News Update

DALLAS — In 1941, businessman Robert S. Bell became a partner with Earle Wyatt, an entrepreneur who founded Wyatt Food Stores Inc., which emerged as the largest grocery chain in Dallas.

By 1956, Wyatt Cafeterias Inc. was spun off as a separate company, eventually growing to 128 restaurants in nine states, and Bell served as the chairman of the board.

While Bell achieved worldly success in the food business, he — along with his wife, Katharine — endeavored to make an eternal difference.

Seventy years ago, the couple donated sizable assets to create the Bell Trust — a way to support “the advancement of religious, missionary and charitable works” of Churches of Christ. 

“Churches are always dreaming of how they can impact the kingdom,” said Clark Packer, 40, a great-grandson of the late Robert and Katharine Bell and the private foundation’s executive trustee since 2020. 

“Churches are always dreaming of how they can impact the kingdom.”

“If we can play a small part in helping some of those dreams come to reality,” added Packer, a member of the Bammel Church of Christ in Houston, “that’s a powerful testimony to the heart of the Bells from the beginning.”

Since Dec. 28, 1956, the Texas-based trust has awarded roughly $40 million to individual congregations — for needs ranging from minister and missionary salaries to church building maintenance to vehicles for the mission field.

Nancy Snelson serves as missions committee chairwoman for the Legacy Church of Christ in North Richland Hills, Texas.

“I just wish that more churches were aware of the good and generous work that they do,” said Nancy Snelson, missions committee chairwoman for the Legacy Church of Christ in North Richland Hills, Texas, northeast of Fort Worth.

The Bell Trust has partnered with the Legacy church to help send missionaries to Australia, Brazil, New Zealand and Ukraine.

“I really appreciate their model of funding,” Snelson said. “It’s the sending church that applies for the grant, not the individual missionary. They want the missionaries to be accountable to their sending church, not to the Bell Trust.”

When minister Tom Riley moved to Arizona to plant a new congregation in 2003, the trust offered financial assistance through the Fourth Avenue Church of Christ in Franklin, Tenn.

“The Bell Trust is a cruciform ministry,” said Riley, referring to the book “The Cruciform Church” by Leonard Allen. “They are shaped by the cross of Christ. They are servants of Jesus. 

“They are not seeking self-promotion,” added the senior minister for the 23-year-old Canyon Church of Christ in Phoenix. “They, in some ways, want to be forgettable but make Jesus memorable.”

With help from the Bell Trust, Tom Riley moved to the Phoenix area in 2003 to plant a new church. He’s shown in a 2007 file photo as the congregation prepared to construct a new building.

‘Very rarefied’ service

As relatives recall, Robert Bell, who died at age 84 in 1982, served for more than three decades as an elder of the Preston Road Church of Christ in Dallas.

From the beginning, he and Katharine Bell depended on their family — along with a preacher — to oversee the trust.

Daughters Betty Bell Muns and Barbara Bell Packer, sons-in-law James N. Muns and H. Lynn Packer and minister Hulen L. Jackson formed the trust’s original five-person board.

All five devoted decades to their trustee roles.

Four served until their deaths: Hulen Jackson passing at age 84 in 1997, Lynn Packer at 73 in 2001, Betty Muns at 92 in 2024 and James Muns at 93 in 2025.

What about Barbara Bell Packer? Well, she’s still a trustee — even as she approaches her 98th birthday on Nov. 2.

“I don’t know of anyone who has served as a trustee for any organization for 70 years,” said her son Barry Packer, 70, a fellow trustee for 36 years. “It’s very rarefied.”

Barbara Packer earned an education degree from Abilene Christian University in 1950. Six years later, the wife and mother of 9-month-old Barry was just 28 when she joined the Bell Trust board.

Barbara Bell Packer, a 1950 graduate of Abilene Christian University in Texas, receives an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree during the university’s May 2026 commencement ceremonies. Robert Rhodes, ACU’s senior vice president for academic affairs, presents the honor.

Asked why the trust was important to her father, she replied with a chuckle, “That I can’t tell you. I imagine that he had some funds that he felt like he’d like to use in a very helpful way, and he thought that would be a good way to help the church grow elsewhere. He was very interested in missions. My parents did a lot of traveling to visit the missionaries.”

A decade before J. Terry Johnson — at age 31 — became president of Oklahoma Christian University in 1974, he worked as the youth minister for the Walnut Hill Church of Christ in Dallas.

That’s where he first met Barbara Packer and her sister, Betty Muns. Lynn Packer and James Muns were deacons at the time but later became elders. 

Barbara Packer still worships at Walnut Hill — the last remaining charter member of the congregation, formed in 1956.

“Various members of the Packer and Muns families have served as trustees of the Bell Trust, each respectfully fulfilling the mission set forth by their parents-grandparents,” Johnson, now 84, said in an email. “Each trustee has had a passion for evangelism in the mission field. 

“The fruit of their investment is incalculable,” he added. “Congregations have been planted in the States and abroad, souls saved and a host of human needs met. The name of Jesus has been introduced in communities where so little is known about saving grace.”

“The fruit of their investment is incalculable. Congregations have been planted in the States and abroad, souls saved and a host of human needs met.”

A family legacy

Over the years, the size of the Bell Trust board, which meets quarterly in Dallas to review grant applications, has grown to nine.

“We have expanded beyond just family, but family has still remained the predominant focus through the generations,” said Barry Packer, who preached in Texas and California for 16 years before leading the Bell Trust as its executive trustee from 1997 to 2020.

Besides his work with the trust, Barry Packer has volunteered in multiple key roles with faith-based ministries, serving at various times as board chair for ACU, Mission Resource Network and The Christian Chronicle. A Chronicle board member since 2004, he accepted the chairman role earlier this year.

Barry Packer’s late father also served as chair of ACU’s board and was part of the Chronicle’s national council, an advisory group that preceded the newspaper’s installation of the formal governing board.

“I feel like I’m part of the legacy of a family that has displayed generosity, and that’s still a part of the heartbeat of who we are,” Barry Packer said. “It’s been passed down from grandparents to parents to this generation and hopefully to future generations.”

Shane Spencer, Clark Packer, Barbara Bell Packer, Barry Packer and Collin Packer pose for a photo after a Bell Trust board meeting in Dallas.

The Bell Trust board includes a ministry representative, Pat Bills, lead minister for the Highland Oaks Church of Christ in Dallas, where Barry Packer is one of the shepherds; and a missions representative, Dan Bouchelle, president of Mission Resource Network, based in Bedford, Texas.

Like Barbara Bell Packer, Barry Packer and Clark Packer, the other four trustees are family members, including Bell grandson John Muns and great-grandchildren Jenna Maynard, Collin Packer and Shane Spencer. Like his late father James Muns before him, John Muns is the mayor of Plano, Texas, the state’s ninth-largest city with a population of nearly 300,000. 

The Bell Trust provides a mix of one-time grants and temporary ongoing support approved on an annual basis. 

For example, the trust gave the North Bronx Church of Christ, a Ghanaian immigrant congregation in New York, a one-time gift of $12,000 in 2024 to help with minister Paul Oppong’s salary, as noted on the foundation’s IRS Form 990 filing.

The North Bronx congregation gathers on the stage at the front of the auditorium in 2023.

In the case of the Phoenix church plant, the trust awarded annual grants for five years, decreasing the amount each time, Riley recalled.

“We want it (the Bell Trust funding) to phase out, so that they can replace that support with their own funds or with funds from other sources, so they don’t rely on us,” Barry Packer said.

Clark Packer added: “Sustainability of an effort in the long term is very important to us, so that there’s a long-lasting impact for the often short-term gifts that we provide.”

All of Wyatt Cafeterias Inc.’s restaurants eventually sold or closed, but the Bell Trust legacy remains.

Collin Packer, 42, Barry’s son and Clark’s brother, said it’s an honor to carry on that legacy.

“The great thing about getting to serve with my grandmother and James and Betty Muns (before their passing) is that we got to hear their heart,” said Collin Packer, director of strategic development for Dallas-based Let’s Talk Race Ministries. “We got to hear their firsthand account of what was important and what to maintain.

“So while there are changes that happen in the missions context,” he added, “it’ll be important for us and perhaps our kids and the next generation to pass down those same values and parameters and why this was started.”

BOBBY ROSS JR. is Editor-in-Chief of The Christian Chronicle. He traveled to Dallas to report this story. Reach him at bobby@christianchronicle.org.