Bethlehem House employee living his purpose

The Rev. Bryan Cox taught at-risk students the last few years he worked in the Kansas City, Kansas, School District, and one student changed his life.

“I had a student there who came to class high every day. I couldn’t reach him,” Cox said. “He said, ‘My grandfather was a drug dealer; my daddy was a drug dealer. I’m going to be a drug dealer.’ That summer, he got shot in the head and killed while dealing drugs. It bothered me for a good little while.”

Instead of turning Cox off to working with problems in society, “it drew me closer in,” Cox said. “I said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to be a better teacher to get to these people.’”

Today, Cox is a case manager for Bethlehem House homeless shelter in Conway, the chairman of the STAND ministry board of directors and a part-time teacher at Central Baptist College in Conway. He also started a church two years ago.

“I knew the calling was on me at an early age; I was 9,” he said of becoming a pastor.

Cox, 51, said he had a strict upbringing in Kansas City — his mother didn’t even allow dice in the house, he said, laughing. His father was from the Conway area, and his grandmother lived in Blackwell, where he visited every summer.

Music was a big part of Cox’s life, and he was involved in many school organizations.

“I was always thrown into leadership,” he said. He was quarterback for the high school football team, was on the debate team and the forensics team, and sang in the choir. “I got enjoyment out of it,” he said.

Although he started attending a community college in Kansas on a track scholarship, he “got burned out on track,” Cox said, and he wanted to pursue a music career. He left school and went to Atlanta.

“I was chasing the dream,” he said. Cox auditioned for a manager who wanted to sign him to a record label, but Cox got cold feet before he signed the contract.

“I knew I was going to be a preacher one day, so I couldn’t sign it — it was the weirdest thing,” he said.

Cox enrolled in Park College, now Park University, in Missouri and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in public affairs with a concentration in nonprofit and community-service management.

He’d always enjoyed community service, and he threw in the management because “I wasn’t serious, … but I said, ‘One day I might open a church,’” Cox said.

He moved to Conway in 2002, following his parents, who live in the Friendship community, and his brother, David, a Navy veteran, who lives in Conway. Cox taught leadership and sociology at the University of Phoenix in Little Rock, where he met a couple of women who wanted to open a church and enlisted his help. For five years, Cox preached in Russellville and held a variety of “odd jobs,” he said. Cox said he left the Russellville church because he and some of the members didn’t agree on its vision. He wanted the church to grow, and they didn’t, he said.

Cox said he also felt led to start a church in Conway.

“I saw all the startups, and me and God talked about that,” he said, laughing. “Some are designer churches that meet people’s needs. I teach more relationships — having a horizontal relationship rather than a vertical relationship with Christ first, and then everything falls in place in your life. Some churches can’t reach a certain status of people. I’m trying to teach our church to reach out to everybody, regardless of how bad their situations.”

He also saw a newspaper advertisement for a job at

Bethlehem House for a case manager, working for Judi Lively, executive director, and alongside four other case managers.

“This is a wonderful place,” he said. “It’s like no other place I’ve ever worked.”

Cox said he talks to homeless people who want to live in Bethlehem House, first assessing their situation in a telephone interview. If they pass the screenings, Cox sets up in-person interviews.

“We have certain questions,” he said, which include asking whether the person is a veteran, a sex offender, or has any warrants or substance-abuse problems.

“I tell them, ‘Be honest. We’re going to find out,’” he said. Background checks are done on each person, Cox said, but he has done the job long enough that he said he can often tell whether someone is lying.

“We tell people, the homeless aren’t the people you see on the street holding signs. It could be the person next door. … It could be the kid at school taking half his lunch home,” he said.

“God has shown me my purpose is to help people meet those basic needs, and if we get to the relationship with Christ, that’s everything in the world to me. I don’t ever force anything,” he said, sitting at a long table in the computer room of Bethlehem House on Parkway Street in downtown Conway.

When Cox started working with the shelter, Bethlehem House was on Faulkner Street, not far from the facility that was built after a capital campaign and opened two years ago.

Now Cox uses the 100-plus-year-old home for New Life Baptist Church, which he started in a hotel meeting room with three people.

“We started praying for a permanent address,” he said. “I told them people won’t take us seriously [without one].”

The man who bought Bethlehem House came to Cox and said, “I heard you’re looking for a place to put your church,” Cox said. “I was blown away,” he said. Volunteers knocked out a wall and put in new flooring, and a pulpit and altar were donated.

He has 40 members on the roll, and about 25 attend on Sundays, he said. The observation that Cox is soft-spoken makes him laugh.

“I get loud on Sundays,” he said.

Cox is passionate about STAND, a nonprofit ministry that houses homeless women and families. It was founded by a former drug addict as a ministry for women coming out of jail, and that’s when Cox got involved as a board member.

“I saw those women and children in there; I saw she had very little knowledge of what she was doing. I jumped in, but not with both feet at first,” he said.

The founder, Suzanne Gonzalez, was arrested in July for parole violations, and an interim director was appointed. Cox was already a member of the STAND board at that time.

If you say it’s God’s vision, you have to work it God’s way, not yours,” Cox said. “We immediately went into prayer and asked God to preserve STAND, and he did. We have an amazing board now.”

One of those board members is Charlotte Green of Conway, a former elementary-school principal who met Cox years ago.

“I learned that he was really a community guy, a guy who just wants to give back, so I wasn’t surprised when I realized he was part of the STAND ministry,” Green said. “He is really working hard. It’s a great organization, and I’m glad he had the resolve to see beyond the issues that were created to continue to see it [fulfilled a need] for the community.”

Cox said the “whole culture” of STAND has changed. He gave residents a handbook and rules that are “a little stricter” than before, he said. Cox said individuals have 30 days to get a job or work on their GEDs, and they can stay a year before being re-evaluated. The organization helps people “manage their lives,” he said. It also has a clothes closet and a food pantry.

He said it’s commendable that STAND never ceased to operate during the transition between the former director and the interim director.

“I just believe that God works things out so he can take things to the next level. Sometimes it looks like it’s evil, like it’s bad, but God’s really working it out for everybody’s good that believes in him,” Cox said.

The former student who was killed in a drug deal made Cox determined to save others from a similar fate.

“That’s why I have a passion for what I do — it’s like life or death out there. It’s life or death, physically and spiritually.”

Cox said he doesn’t take credit for anything he’s achieved. “As a matter of fact, when I do something for somebody, I ask them not to tell. I don’t need the accolades when I’m doing what God tells me to do. I love what I’m doing; I really do. I’m in my lane. I’m living my purpose — I really believe I’m living my purpose in life.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.