Texas Methodist Foundation’s Grants Ministry Awards $920,000 to 68 Churches and Nonprofit Ministries Across Texas and New Mexico

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 7, 2026--

Texas Methodist Foundation (TMF) has awarded $920,000 in grant funding to 68 churches and nonprofit ministries across Texas and New Mexico. Selected as part of TMF's Fall 2025 grant cycle, these life-giving ministries are cultivating ecosystems of generosity and improving the lives of those living in poverty. Grantees are nurturing places where neighbors are welcomed and fed, where healing begins, and where people experience God’s love, reflecting the heart of what TMF believes: that when we invest in faithful leaders and communities, hope thrives.

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Fall 2025 grantees we’re proud to support:TMF Partners in Ministry

“Our grantees are serving their communities in ways that usher in the spirit of truly loving one’s neighbor,” said Wendolyn Abel, TMF’s vice president of Grants Ministry. “Whether it’s a hot meal, a pathway to stability, a safe place for children to grow, or a vibrant worshiping community for deaf students, these ministries remind us that hope is abundant.”

The churches and nonprofit ministries selected are strengthening relationships, fostering belonging, and building stability through faithful service. These grantees include:

“These ministries show us what faith looks like when it’s lived out every day,” said Justin Gould, TMF’s chief philanthropy officer. “They are responding to real needs with compassion, commitment, and care, and we’re honored to come alongside them as partners in this work.”

About Texas Methodist Foundation’s Grants Ministry

Texas Methodist Foundation’s Grant Ministry empowers innovative churches and nonprofits that provide evangelism with social impact and community programs and services that improve the conditions of those living in poverty across Texas and New Mexico. Our ministry is made possible by a cycle of generosity that begins with investors and donors who provide funds that support churches and nonprofit ministries serving the needs of their communities and doing Christ’s loving work in the world. In 2025, the ministry distributed over $1.8 million in grants to 99 churches and nonprofits, supporting individuals and families and strengthening local communities. To learn more, visit texasmethodistfoundation.org/grants.

About Texas Methodist Foundation

Texas Methodist Foundation is a ministry partner to the church, the body of Christ, helping bring about the loving world God imagines through cultures of purpose, generosity, and courage. Founded in 1938, Texas Methodist Foundation helps strengthen churches and nonprofit ministries through Impact Certificate and market-based investments, loans, gift planning, endowment services, and grants. Texas Methodist Foundation's leadership ministry, which began in 2002, is known nationally as a convener and conversation partner on the future of the church, courageous leadership, and innovation across the spiritual landscape. Texas Methodist Foundation serves organizations throughout Texas and New Mexico. Based in Austin, Texas, the organization is led by President & CEO Rev. Lisa Greenwood, who is also President & CEO of Wesleyan Impact Partners. To learn more, visit texasmethodistfoundation.org.

Texas Methodist Foundation grant recipient Runnin’ WJ Ranch in Texarkana, Texas, helps children and youth with physical, cognitive, and emotional challenges build confidence and skills through therapeutic horseback riding.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday that he will allow service members to carry personal weapons onto military installations, citing the Second Amendment and recent shootings at bases across the country.

In a video posted to X, Hegseth said he is signing a memo that will direct base commanders to allow requests for troops to carry privately owned firearms “with the presumption that it is necessary for personal protection.”

He said any denial of a service member's request must be explained in detail and in writing.

“Effectively, our bases across the country were gun-free zones,” Hegseth said. “Unless you're training or unless you are a military policeman, you couldn't carry, you couldn't bring your own firearm for your own personal protection onto post.”

Questions about why service members lacked access to weapons have often emerged following shootings on the nation's military bases. Such shootings have ranged from isolated events between service members to mass casualty events, such as the shootings by an Army psychiatrist at Texas’ Ford Hood in 2009 that left 13 people dead.

Hegseth cited some of the events in his video, including a shooting that injured five soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia last year. Officials said the shooter, an Army sergeant who worked at the base, used his personal handgun before he was tackled by fellow soldiers and arrested.

“In these instances, minutes are a lifetime,” Hegseth said. “And our service members have the courage and training to make those precious, short minutes count.”

Defense Department policy has prohibited military personnel from carrying personal weapons on base without permission from a senior commander, with strict protocol for how the firearms must be stored.

Typically, military personnel must officially check their guns out of secure storage to go to on-base hunting areas or shooting ranges, then check all firearms back in promptly after their sanctioned use. Military police are often the only armed personnel on base, outside of shooting ranges, hunting areas or in training, where soldiers can wield their service weapons without ammunition.

Tanya Schardt, senior counsel at the Brady gun violence prevention organization, said in a statement that Defense Department leaders and the military’s top brass have opposed relaxing the current policy, which was originally enacted under President George H.W. Bush.

Schardt noted that most active duty service members who die by suicide do so with a weapon they own personally, not one military-issued, and argued that there will “undoubtedly be an increase in gun suicide and other gun violence.”

While fewer American service members died by suicide in 2024, the suicide rates among active duty troops overall still have gradually increased between 2011 and 2024, according to a Pentagon report released Tuesday.

“Our military installations are among the most guarded, protected properties in the world, and they’ve never been ‘gun-free zones,’” Schardt said. “If there is a problem with violent crime on these installations, then the Secretary of Defense has an obligation to alert the American people and describe how he’s working to prevent that crime.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to members of the media during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)