Jerry Bradley • Round Rock

Jerry Bradley • Round Rock

By Terry Hanley Friday, 07 November 2008

Children at Heart Ministries President Jerry Bradley has been with the Texas Baptist Children’s Home for 18 years.

At the age of 18, Jerry T. Bradley left home without telling anyone and hopped on a train heading west. He initially planned to go to Oregon, but said he felt led to Shawnee, Okla., after seeing a television news report about a man crashing a plane into Oklahoma Baptist University.

Bradley credits that tragic plane crash with leading to his life’s calling to do Baptist childcare work. After graduating from Oklahoma Baptist University, where he met his wife, Bradley began a career as a social worker in Oklahoma.

“I started in a ground-level position,” Bradley said. “I started as a lowly social worker, straight out of school, not knowing what I was doing, and worked my way up. I have just been blessed to have worked at every level and processed through.”

Bradley is now the president of Children at Heart Ministries of Round Rock and said he likes to keep a low profile. He began working at the Texas Baptist Children’s Home 18 years ago after a search committee invited him to apply for the executive director position. In 1990, Bradley was chosen to run the organization.

When he started at the Texas Baptist Children’s Home it was serving as an emergency shelter for children. Bradley soon began thinking of ways to change the organization’s identity to shift the focus more toward the family instead of strictly catering to kids.

Texas Baptist Children’s Home Executive Director Keith Dyer said that Bradley brought a wealth of experience to the organization and did a tremendous job of providing leadership to expand the growth of the organization.

“He began as a house parent and had that experience of direct care for kids,” Dyer said. “He just has a heart for children. We’ve been very blessed by the stability he has provided and his expertise and leadership.”

In the late 1990s, concerns about societal and insurance issues caused Bradley to shift the structure of the Texas Baptist Children's Home. He said that legal council advised him that the best way to protect the agency against lawsuits was to seek a corporate veil. So shortly after, the Texas Baptist Children's Home broke into separate corporations.

In 2006, the Children at Heart Network became official. It comprises seven corporations, including Gracewood, Miracle Farm, STARRY, Texas Baptist Children's Home — the original property holding corporation — and Children at Heart.

"Now we have a fully operational system of services and programs and everybody has separate identities, yet they are all related in this one common theme that we call Children at Heart Ministries," Bradley said.

With the shift in structure also came a shift in focus, and Children at Heart Ministries programs began to provide more for families, as well as the children they were already serving. Instead of only working with a child who needs help, Bradley said that Children at Heart staff tries to help restore the family surrounding that child so he or she can be introduced back into a healthy home environment.

Bradley was previously a member of the YMCA of Round Rock Board of Directors and continues to be involved in the Round Rock Rotary Club, an organization that has acknowledged his work with several awards.

Bradley, who is humble about his impact on the community, said the best reward from working in childcare comes when adults who were once children in the program come back and talk about the positive effects the experience had on their lives.

“When you are around long enough, that’s sort of your paycheck — when they come back and they say, ‘It meant something to me,’” Bradley said. “Even the ones that you didn’t think you did anything with, or the staff did anything with, when they come back and say it meant something, that’s when you say, ‘Okay, it’s worth it.’”

CHILDREN AT HEART MINISTRIES

Children at Heart Ministries offers specialized services and supports ministries that help children and families in times of need. The four family-focused program corporations that Children at Heart Ministries directly oversees include:

Gracewood — a Houston-based program aimed at helping single mothers get to a point where they can get back on their feet and raise their children

Miracle Farm — a boys ranch program in Brenham that takes young men away from distractions and negative influence and helps them to establish self-esteem and character

STARRY — places children that are the victims of abuse and neglect into a nurturing environment where they can feel safe

Texas Baptist Children’s Home — provides various programs to assist children and families in crisis including the Campus Life program, the Family Care program and the HOPE program

1101 N. Mays St., 255-3682, www.childrenatheartministries.org