Jimmy Dorrell
Jimmy Dorrell, Adjunct Professor in Truett Seminary and Baylor Community Service Classes
At 19 years old and attending Baylor, I was a youth director of a local church which was invited to a blighted area of Waco called “No Man’s Land.” The impact of working hands-on in such an impoverished area of this community made a huge impact on shaping my perspectives and call. Years later, after traveling the world with my wife and first child to volunteer in some of the world’s poorest areas, we became convinced our call from God was to live incarnationally among the marginalized. We returned to Waco and bought a house in a diverse and poor neighborhood where we have lived and loved for over twenty-five years. We have raised four children and had over fifty-six Baylor students live in our home these many years.
As founder and executive director of Mission Waco and pastor of Church Under the Bridge, our lives have been immersed in the issues of the poor and disenfranchised. Based on an empowerment model of ministry, we believe in the dignity of the poor to be a part of their own healing and recovery. We have found friendship and humility among struggling and hurting folks. My wife and I have been married thirty-two years and we still share a deep sense of vocational call to the poor. In all the chaos of the streets, I still make time for table tennis, tennis and racketball to keep some balance in life.
The world is still our playground as we take annual trips to lead mission-exposure trips to work among the poor in Haiti, India and Mexico. Janet and I were blessed to meet Mother Teresa in Calcutta several years ago before she died.
I love the college atmosphere where students are asking the big questions of life and trying to integrate orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Our weekend “poverty simulation” now attracts over 600 participants a year from all over the U.S.. The willingness of students to leave the campus and invest in this needy local community has created an engaged learning environment that is unlike most ivory tower models of academia. After seventeen years of interaction, we have watched scores of students leave the Waco community to change the world or their own communities.
