellowship, and Wilshire seems to know who it is as a church.”
They are members of Journey Class. He serves on the Adult Education Committee and has
recently become a member of the board of the Grief and Loss Center.
Pat enjoys mountain biking and running, and he has run the White Rock Marathon.
I AM WILSHIRE: CAROL PRIDE
With a rich history of involvement in Baptist institutions, Carol
Pride also brings to Wilshire a lifetime of service and multiple
talents.
She was born in Fort Worth, then lived in Corpus Christi and
Denton when her father, Britton Wood, was Baptist Student
Union director.
“I consider Denton my childhood home,” she said. “It was a
great place to grow up. We spent six years there before
moving to Dallas, where my dad became single adult minister
at Park Cities Baptist.”
At Lake Highlands High School she took four years of Spanish, which proved valuable on a
mission trip to Juarez, Mexico. She and her sister were music leaders, singing and playing
guitars in Spanish and English. Through Spanish Club she studied for two weeks in Saltillo,
Mexico, and lived with a Mexican family.
Graduating in 1976, Carol chose Hardin-Simmons University, her father’s alma mater, for
college. “I immediately felt at home,” she said. “It was warm and inviting, and I liked the
campus size.”
There she was active in BSU and sang in the BSU choir. As a freshman, she sang in the
Hardin-Simmons Chorale and she took piano lessons. She was involved in a service
sorority that volunteered for ministries such as Meals on Wheels.
One summer Carol was a summer missionary in Albany, N.Y. “We did Vacation Bible
School, children’s choir and canvassing, and we painted some rooms. It was a great
experience.” Another summer she was a summer missionary in Texas with the Invincibles.
Graduating in 1980 with a degree in English and secondary education, she and a friend
toured 10 European countries in 12 days. “The money for the trip was a gift from my
grandparents,” she said.
“That fall I began a master’s degree in counseling,” Carol said, “but after one semester I felt
led to go to seminary.”
She graduated from Southwestern Seminary in December 1983 with a master’s degree in
religious education, “trying to see whether God wanted me in missions or the church.”
During seminary she worked as a secretary, and after graduating, she substituted at
Paschal High School in Fort Worth. When Paschal needed an ESL teacher, she taught full
time, teaching a number of Cambodian refugees.
Carol had enjoyed attending student week at Glorieta Baptist Assembly, but one year
stands out. “My husband, Dale, and I met on the way there in 1982,” she said. “His church
had spots on their bus for my group. We met on the bus and married a year later.”
The Prides have three children who grew up at Wilshire. Leslie has two preschoolers and
lives near Memphis, and Rachel and her husband live in Denver. Christopher is studying
secondary education and English at the University of North Texas.
In 1986, when Dale was looking for a ministry, they became house parents for juvenile
delinquents at the South Texas Children’s Home. “It was challenging,” she said. “Leslie was
an infant, I had to cook for five boys, and we had only one weekend a month off.”
From 1987 to 1990 they were house parents at Buckner Children’s Home, overseeing
juvenile-delinquent boys in their dorm. “We went to church at Buckner with them, and on
Sunday evenings we went to Wilshire when Bruce McIver was there,” she said.
After several years raising her own children, Carol returned to teaching when Christopher
was in kindergarten. She had been recertified for elementary school, and she taught
elementary ESL in Garland for seven years, then began a program for newcomers at
Garland High School. For the past 10 years she has taught regular ESL there. The program
includes creative writing and literary genres.
“It’s a ministry that includes building relationships with students,” she said. “I see their
positive changes and new confidence. I can choose my curriculum, and I love trying to
incorporate morals. We’re now doing a unit on the Holocaust.”
Before joining Wilshire, the Prides were members of First Baptist Church of Garland. They
joined Wilshire in the mid-1990s, when Dale became facilities manager.
“I love Wilshire’s music program, and the children’s and youth programs were very
important for us,” she said. “The staff members are wonderful, strong leaders.”
Carol has sung in Sanctuary Choir, worked with Globetrekkers, taught third-grade children’s
choir and fourth-grade Sunday School, volunteered in Vacation Bible School, helped with
youth activities, and served on the Library Committee. She now works with bed babies on
Sunday mornings. Her Sunday School class is Cord of Three.
I AM WILSHIRE: MARNIE FISHER
An outstanding high school athlete who is passionate about her
medical career, Marnie Fisher brings to Wilshire a love of
missions and a high-energy care-giving personality.
Born in Dallas, she lived in the White Rock Lake area until her
family moved to Mesquite when she was in elementary school.
At North Mesquite High School she excelled in athletics. “Sports
was my outlet,” she said. “My home life was stressful, so I
participated in sports to get out of the house.
“My main sport was volleyball,” Marnie said. “I was also heavily
involved in track. I threw the shotput and discus. I was district
champion, and I broke school records in both events that had stood since the 1970s.”
She played sand volleyball during college to keep fit, and she also has done roller blading
for fitness. “I used to race mountain bikes,” she said, “and I do yoga and cycling. I
snowboard every year in Vail; that’s my favorite.”
Marnie declined a volleyball scholarship to Dallas Baptist University to attend the University
of Texas at Arlington, finishing her degree at Baylor School of Nursing in Dallas in 1997.
“My mother is a nurse, and I knew wanted to go to nursing school,” she explained. “From
my junior year in high school through my first year of nursing school, I worked at Baylor
Hospital as a nurse’s aide in the rehab center.”
Marnie then began a job in the emergency room at Presbyterian Hospital. “It fits my
personality,” she said. “I’m a thrill seeker, and I enjoyed the fast pace. I love caring for
patients in a rush.”
She stayed at Presbyterian for four years after becoming a registered nurse, then was a
research nurse at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School for six years, the
last two as a manager.
“I did trials for new drugs—everything from toenail fungus to Parkinson’s disease—and a
new emergency clot buster for stroke victims,” she explained. “I was responsible for
recruiting patients for trials, following protocols and testing patients.”
For the past seven years Marnie has been director of research for Texas Oncology at
Baylor’s Sammons Cancer Center.
“I love the work we’re doing for patients, the fast pace, hearing stories about improvements
and working from start to finish with my team,” she said. She has also completed an MBA at
Texas Woman’s University.
She grew up in a conservative Baptist church in Mesquite. “My dad’s family included Baptist
missionaries and preachers, and both my dad and grandfather were deacons.” she said.
“My mother was our church’s preschool director. I was involved in youth activities, choir and
camps.
“In college I began to resent the Baptists, and later I struggled with depression,” Marnie
said. “At age 35 I started to realize I needed God. I started looking for churches, but I
couldn’t find one. I passed Wilshire all the time and finally tried it.”
She now attends Wilshire with her daughter, Samantha Tinney, age 11, who has inherited
her mother’s love of sports. “She does select soccer and is starting club volleyball. She’s
now on a pre-club team,” Marnie said.
“I love George,” Marnie said. “I’ve never before wished that a preacher would keep
preaching. I love how real he is. He always remembers my name, and that means a lot.”
After a conversation with Minister to Children Julie Girards, Marnie began teaching second
grade on a rotation every other month, and she volunteers for other children’s events. After
attending the Discovery Class, she is now a member of Foundations of Faith.
This is Marnie’s second year on the Missions Committee, which is a good fit for her. “I have
a caretaking personality; I love helping people,” she said. “I’d been looking for missions
opportunities and wanted a church where I could get involved.”
She previously was involved in Habitat for Humanity projects, and she and her daughter
have volunteered for Special Olympics events.
Marnie’s first Wilshire mission trip was during spring break last year. She went with a group
to the Rio Grande Valley to build beds for children. Last October she was part of a medical
missions trip to the Dominican Republic. “It was such an honor to participate with Linda
Garner,” who had been her instructor in nursing school, Marnie said.
“Wilshire is such a welcoming church,” she said, “and I love the family feel.”
I AM WILSHIRE: EMILY GUTHRIE
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | JANUARY 31ST, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Emily Guthrie’s StrengthsFinder results highlight her
adaptability.
“The connecting theme of my career, starting with
covering news at SMU, is that I do well when I don’t
know what’s going to happen from day to day,” she
said. This quality—and her many talents and
experiences—makes her a valuable and interesting
church member.
Born near Chicago, she lived there only briefly, as
her father’s work for EDS took the family to Florida,
Maryland, Michigan and twice to Plano, where she
attended middle school and high school.
Emily began piano lessons at age 9, continuing through high school. She sang soprano in
the high school choir and pop choir and took private voice lessons.
At Plano East High School she served on the student council, participated in speech and
debate and took honors classes. “My favorite AP class, humanities, included a study of art,
literature and music,” she said.
At Southern Methodist University, Emily majored in art history, print journalism and Italian
area studies. She also served for three years on the SMU newspaper, The Daily Campus,
including working as the arts editor.
“I began as a voice student in the music program but changed majors after a few
semesters,” she said. “It was fun, but I didn’t see music as a career choice.
“The summer after my freshman year, I participated in a summer program in London
through SMU’s communications school. I loved my arts criticism class, and I did theater
reviews. The class honed my writing skills and helped me to look (at dramas) more critically,
and it also helped me enjoy plays even more.”
Upon graduation in 1998, she accepted a summer internship at the National Gallery in
Washington, D.C. “I worked with the curator of sculpture and decorative arts,” she said. “He
was writing a systematic catalogue of the inventory. I read the entries and found appropriate
illustrations to accompany them.”
Returning to Dallas, Emily became assistant to the director/owner of Altermann Galleries. “I
helped organize and participated in yearly auctions, one in Dallas and one in Santa Fe,” she
said. After a time she realized that this job did not offer her the best career path.
Next she was director of communications for Paciugo, an Italian gelato chain. “I helped get
stores off the ground, wrote training manuals, trained people and developed a catering
program—and I learned how to treat people,” she said.
Emily met her husband, Ben, in 1999 through a mutual friend. They were married in 2002
and have three children: Joseph, 8; Felix, 6; and Judith, 4.
Her best job after her marriage was at the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center, which helps
abused children. She did fundraising and grant writing and worked with Child Protective
Services, detectives, therapists and forensic interviewers. Leaving the center as director of
corporate and foundation giving, she transferred to the corporate office to do fundraising
and special events.
Emily and Ben serve on the board of directors of Second Thought Theatre. She also does
grant writing for this theater, which predominantly performs plays that are new or performed
in new ways. For example, she said, The Comedy of Errors was rapped instead of
presented in traditional form.
After Joseph was born, Emily became development manager for Kitchen Dog Theater. She
currently does grant writing for the Lakewood Elementary Expansion Foundation, and after
Judith begins kindergarten, she plans to freelance or work part-time.
Emily grew up Catholic and was married in a Presbyterian church. After getting married,
“Ben and I planned to shop around for a church, but we attended Wilshire once and stayed,”
she said.” Now I invite people and tell people about Wilshire.”
The Guthries are members of Avodah Class. “I love the camaraderie, openness and
fearlessness of our conversations,” she said. “We can ask questions with no easy answers
or maybe no answers.
“The preschool and children’s programs are priceless under the leadership of Joan
Hammons and Mary Browder and Julie Girards,” Emily said. “I don’t know where we’d be
without them.” She has been involved in MOPS for seven years, five on the Steering
Committee.
She recently began singing in Nova. “I hadn’t been in choir for 20 years, so I’m really
thankful for this opportunity,” she said. “After the Christmas concert, I was on a cloud.”
Emily did summer Bible studies with Susan Center for several years and is a Vacation Bible
School volunteer. “I did the daily newsletter for a few years, and last summer I took pictures
of preschoolers,” she said.
I AM WILSHIRE: COLLIN YARBROUGH
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | JANUARY 24TH, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
Collin Yarbrough is the youngest member of a threegeneration Wilshire family that includes grandparents
Charles Sr. and Louise Yarbrough and parents Charles Jr.
and Judy Yarbrough. Born in Houston, Collin and his family
returned to Dallas when he was an infant, and they rejoined
Wilshire on George Mason’s first day as pastor.
“My StrengthsFinder test classified me as a Learner and an
Activator. I’m passionate about something but not always
the person to carry the torch for the long haul,” he explained.
“I enjoy finding something new and then handing it off to
other people to do the long-term work.
“I’m often called a jack-of-all-trades,” Collin added. For
example, from fifth through seventh grades, he played several wind instruments, and at
Lake Highlands High School he played on the golf team but tried to start a lacrosse team.
Also at Lake Highlands, he was inducted into the National Honor Society and the math
honor society, and he participated in math competitions. “I was really nerdy,” he said. “It
was not until college that I really broke out of my shell.”
Choosing Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y., for college was “very serendipitous,” Collin
said. “I found out about it while thumbing through a college catalog. What drew me is that
it’s a small school and personalized. That’s what I needed.”
His experience there was “a defining four years of my life,” he said. He first was interested
in mechanical engineering and wanted to focus on alternative fuels, but he eventually chose
a path that included both engineering and management.
“Students began to talk with employers beginning with career fairs in their freshman year,”
Collin said. As a result of his first career fair, he was hired by Johnson & Johnson as a
sophomore for a six-month cooperative program in Memphis. “I worked in the distribution
center. It was a good experience in that I knew that this was something I wouldn’t enjoy.”
In the summer of 2010 he did a logistics-based internship with Johnson & Johnson in New
Brunswick, N.J. Returning to campus, he started a sustainable-energy club focusing on
wind, solar and hydrogen power.
“That was my defining role at Clarkson,” he said. “We worked with the university to identify
areas for improvement in energy usage and to increase energy independence and
sustainability. It was the genesis for creating a new program to get Clarkson up to speed on
sustainability.”
The next spring Collin studied at Ireland’s Galway University. “I was the first person from
Clarkson to go there,” he said. “Our options were limited, so I took business courses.”
When he graduated in December 2011, he expected to have a full-time job, but that took
some time.
“I never intended to return to Texas, but now I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” he
admitted. He currently works for Atmos Energy. Among other responsibilities, he reviews
regulations for natural gas usage.
Collin and his mother also run Full Circle Bakery, a nonprofit endeavor that began as a
“response to God’s calling,” he said. On the New Year’s Eve after graduation, “I was asking
God what to do. The voice in my head said I needed to start a nonprofit bakery. When
something that specific comes into my head, I tend to pay attention. It was the only time I
ever heard God speaking in such a clear manner.”
Full Circle bakes and sells cookies, with proceeds donated to Texas nonprofits. “For the
past two years it has benefited the Grief and Loss Center, with the other half going to
CitySquare,” he said. He also serves on a board of young professionals who work to
understand the issues of the homeless and to address the root causes of homelessness.
“Youth Choir and Wilshire’s youth group are among my fondest memories of Wilshire. Many
of my friends from then are still close friends, and some are even closer than before,” he
said. “When I came back, I didn’t fit in anywhere, but I eventually realized the need to get
engaged. I did youth camp photography in 2010, and in 2012 I started teaching the seventh
grade Sunday School class with good friend Mary Lu Spreier.”
Collin was a member of the search committee that brought Minister of Missions Heather
Mustain to Wilshire, and he has begun his first year of service on the Missions Committee.
“What I love most about Wilshire is the close-knit family of congregants,” he said. “I value
the support and friendship that Wilshire fosters.”
I AM WILSHIRE: ASHLEY HOWLAND
Since joining Wilshire in 2012 with her
husband, Matthew, Ashley Howland has
been “shouting” Wilshire’s praises from the
rooftops and always recruiting others to
come visit the church.
The Howlands grew up Southern Baptist,
but “in college, I never found a Baptist
church that I liked,” she said. “I visited a
Presbyterian church with friends and went
to weekly Bible studies.”
Ashley attended Baptist churches with her
husband until they moved to the Dallas area. “We visited many churches here, including
Methodist and Presbyterian, but never really found our place.”
She first became aware of Wilshire because she drove past it every day. She also met
Minister for Care Ministries Tiffany Wright because Tiffany’s daughter, Cayton, and Ashley’s
older son were in the same preschool class at Dallas Day School.
“We also served together on a preschool committee that sometimes met at Wilshire,”
Ashley recalled. “One day I was early, so I went to Tiffany’s office”
Judging by the books on her shelves, “I thought Wilshire seemed welcoming and not like
the Baptist churches I was familiar with. I was also pleasantly surprised that Tiffany was a
minister. I asked her a lot of questions and decided this was the kind of church we’d been
looking for—welcoming, progressive, open and inclusive.”
She appreciates women in ministry and enjoys George’s sermons, which she finds
educational and uplifting. “The church is also willing to change to keep up with the times,
like the recent decision to accept other baptisms,” she said.
Despite growing up Baptist, she was not baptized until January 2013 at Wilshire. “I just
never got around to it because I couldn’t find a church home,” she explained.
“Wilshire’s Sunday School classes are great,” she added. The Howlands are members of
Avodah Class.
In Ashley’s hometown of Monroe, La., her main interest in junior high and high school—as
well as her twin sister’s—was competitive cheerleading. “I took gymnastics as part of the
program, and for several years after graduating from high school, I taught gymnastics,
cheerleading classes and private lessons to children.”
After graduation, she stayed in Monroe to attend the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
Planning to be an English teacher because she enjoyed literature and writing, she majored
in education. However, “after observing classrooms, I decided it wasn’t for me,” she said. “I
changed my major to public relations and also took journalism classes. I wrote for the
school newspaper and the yearbook.”
She also was active in a sorority as well as the student government association and the
Public Relations Student Society of America. “I was also a hostess for the Indian Scouts, a
university organization that works at sporting events and helps with recruiting,” she
explained.
Hired as a senior, Ashley worked for a year as assistant to the director of the local TV
station’s promotions department. “I wrote and produced promotions for the station,” she
said.
She began dating her husband, Matthew, in her senior year. “I’d known him since we were
12. We were always friends, but he was a grade behind me,” she said. “We went on one
date in high school but didn’t really start dating until my senior year. We were married in
November 2003.”
After graduating in 2003, Ashley became regional director for Prevent Child Abuse
Louisiana. “I was in charge of 12 parishes in the northeast part of the state,” she said. Her
responsibilities included fund raising, public relations, training and education and event
planning for fundraisers.
“When Matthew graduated, we decided to leave Monroe,” she said. “Dallas was only fourand-half hours away, and his sister then lived in Rockwall, so we decided to move to the
Rockwall-Rowlett area.” She became a media relations consultant for Baylor Health Care
System in 2004, and in 2009 she was promoted to a managerial position in social media.
Ashley helped launch Baylor’s Facebook page and the organization’s first blog, and she
develops content for several social-media channels. She is now director of digital
communications.
When the commute from Rockwall to downtown Dallas became too stressful, the Howlands
moved to Lakewood in 2010. They have two children: Ethan, age 6; and Lucas, born in
November.
Ashley is active in Junior League and volunteers for the East Dallas Community School, a
Montessori school, working with underserved families. “I’m a member of the Learning
Materials team. We create handmade toys, clothes and educational materials for young
children who attend the school and live in the community,” she said.
I AM WILSHIRE: TERESA POSANI
Theresa Posani describes herself as goal-oriented and
industrious—and she would have to be, given the number of
activities, organizations and jobs she is or has been involved in.
Born in Dallas, she lived in Mesquite until age 11, when the
family moved to Euless. Beginning in middle school, she
volunteered at the public library “because I wanted unlimited
access to books,” she said, and for several summers her job was
to reshelve books.
In high school Theresa first worked the grill and the hot dog
stand at Kmart. Then through her school’s vocational program,
she worked for two years at Zales, doing 10-key and other office
jobs. As a result, she was “one of only a few 17-year-olds who
could buy a brand-new car,” she said.
Graduating from Trinity High School in 1971, she entered the Army’s nurse-scholarship
program at Texas Woman’s University.
“I had a full scholarship from the Army for two years, and in the last two years I had other
scholarships,” she said. She was a member of Sigma Theta Tau, the nursing honor society.
Theresa chose the neonatal ICU as her specialty. “My uncle was an Army recruiter who
gave me advice on which specialty to pick so I didn’t have to go to Vietnam,” she said. “But I
chose this specialty because I loved babies and working with sick babies.”
She joined the Army Nurse Corps after graduating in 1975 and was assigned to Fort Bliss in
El Paso. She worked for six years in a hospital’s neonatal ICU there before returning to the
Dallas area. She worked in the neonatal ICU for a Hurst hospital, then for two years she
worked weekends in the pediatric ICU at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas.
Other positions in the next few years included service as the director of critical care at
Northeast Community Hospital and chief nursing officer in DeQueen, Ark., in the state’s
southwest corner.
Returning to Dallas, Theresa moved into a consultant and troubleshooter role, partly in
Dallas and partly in Austin.
“I took care of whatever was needed, such as opening a nursing staffing office, preparing
for Joint Commission (accrediting) visits and making sure there was sufficient nursing
staff”—even tending to minor details about restroom fixtures in new hospitals.
She later worked for nursing agencies and then at Presbyterian Hospital for four years. As a
clinical nurse specialist, she worked in critical care.
During these years Theresa also raised three children: Ann, Briana and Ray. Her son lives
in the Waco area, and her two daughters, who live in Austin, are the parents of her five
grandchildren: four girls and a boy. “I do a bonding trip to Disney World with each child at
age 7,” she explained.
After earning a master’s degree in nursing at Texas Woman’s University, Theresa qualified
as a medical-surgical clinician and nurse specialist, and she also became an advancedpractice nurse.
From 2002 to 2006, she was a faculty member at Baylor University School of Nursing,
teaching medical-surgical techniques and nursing infomatics, which, for example, involves
technologies related to medical records.
In the past few years she has been a presenter at national workshops and seminars for the
American Nurses Association, worked in critical care in New Hampshire, and spent two
years as director of education at Medical Center of McKinney.
Theresa currently is employed at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.
Working in critical care in five nursing areas, “I get to care for people—whether nurses,
patients or families—and help everyone grow and develop,” she said. “No two days are
alike.”
She also is working on a Ph.D. in nursing leadership at the University of Phoenix. At
Simmons College in Boston, she teaches advanced pathophysiology. She also writes
questions on cardiovascular nursing for the American Nurses Association’s national
certification exam. “It’s what I work with every day,” she said.
Theresa grew up Baptist and joined Wilshire last year after “shopping around for churches
on the Web,” she said. When she walked into the Circle of Women Sunday School class,
she recognized two members: nurses Linda Garner and Micki Lacker.
“I feel good here,” she said. She appreciates Wilshire’s welcoming spirit, and “people don’t
hesitate to answer my questions,” she said. She serves on the Adult Education Committee
and attends the Wednesday Disciple Bible Study.
Now married to a practicing Catholic, Theresa loves to read, crochet and make jewelry, and
she admits to being an avid Dallas Cowboys fan.
I AM WILSHIRE: MICHELE STINECIPHER
BY TAPESTRY NEWS | JANUARY 3RD, 2014 | I AM WILSHIRE
“My focus has been helping people for as long as I can
remember,” said Michele Stinecipher. Fulfilling that
desire, she is currently administrative assistant to the
executive director of Healing Hands medical and dental
clinic.
She was born in Portsmouth, Va., where her father was
in the Navy, but her family soon moved to the Dallas
area and later to Waxahachie, where she graduated
from Waxahachie High School in 1991.
In high school Michele played clarinet in the band and
marched with the band’s color guard. A highlight was
marching in the Florida Electric Light Parade at Disney
World. She also was a member of the student council
and was elected to the National Honor Society.
Active in the youth group at First Baptist Church of Waxahachie, she participated in summer
mission trips, first to Canada and also to Chicago and Florida. “My mother (Barbara
Clayton, Wilshire’s music ministry administrator), usually chaperoned,” she said.
Michele also participated in the church’s Christmas pageants. “We put on five shows every
year,” she said. “One year I played Gabriel, but I was behind a scrim.”
At age 16 she began her first job. After school and in the summers, she assisted a car
window tinter and helped with the company’s inventory.
Upon graduation from high school in 1991, Michele made a last-minute decision to attend
East Texas Baptist University in Marshall. “I liked the small-college atmosphere, and it was
just far enough away from home,” she said. “I majored in psychology and minored in religion
because I wanted to do Christian counseling,” she said.
In her sophomore year she began working as a resident assistant. One of the perks was
getting a private room. Throughout college she continued her habit of being involved in a
number of organizations.
Michele sang in the Chapel Choir and played saxophone as well as clarinet in the band, and
she was band secretary. When she was a freshman, a senior in the band asked Michele to
be her little sister. “Graduating seniors picked a freshman to carry on the school’s
traditions,” she explained. She also participated in the Miss ETBU pageant, having been
nominated by groups she was involved in.
After graduating in 1995, she moved to Nacogdoches, planning eventually to work on a
graduate degree. She worked in the corporate office of an electrical supply company for two
years. While living there, she was in a serious car accident but sustained only minor
injuries. “It was quite a miracle,” she said.
Returning to Dallas, Michele worked as an administrative assistant for an accounting firm in
which Wilshire member Alvin Burns was a partner. While there, she earned an online
degree in mental health counseling at Capella University, with the goal of becoming a
licensed professional counselor. “After graduating, I left the accounting firm to do a full-time
nine-month internship at a domestic-violence center in Garland,” she said.
Finding it difficult to land a position in her field, she first worked at Blockbuster Video, but in
July 2010 she was hired by a foster care/adoption agency. “I left there in August 2012
because of dissatisfaction but had a job lined up,” she said. “About a week before I was due
to begin my new job, it fell through.” About six months later she began her current position.
Michele met her husband, Brian, in the college band, and they reconnected through mutual
friends in December 2010. “We were just friends at first. He was living in Ohio, and we
connected mostly through Facebook,” she said. The next April he returned to Texas and
began working in Dallas. “We started dating and were married in 2011 at my 20th high
school reunion in front of about 200 people.”
The Stineciphers are members of Seekers Class, where they “love the atmosphere, and we
care about each other,” she said.
Michele joined Wilshire in the late 1990s. She is currently involved in a new venture as an
advocate for foster care and adoption, with Joan Hammons. She also is deeply involved in
Wilshire’s music program, playing handbells, singing in Sanctuary Choir and Nova, and
teaching the kindergarten choir.
She likes Wilshire because “the church is big but not too big, and you can be yourself,” she
said. “I appreciate George Mason’s analytical style and the fact that he always asks what
we think.” She also loves the residency program and enjoys hearing the residents preach.

Full Articles December to January 2014

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