February 2008

Text Box: Dear Highland Park Baptist Family,

With great excitement and much anticipation for doing gospel ministry over the long-haul together, I accept humbly your kind and gracious invitation to become your Senior Pastor.

You are a committed bunch of Christians who know how to love, care, embrace and extend hospitality to (as Roy Kimble put it) “our neighbors to the North.” Roy, Kansas isn’t Canada!
This past weekend indicated to our family the desires of your collective heart: to be lovingly led by a shepherd-pastor and to welcome such love by a minister in return. Our shared and mutual ministry to extend the reign of God’s kingdom, to be good neighbors to all of Austin, to joyfully serve the Lord, we will do with baptized grace and gumption. And we will enjoy doing it together.

I thank the Pastoral Search Committee for their dogged patience with me as I discerned a call to Highland Park. Without putting too fine a point on it (perhaps that is too late), my pastoral ministry and our family life in Lawrence,

Text Box: Kansas, have been immensely rewarding. We have celebrated many significant milestones over our ten plus years at First Baptist Church. This has been the most difficult decision in my life, and I count on your prayers as we begin the process of our leave-taking.

My family is thrilled, however, to place our lives of service alongside yours and begin a new chapter at Highland Park. We believe that in God’s good time we have been called to such a time and place, into another covenanted community of sisters and brothers who practice the faith. So we trust the Lord with all of our hearts and wholeheartedly commit ourselves to the future we will share together . . . with joy, beauty and love.

I cannot find adequate words to describe my affection towards your committee. They are all tremendously gifted and gave their very best efforts to an important (and time-consuming) task. I know they have appreciated your prayers and words of encouragement at each turn in this search process. So to.... Dottie (“Marcus likes you best”) Denton
Brenda (“You’ll love the choir, especially the

Text Box: sopranos”) Nelson
John (“Does it help that my sister is Nancy Sehested?”) Hastings
Cathy (“We will love you”) Glazener
Alana (“ I need your acceptance article by 8 a.m.”) Mallard Roy (“Luke 19”) Kimble
Gregg (“Triple G”) Wilson

I give you my heart filled with the deepest of Christian affection.

I look forward to seeing you again in early May as we take the first step of our second dance together. Please feel free to communicate with us at either mmcfaul@sunflower.com or 2420 Princeton Blvd. Lawrence, KS 66049
With grace and peace and much hope, (and now that the “pending” vote was positive)

Your Pastor,
Marcus W. McFaul

Highland Park Baptist Church, 5206 Balcones Dr., Austin, 78731

Text Box: Please join us for worship. Sunday School 9:45 a.m.; Sunday Worship 11:00 a.m.; Wednesday Supper and Fellowship 5:30 p.m.; Wednesday Weaving 6:30 p.m.; and Second Sunday Taize Prayer Worship 7:30 p.m.

Text Box: term. This was a difficult decision. All pre-paid tuition will be promptly refunded. We will begin this process today. If you have any questions, please direct them to deacons@highlandparkbaptist.org. Respectfully, The Administrative Board of Deacons

Text Box: The Highland Park Baptist Church Administrative Board of Deacons has met to consider the ministries of the Church and its relationship to the Day School. After careful consideration, the Board of Deacons has committed to a successful conclusion of this school year under the leadership of the School Board and its current teachers. The Board of Deacons, however, has decided to close the Highland Park Baptist School at the end of this school

Text Box: BS in Speech Communications, UT Austin, 1984 Graduate curriculum, Regents Park College, Oxford, England, 1986 MDiv in Church History and Preaching, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, 1987 Ordained to the ministry, First Baptist Church, Austin, 1987 Doctoral studies in Church History and Preaching, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, 1990 DMin in Interpreting the Faith for the Local Church, Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2006, with a dissertation entitled “A Little Local Theology: Covenant and Community”

Text Box: It is important that people know what you stand for. It’s equally important that they know what you won’t stand for. —Mary Waldrop