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Daddy’s Delight Blog Tour

KARIA BUNTING is an expository Bible teacher whose mission is to communicate the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ so that people are saved, and disciples are developed. She is the founder of Focused Forward Ministries, a communication and media ministry, and a member of several community and ministry organizations. She also partners with her husband, George, in his management & financial consulting company.

Karia received her master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and a doctorate from Louisiana Baptist Theological Seminary. She’s currently receiving a second doctorate from the University of Texas. She serves as an adjunct professor at Dallas Baptist University and enjoys ministering the Word and its’ principles through her lecture series and power lunches held throughout the year.

Karia and George, her husband of 26 years, live in Dallas, Texas where she teaches the Word weekly in the women’s Bible study at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. Mother of three children, Karia is also a mentor to many young women. She enjoys reading, writing, and spending time with family and friends.

Visit her Dr. Karia online at focusedforwardministries.org.

Dr. Karia, tell us about yourself

I am a mom of three, a wife of one (for 27 years),  a servant of God’s people, a teacher of God’s Word, a theologian, and a scholar. I have spent the last 17 years in academic study of the Word of God, and the last 7 years studying intellectual history (particularly in the Christian tradition) and humanities.   I expected God to use me in academia, but He had another plan.  He wanted me to take all the stuff I have “stuffed” into my head, and bring it to the “street” for His glory!  And I am having a ball.  I love communicating with people, being a part of other women’s l lives, and being involved in the daily joys and struggles of women who range in age from 15 to 95.  God’s grace is amazing!

What type of jobs or careers have you worked in the past?

My, what have I not done?  My undergraduate degree was in business –marketing and transportation – so for my internships I worked at a retail store in the warehouse.  I was responsible for shipping operations.  I loved it.

When I graduated from college I went to work for Neiman Marcus as a department head in ladies accessories and shoes.  That, I hated.  I had one lady that came into the shoe department with some old shoes, wanting to exchange them for a new pair.  She must have been about 80, and I believe she bought the shoes when she was 18.  When I told her she could not exchange them, she fainted.  Yes, that is what I said.  She fainted.  We had to call the ambulance and the whole bit.

I decided that wasn’t for me.

So I went to find another job.  I found it in insurance as a claims adjuster.  When I went to training for that job in Atlanta, I met my husband, who was also training to be an adjuster.   We were both licensed, and we adjusted bodily injury and property damage claims. Eventually I started adjusting  worker’s compensation claims.  I got tired of being cursed out and threatened every day, so I quit doing bodily injury and property damage claims, and switched to workers’ compensation completely, which paid more anyway.  I then left the insurance company and went to work for a hospital to adjusted worker’s compensation claims there, which expanded into what was then Affirmative Action/EEOC claims and employee relations.   That led me into my first career:  Human Resources management.   The end of that whole path was that I ended up in municipal government as the Director of Affirmative Action/Diversity Management for a prestigious, All-American city.    That involved a lot of legislative, civic, and community service work.

I had small children at the time, and my work began to conflict with my family in a significant way.  I was seldom home before 11:30 p.m.   I only saw my children not asleep when I dropped them off at the day care in the morning.

I felt called to full-time motherhood at about the same time that my husband was thinking that was what we should do.  When I left my position, my colleagues could not believe it!  I was training to be a City Manager, and I was known throughout the country in my field.  That was a drastic change, but  I loved it!  I don’t think I wore anything but sweatpants for a year.  But I was still active in the community, and was chair of several boards and commissions.  I eventually started a human resources company, and sold it, returning to full time motherhood.

I started seminary when I was a mom-at-home.  I had always said I was called to ministry, and when I moved to Dallas initially, it had been to attend seminary.  Financial needs was what pushed me into the workforce for that first post-college job.  While in seminary,  I worked whatever job I could find that would adjust around the time my children were in school and my seminary classes.  So let’s see, I worked in a call center for Women of Faith, another call center handling plumbing claims for mobile homes, as an administrative assistant in an oil company, as a day care worker for Mother’s Day Out, a fax machine operator for a popular potato chip manufacturer, a substitute teacher – whatever would pay, I did!  Most of those were temporary jobs, because I couldn’t commit to anything that would pull me away from preparation for ministry.  I am grateful that my husband supported me through those difficult years.  His buddies teased him, but He was faithful to the Lord’s call on my life, and I know the Lord will be faithful to Him.

Finally, when my masters degree was almost finished, my children transferred to private Christian school and I worked there as the Assistant Director of Admission for Diversity Management.    

About the time when I was finishing my Doctorate in Theology, my husband and I started a business, which failed.  It was his dream business, and both the failure and the aftermath of the failure was painful.   We lost most of our savings in that venture.  But God is faithful, I will tell you.   About a year later, I started teaching at Dallas Baptist University, having finished my seminary training and arrived at the last phase of my second Doctorate in Humanities. 

Now the Lord has given us a ministry, and that is my heart .  All my life, even while working in other positions, I have worked in ministry.  My father was a Baptist pastor, and I took my first position as Minister of Music at the age of 15.  I have been on church staffs, or worked in church leadership every since then.   So I’ve been in ministry for a while.  

This book, Daddy’s Delight: Embracing Your Divine Design, is a part of that ministry.  I not only know the Word, but  I have experienced the Word.  It is true.  In this book, I apply it to each stage of a woman’s life.

In addition, God has given me a wonderful group of ladies with whom I can share my life at my home church, where I teach the Word weekly. 

In addition, God has given a weekly television broadcast:  Direct TV channel 378, Sky Angel  126,  10:30 Central Standard Time, 11:30 Eastern Standard Time.  Our program airs right after that of Kay Authur. Through Direct TV we go into over 11 million homes.

The ministry the Lord has given me, Focused Forward, beginning in September  also hosts a power lunch/taping every 2^nd Thursday in Plano, TX.

I am also an expository conference speaker, and  workshop conductor.  Through Focused

Forward we also minister to women in places like Nigeria, Haiti, and Papua New Guinea.  

So that’s it!  A whirlwind career tour, all of which God is using for His glory.  By the way, I still know how to adjust claims!

Who are your favorite authors?

I like testimonial literature, so I like the narratives by people like Fredrick Douglass, and the slave narratives.  My favorite literary time period is 18^th and 19^th century.  I love the poetry and writings of Sor Juan de Inez de la Cruz , a Spanish catholic nun who, with integrity based on her identity,  pushed the Catholic Church to accept her as a woman gifted in theology.  She was eventually condemned  by the church because she wanted to study science.   During the height of the controversy about her, even her friends abandoned her.

I guess when it comes to more modern fiction, I like John Grisham – he is entertaining, I think.  And for non-fiction, John Maxwell.  I try to read everything he writes.  For biblical commentary, my absolute favorite theologian of all time is St. Augustine.  He was a genius.  For contemporary theology, I love the work of my pastor, Dr. Tony Evans, of course!

But having said all that, the last magazine I bought was Rolling Stone.

What are your favorite books?

Confessions, by St. Augustine.  The Book of Hours, by Rainier Maria Rilke.  Maybe Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke as well.   The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.  The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Dubois, definitely.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe.   I think that book has gotten a bad rap.  It is an excellent piece of Christian literature.  Most people that condemn it never read it.  Right now I like Talent is Never Enough by John Maxwell, and How Successful People Think by the same author.    I liked Maximize the Moment by T.D. Jakes as well.  Dr. Evan’s The Battle is the Lord’s is a good, solid exegetical  work.  My all time favorite book?  The Bible.   That is the only inexhaustible book I know of.

When did you realize you wanted to write?

It was an idea that developed slowly.  I have always written.  My sister in law has a 17 page letter I wrote her before I married my husband, trying to convince her to become a Christian.  One of my more unethical  pre-sanctified  college jobs was writing people’s term papers (that was before internet). My clients paid me according to what grade they wanted!  I got paid pretty good for an “A”, but most people wanted a “B”.   Finally, I had written so many that the professors recognized my writing style and put me out of business.   

I cannot say I ever really thought I would write, although I had a slight desire.  It was more that it was something that arose in me and spilled out.

Tell us about your journey to publication

And part of my Th.D. program,  I was required to write a draft commentary of the Bible.  I found myself, in that process, attracted to what God had to say throughout scripture on our identity and authority.  I began working on the subject, just writing notes, for several years.    I began to organize the notes, but never expected to do anything with them.  Then my pastor preached a series on Spiritual authority.  I turned to my husband and said, “That’s my book!”  Everything he said in the whole series I had written in my notes!  So I translated and expanded those notes so that they made sense (i.e. – absolutely practical and everyday stuff).  In the process of writing, it all changed and I began to speak from my heart, and the subject expanded to talk about every stage of a woman’s life, the struggles we have, the victory that awaits us, and the means we can access to accomplish that victory.   But the whole project was undergirded by a thorough exegesis of scripture.             

Moody accepted the book proposal.   I was as surprised as anyone about what God did.

Are you a full time writer?  If so, describe your day?

I am in full time ministry.  I suppose that is not the same thing. 

About the Book

In Daddy’s Delight, Dr. Karia Bunting reminds women that they are God’s workmanship, His masterpiece, His “poema”. That God has intricately woven together every fiber of their being and created each one special and unique. That God, having completed His work of art, gave her to mankind as a gift.

Evident in this great care God took in fashioning woman is the importance and value of each one. So why do so many women struggle with God’s design, wishing they could change just this or that one thing about themselves?

Dr. Bunting challenges each reader to accept and embrace the truth that, regardless of what season of life she’s in, she is God’s masterpiece-not her own work of art. When God sees her, He sees His beautiful creation. A creation that yes, has some wrinkles needing to be smoothed out and yet, is one in whom is His delight to love to perfection.

View the blog tour schedule and read an excerpt at

http://bit.ly/DaddysDelight.