December 18, 2000
NAMB adds staff for Hispanics,
African-Americans, multi-housing
___By James Dotson
___North American Mission Board
___ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)--The North American Mission Board has added new national leaders coordinating church planting among Hispanics, African-Americans and people living in multi-housing developments.
___Chris McNary serves as national missionary for multi-housing, Bobby Sena serves as national Hispanic specialist, and Ken Weathersby is the national African-American specialist.
___Dennis Mitchell, director of the multiplication team of NAMB's church planting group, said the new leadership emphasizes NAMB's commitment to placing strong strategists to help facilitate a church multiplication movement among Southern Baptist churches in the United States, Canada and U.S. territories. Today, he said, only about 4 percent of the 41,000 Southern Baptist churches are involved in church starting.
___"If we're going to reach America ... we've got to help more churches catch a kingdom-expanding, church-planting vision. Selection of these three gifted, experienced church-planting practitioners will significantly enhance NAMB's ability to achieve this objective," Mitchell said.
___The new role of a church-planting national missionary for multi-housing reflects NAMB's expanded commitment to helping churches, associations and state conventions reach people living in apartment complexes, condominiums, manufactured housing and other types of multi-housing communities, Mitchell said. That commitment goes beyond the Bible studies and other ministries that often remain extensions of existing churches, he added.
___"With an estimated 90 percent of the 100 million people in the United States and Canada living in these communities not attending church on a regular basis, we have no choice but to reach them and seek to lead them into active involvement in a New Testament church in their own community," he said. "For years, Southern Baptists have emphasized multi-housing ministries, but this is the first time we have had an individual specifically tasked at leading the efforts to facilitate church planting in multi-housing communities."
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