Texas Baptists hear messages on loving your neighbor by protecting children in the church and living out justice, mercy and humility

Messengers at the 2025 Texas Baptists Annual Meeting gathered for a time of worship Monday morning after the first business session concluded. 

Gregory Love, cofounder and director of MinistrySafe, brought a message on the importance of protecting children from sexual abuse in churches. He was followed by Rolando Aguirre, pastor of Park Cities en Español, who preached on Micah 6:8.

Protecting children from threats inside the fence

Love has over 30 years of experience litigating sexual abuse cases across the United States and providing crisis response to ministries and churches nationwide. 

“I get to see the patterns … believe me, there are patterns, and actually that’s good news. Because if something has a pattern, it makes it predictable, and if something is predictable, it’s preventable,” said Love.

Love encouraged church leaders that the risk is knowable and preventable, but cautioned them that it is not intuitive. He reminded churches that they will not accidentally get their protection policies right; it will require priority, intentionality and training. 

Love explained that while churches are building strong fences against threats outside the church, preferential offenders are a threat already inside that fence. 

“More than 90% of the risk happens on this side of the fence,” he emphasized. 

Love invited leaders to join him for a breakout session later in the day to do a deep dive into implementing effective protections against the preferential offender, including sexual abuse awareness training, skillful screening, tailored policy and procedures and how all of this looks in function.

Living out justice, mercy and humility

“God is not after performance at the altar, but after substance in life,” said Aguirre. 

He brought a powerful message from Micah 6:8 on the three dimensions of God’s justice — making wrong things right, making mercy your way and making humility your practice.

“Justice … is the essence of God’s love toward his people. There cannot be love without justice.  Justice is at the core of everything we believe and do,” he said. 

Aguirre explained that justice and mercy go hand in hand. 

“They walk in covenant life together … In order to be just, according to the scriptures, we must be merciful,” he said. “What does mercy as our way look like among God’s people? It sounds like truth with tears, not with pride, it moves toward pain, not away from it … it puts compassion on the calendar and in the budget so mercy becomes a daily routine.”

“Mercy is not a mood; it is a way of life that reflects the heart of God,” he emphasized.

And of humility, Aguirre said, “Humility is a covenant position that sustains justice and mercy … it is not weakness, it is strength under dependence. When you have nothing left but Jesus, you finally have enough — that, my friends, is humility.” 

Aguirre concluded his message with a passionate appeal to Texas Baptists from Proverbs 31:8–9, “Advocate for others as an expression of God's justice. Speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. Defend the rights of the poor and needy … Let Texas Baptists be known not only for what we confess but for how we live.”