Ties that Bind

Three Baylor alumnae are making a difference in an impoverished neighborhood near the Baylor campus. In recognition of their service, the Baylor Alumni Association is presenting the Abner V. McCall Humanitarian Award to Sherry Boyd Castello ’58, MA ’60 (pictured, left); Susan Swartz Cowley ’71 (right); and Marsha Martie ’79 (center) during commencement exercises on August 15.

In 1985, Martie and Castello, who was editor of the Baylor Line for twenty-five years until her retirement in 1995, visited Church of the Savior, an intentional Christian community in Washington, D.C., and came back sensing there was more they should do in Waco. Cowley joined their efforts soon after. The three women spent their first year focusing on building their inner spiritual lives until they sensed it was time for an outward journey. They believed God was calling them to a ministry with the poor.

Cowley remembers, “Sherry and Marsha went to—and sat and prayed at—every government housing project in Waco.” They spent $5,000 for a small, white frame house in the Kate Ross neighborhood on South Eleventh Street, named it Cross Ties Ecumenical Church, and began what they describe as “a ministry of hanging out.”

Now, almost twenty-five years from that beginning, Cross Ties has grown to include services as diverse as a twelve-step program and a neighborhood swimming pool. Twice each year, they sponsor a Servant Leadership School and a silent retreat, and their ongoing ministries include the Gospel Café and a therapeutic nursery called the Talitha Koum Institute.

The café was their first major venture, when they bought a building Martie describes as “a crack house and gambling shack” in 1991. With community support and volunteer labor, they steadily worked to transform the structure—all the while building relationships with people in the neighborhood.

As soon as it was ready, the house—now clean, safe, and welcoming—became home to their weekly worship services, a youth group called Peacemakers, and the twelve-step program. In April 1996, the Gospel Café officially opened its doors, serving lunch three days a week to people from the neighborhood and community. Waco professionals and Baylor students and faculty often share home-cooked meals with the homeless or unemployed, and the café now serves close to two hundred on an average day. “But they don’t just serve food,” Cowley adds. “They serve love and respect. That’s why people come back.”

The women like to think of the Gospel Café as the neighborhood living room. “When we began, neighborhood kids used to drop by after school,” Castello says, “and Marsha would put their school artwork on the refrigerator door. Some of them are now mothers who bring their own children to the café.”

Members of the church began to sense that neighborhood families needed additional care, and Cowley, Martie, and Kim Jamison ’81 began to develop another vision. Their vision took a big step closer to reality in 2001, when they received a grant from the Cooper Foundation of Waco to purchase a vacant Boys Club near the church. The club’s swimming pool was put to immediate use while the women sought God’s direction for the rest of the facility.

In 2003, Talitha Koum Institute opened. (The name comes from the Aramaic words that Jesus spoke to Jairus’s daughter and translates, “My child, get up!”) Unlike a traditional daycare facility, this mental health therapeutic nursery also has a family dimension, offering weekly parenting classes and assigning each child a “lifetime mentor” who will see them through high school. In addition to the twenty-four children—newborns through six-year-olds—who are served each day, eleven school-age children are being mentored.

Each of the women sees herself as a minister. They prefer not to use job titles, speaking in terms of gifts instead. Martie does pastoring, teaching, and preaching. Castello describes her ministry as hospitality and shepherding, primarily managing the kitchen and coordinating volunteers at the café. Cowley, the one of the three who still holds an outside job, gives the majority of her time to Talitha Koum. She and her husband, John Cowley ’71, JD ’73—also a member of Cross Ties—are co-owners of the Cowley Group, a Waco marketing firm.

“The undercurrent in these years is the trust relationship we’ve built,” Cowley says. “The neighborhood has accepted us, too.”

Go to "Glimpses of Nurture" for more on CrossTies.