Dear Pastor/Friends. 



I am looking forward to seeing many of you at Family Camp next week, and then at CRAVE youth camp the following week…and at Activate Kid’s Camp in July (15-19). We are praying for, and expecting, many spiritual victories and abundant spiritual growth and FUN at our district camps this summer. Please join me in prayer for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit through our camping ministry. Special thanks is in order for our Camp Arrowhead staff and all of the volunteers who help make our camping ministry so powerful.

I want to congratulate two of our pastors who had outstanding 2-year reviews recently. Congratulations to Gary Young, and Cori, at Lubbock first. What a blessing it was to be there three weeks ago and lead his review. It is very obvious that things age going well at First Church. His board gave Pastor Young a unanimously enthusiastic review. 

The same is true for Pastor Caleb Hughes, and Sofia, of Abernathy. I truly enjoyed conducting Caleb’s first-ever pastoral review. It was outstanding! So much good is continuing to happen at Abernathy these days…including a dynamic Wednesday evening community meal! 

This past Sunday it was my privilege to be in Post for their 100th anniversary celebration. Pastor Chuck Gibson and Michelle did an outstanding job of organizing this event. It was a great day of celebration! The Lord was honored. 



Also this past Sunday Intersection Church in Amarillo celebrated an open house for their newly renovated outstanding facility dedicated to ministry to Amarillo’s homeless population. I was not able to attend so Pastor Shawn Fouts sent me a virtual tour. What tremendous progress has been made! You can view the virtual tour by CLICKING HERE.

I want to congratulate our Euless First congregation on the unanimous election (and acceptance) of their new co-pastors, Brookelyn and Zach Nelson. They have been serving as interim pastors for the past several months and are already very loved. These are exciting days at Euless First. They are pictured here with their precious son, Thomas. Brookelyn and Zach are both SNU grads. She grew up on our district and is the daughter of Cheryl and Jeff Crouch. Zach grew up on the NE Texas district in Dallas. They’ve been serving in California. Welcome home!

Incidentally, I read recently that there are only 50, or so, lead pastors under the age of 30 serving on the USA/Canada region. We are so fortunate to have 4 of them here in West Texas. They are Caleb Hughes (Abernathy), Allen Dunlap (Big Spring), and now Zach and Brooklyn Nelson (Euless). Each of them are SNU grads and are providing commendable service to our churches.



Finally, please take a few moments to read the instructional article, below, “Treasurer Chest”, written by our finance officer, Rev. Connie Lincecum. I think you will find it to be very helpful.

For you and with you,

Pastor David Downs



P.S. We are now one quarter through the church year. Please take a moment to look at the Funding the Mission report below. 

Our district treasurer, Connie Lincecum, has prepared the West Texas District 2024-2025 "Funding The Mission" report as of June 5, 2024. Pastors, please pay close attention to your church's contributions so far this year. Please make every effort to encourage your people to faithfully maintain their giving for others. 

Click here to download the report.

Family Camp - June 9-14 at Arrowhead. If you have any older high school students or young adults that you would recommend to serve in our nurseries or worship services, please reach out to our Family Camp team for 2024.

· Mary Brewer - nursery team leader - mzolabird@gmail.com

· Renae Fowler - prek worship team leader - rfowler@trainingdepot.org

· Tracy Ricenbaw - kids church team leader - ricenbaw@hotmail.com

ACTIVATE-kids camp - July 15-19 at Arrowhead. The district website has the Early Bird registration link up and ready. You can also find the Church Leaders Packet and several separate documents to download and view at www.westexnaz.org/childrensministrie

MinistrySafe Update - We need to work toward ALL of our WTX District Churches renewing their MinSafe training for anyone who serves in youth or children ministries. If you serve with kids 18 years old or younger your MinSafe training must be updated every two years. We had a district wide push for this in 2022 so it's that time again to get this all taken care of. CLICK HERE for an updated MinistrySafe explanation letter for you to review.

· MinSafe team update - Jen Sommers is now serving the following zones: Abilene, Amarillo, Arrowhead, Denton, High Plains and Lubbock. Mary Brewer is continuing to serve the Fort Worth, Lamesa, Metro Mid-Cities and Wichita Falls zones.

· MinSafe new invoicing - church leaders requesting MinSafe training links will be invoiced when training links are sent. MinSafe now charges us when we send out links instead of when links are used. Please try to get these invoices paid as soon as you can. These payments come out of our WTX children's ministry budget that we use to run our events (BLAST, quizzing, Kids Camp, etc.) We want to respect our ministry budget and continue to use it in the manner it is intended for.

Jennifer Sommers