1st Baptist Church of Arlington and its homophobia, connections to conversion therapy.
More and more the DFW area reveals a sea of seething homophobia.
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1st Baptist Church of Arlington online presence.
https://www.facebook.com/fbcarlington/
https://www.instagram.com/fbcarlington/
https://www.youtube.com/c/FirstBaptistChurchArlingtonTV
https://www.fbca.org/what-we-believe/
This is a statement from 1963 Texas General Convention.
https://www.fbca.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Baptist-faith-and-message.pdf
However, the directory of Southern Baptist Church has a listingfor the First Baptist Church Arlington. They list 300 S. Center St., and the 1st Baptist of Arlington lists 301 S. Center St. However, the listing has the webpage for 1st Baptist Arlington.
https://churches.sbc.net/church/first-baptist-church-955/
It is unclear why they obscure this connection. Perhaps it is their notorious reputation they are trying to obscure.
Their pastor is Dr. Dennis R. Wiles.
https://www.fbca.org/ministries/care/pastor/
He has a website, The Sacramental Journey.
https://thesacramentaljourney.org/
The following page has biographical information.
https://thesacramentaljourney.org/about
This is the staff, there is something very important about this listing.
At this listing you will see Ricky Chelette, Pastoral Care Ministry Associate. He is the Excutive Director of Living Hope Ministries which tries to make Gay people straight. The church funneled LGBT into Living Hope Ministry.
https://www.livehope.org/staffs/ricky-chelette/
They are still on the Living Hope Ministry’s list of churches they recommend.
https://www.livehope.org/get-involved/partner-churches/
Dennis Wiles praises Living Hope Ministries at this banquet.
Dr. Dennis Wiles, pastor of First Baptist Church, Arlington, closed the evening with a powerful word of praise for LHM and a challenge to continue forward in the pursuit of Jesus.
https://www.livehope.org/2011/10/25/stand/
Reporting on Baylor Univ., Conversion Therapy, and 1st Baptist Church of Arlington.
Quoting from the report.
While Baylor administrators make a great show of stating that Baylor counselors do not condone or promote conversion therapy, it seems to be a case of the right hand pretending not to know what the left hand is doing. It is a rather dubious sleight of hand, considering that the current Board of Regents Chair and Vice Chair of the Student Life Committee — Kim Stevens and Dennis Wiles, respectively‚ — both have explicit connections through their churches to Living Hope Ministries, the aforementioned ex-gay organization.
Dennis Wiles is the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church Arlington, which has employed Living Hope’s Executive Director and provided Living Hope Ministries with office and meeting space for decades, as well as significant funding ($52,635 a year contributed in support of its mission). Wiles also represents the Baptist General Convention of Texas, of which Baylor is affiliated, on the Board of Regents. It is worth noting that in recent years, the BGCT has kicked LGBTQ affirming churches out of its conference. Meanwhile, Kim Stevens — who Baylor’s website describes as being an active member of Antioch Community Church — runs a local event production company, which has produced Antioch’s annual global missions conference, World Mandate, which draws heavy attendance from and is heavily promoted in the Baylor community. The event was hosted at Baylor’s Ferrell Center for several years, and in 2012 was attended by then Baylor President, Kenneth Starr.
Though it seems Dennis Wiles is no longer a board member.
https://boardofregents.web.baylor.edu/regents
1st Baptist of Arlington in the News.
KERA news article from 2022, Dennis Wiles is one of the ten Arlington pastors wanting Gay Pride Display removed from the library.
Quoting from the article.
"We are asking that those displays not be allowed in our city library. They do not align with the family and faith values of the majority of parents in Arlington and are actually designed to influnece children into that lifestyle," according to the email, titled "For your eyes only - Request for dialogue - Gay Pride Display directed toward children."
Co-signers of the emailed letter include Gary Hutchison of Grace Community Church; Maurice Pugh of New Life Fellowship; Richard Martinez of Iglesia Cafe; Dennis Wiles of First Baptist Church Arlington; Marty Collier of Rush Creek; Ronnie Goines of Koinonia Christian Church; Jason Paredes of Fielder Church; Jeff Hubbard of North Davis Church of Christ; Stephen Hammond of Mosaic Church and Eric Herrstrom of Lake Church. [Boldface added.]
From Baptist News Global. June 2, 2022. They are still involved with conversion therapy.
Living Hope Ministries, based at First Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, is one of these religious organizations practicing sexual orientation change efforts. Since 2001, the church has been led by Dennis Wiles, who also is a member of the Baylor University Board of Regents and serves on the regents’ Executive Committee.
Living Hope has 28 partner churches that are largely located in Texas, but the ministry has national reach through its online programs. Three of Living Hope’s partner churches are located in Waco: Harris Creek Baptist Church, Antioch Community Church, and Church of the Open Door. Those churches all attract Baylor students.
Ricky Chelette, executive director of Living Hope and a pastoral staff member at First Baptist Arlington, said partner churches donate money and recommend members of their congregation who are attracted to the same sex or are transgender to get help at Living Hope.
Chelette said people who come to Living Hope feel their sexual or gender identity is in conflict with their faith, and the leaders help their behaviors shift through discipleship.
“Nobody is ever made to stay here,” Chelette said. “You come here, you ask for help, and you show up as long as you want to show up. You leave whenever you want to leave. This isn’t a cult. This is a safe place where people can come and share about their feelings and their faith and discover who they are in Christ. As they do that, we find that they find healing.”
Chelette said he has been called manipulative and accused of damaging LGBTQ people psychologically.
“If believing that you belong to Jesus, and that God is your father, and that he has a good plan for your life, and he wants to prosper you and bless you because he is a good father … if we believe all of that is true, if that’s harmful, well, I guess religion as a whole has been harming people from the very beginning,” Chelette said.
This is a summary of excepts over the struggle to get an LGBT student group recognized at Baylor. Dennis Wiles comes up in it.
Some excepts.
From a Houston Chronicles article.
Rumors of the school’s alleged loose ties to conversion therapy — treatments that are supposed to turn gay people straight — have also floated around among Baylor’s LGBTQ community. They involve links between Dennis Wiles, a member of the university’s Board of Regents, vice chair of the student life committee, and pastor of First Baptist Church in Arlington, and his partner church Living Hope Ministries.
Wiles made a statement that Living Hope Ministries doesn’t do conversion therapy. The New Homphobia is stealth.
But Jason Cook, a spokesman at Baylor, said “Dr. Wiles has indicated Living Hope Ministries does not do conversion therapy,” adding that the church is a “discipleship, peer-based ministry.”
Cook also emphasized that although Wiles, one of 41 members of Baylor’s Board of Regents, is vice chair of the university’s student life division, Wiles still has to consult and work with the rest of the board to make decisions.
https://bubearsforall.org/news/tag/Christian
Somthing will be added here, but we are still investigating.
Summary
This church is a menace to LGBT.
It seems though that its website is somewhat avoiding the topic of homosexuality, perhaps to attract more attendance. The New Homophobia is stealth.
For all the anti-LGBT groups in the DFW area, there is this directory post.
