TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas (KXAN) - A Dayspring Fellowship pastor and his wife died in a Southwest Travis County wreck, which also sent a paramedic to the hospital with critical injuries via STARFlight. The crash happened in the 10000 block of U.S. Highway 290 West near Baxter Lane just after 9 p.m. on Tuesday, November 29, 2011. Texas Department of Public Safety officials said a Toyota SUV -- driven by 40-year-old paramedic was heading west and veered into oncoming traffic, hitting a Honda van head-on.
Troopers said two people inside the van, Ernest Jackson Boyett, Jr. and Barbara Boyett, both 64, were killed.

Meanwhile, the Toyota driver was taken by STARFlight to University Medical Center Brackenridge in critical condition with both head and internal injuries. She was listed in fair condition on Wednesday morning.

A church-goer with Dayspring Fellowship said that Ernest Boyett, known to the congregation as "Jackson," was a longtime pastor at the church. He was also a leader in the Right to Life movement.

"We are obviously saddened in his passing," said Max Smith, one of two elders at the church. "We're going to miss him very, very much."

The founding pastor of the church, Boyett was also on the Board of Missions Agency and Theological Seminary and on the Board of Trustees of Providence Theological Seminary in Colorado Springs.

He helped start Dayspring Fellowship in October 1978 and has always served as its pastor, Smith said.

"His loss is not just a loss to our church but also the Christian community," said Smith. "They were in the prime of their life, and this is really a great shock to us. We are really looking forward to looking at how this makes any sense."

The congregations will meet Wednesday evening to mourn the Boyetts and offer up support at 6:30 p.m. at the church, located at 5500 Avenue G.

"This is going to be such a shock to our congregations that we are just going to be there ministering to them," said Smith.

Smith said the closest relative they could find was a far-removed nephew, who also lives far away. He will be in town Wednesday, however. He said the couple would have celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary later this month.

The couple will be buried in Junction, near the pastor's father -- who served as secretary to Gov. Coke Robert Stevenson.

Smith said the pastor's father was one of the first in Texas to receive a driver's license. After his death, Boyett petitioned to take over his father's number. His single-digit driver's license number reportedly took DPS troopers aback when they saw it.

The couple graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in the late 1960s. Jackson Boyett graduated from Austin Presbyterian Seminary in 1976. He was also a disc jockey and talk show host for KIXL in the mid-1970s. During that same time, the couple managed a home for unwed mothers in Austin for several years, according to Smith.

Larry Wessels, director of Christian Answers of Austin, Texas/ Christian Debater (YouTube Channel CANSWERSTV, see our 19 playlists at http://www.youtube.com/user/CAnswersTV?feature=mhee; websites: http://www.BIBLEQUERY.org, http://www.HISTORYCART.com, & http://www.MUSLIMHOPE.com) presents this special tribute series to his pastor of 30 years Jackson Boyett. This is part 2 of a 5 part series.

Pastor Jackson gives one of his typical verse by verse expositions from the Gospel of Luke covering chapter 6, verses 17-19:

"17And he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases;

18And they that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed.

19And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all."

The website for Dayspring Fellowship is http://www.Dsf.org.