“Send Cities” effort rallying ethnic groups

Polish, Brazilian, Haitian, Romanian, African, Jew, Mainland Chinese, Slavic/Russian, Korean, Filipino, Hispanic, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Caribbean, Deaf, and Cambodian are just a few of the ethnic people groups who have been introduced to the Send North America strategy of the North American Mission Board in the past year.

With a commitment to mobilizing and equipping Southern Baptist churches to plant evangelistic churches throughout North America, NAMB is seeking participation from Southern Baptist ethnic church fellowships and African American congregations.

Forty ethnic leaders from across the U.S. and Canada heard from NAMB President Kevin Ezell last June as he underscored how important these leaders are in their spheres of influence and in NAMB’s new church planting strategy.

The new strategy will benefit ethnic networks and churches more than other groups, Ezell said, because “many of you are already established in the 26 ‘Send Cities’ we’re focusing on,” according to a report by NAMB writer Mickey Noah.

“We want to partner with you as we move forward,” Ezell told ethnic church leaders. “We need your help in encouraging your churches to step up to the plate and partner with us to plant more churches.”

With the creation of a NAMB-funded position for a presidential ambassador for ethnic church relations, the SBC entity will give special focus on ethnic churches and leaders to work together as a “Great Commission people with a Great Commission Heart,” the entity noted in its report to the SBC Executive Committee. Ken Weathersby, an African American, was named to that position in partnership with the Executive Committee.

The report also noted that five ethnic leaders currently serve on NAMB’s board of trustees.

“It’s about time Southern Baptists of all ethnic backgrounds worked together,” stated Paul Kim, a Korean multiethnic church planter and pastor in Boston who, at the 2009 SBC annual meeting, introduced the motion that led to the ethnic involvement study.

“That’s why I introduced the motion. We are all one family and can achieve more work for the kingdom together,” Kim said. He exhorted his counterparts to attend local, state and national Southern Baptist meetings. “Let people know who you are. Why do we even have so many ethnic fellowships rather than being one, working together?”

Weathersby emphasized, for example, that African American churches must plant Hispanic churches and Japanese churches must plant Korean churches and Slavic churches must plant Chinese churches—not just churches of their own ethnic groups. Working across cultures to plant new churches is what Send North America is all about, he said.

That’s been the approach of Paramount Baptist Church in Amarillo, which sponsors Korean and Hispanic congregations, as well as hosting a service for Afrikaners on campus. The Hispanic congregation, Iglesia Bautista Fuente Viva, is starting a congregation for English-speaking Hispanics.

For over 17 years, Paramount Baptist Church in Amarillo has used ESL as a vehicle for reaching 400 adults from 30 different countries, leading to 100 people professing faith in Christ and 25 baptisms. Over 125 members of Paramount are involved in the outreach effort, providing an opportunity to develop relationships that have attracted class participants to get involved in the church.

A combination of ethnic churches reaching people of their own ethnicity and working across cultures has been successful at the International Mission Board as well. Terry Sharp directs IMB efforts to strengthen relationships with state conventions and associations as they develop strategic mission involvement and engagement strategies with Unreached People Groups.

The Church and Partner Services office of the IMB has three departments that specifically relate to larger ethnic components in the SBC, according to the report provided to the SBC Executive Committee. Trustees, staff and hundreds of IMB missionaries come from ethnic minority backgrounds with Korean American missionaries represented at a significantly higher percentage than in the SBC as a whole.

“These ethnic missionaries maintain a close connection with their home churches, and specifically ethnic IMB events are frequently conducted in the churches and gatherings of SBC ethnic communities,” the report noted.

“For all of our folks it’s about strategy,” Sharp told the TEXAN. “Certainly, if there are projects they see that are strategic in those countries where they speak the same language, that would be very good,” Sharp said. “But Hispanics, for example, are serving in areas of the world that are Muslim and they’ve got more of an open door” than Anglos.

Jason Carlisle, missional church strategist, and Marcela Rivera, a mobilization specialist, both represent IMB in working with Hispanic churches to develop mission strategies overseas.

“African Americans can serve God all around the world, not just in places that have people of African origin,” shared Keith Jefferson, African American mobilization strategist for IMB. After returning from serving as a missionary among Brazil’s Quilombola people, Jefferson has been encouraging, challenging and training African American churches and people to be on mission with God.

“A missionary can be from any background because there’s someone that he can reach that no one else can reach,” Jefferson told IMB reporter Don Graham. “God uses our unique personalities to click with somebody in another country.”

As a Korean/Asian missional church strategist for the IMB, Gihwang Shin is encouraged by the response he’s seeing among mission-minded Korean Baptists.

“Some churches are really open to work cross-culturally beyond the Asian limit, so they go to Africa or South America to sponsor those churches,” Shin said. Many Korean Baptist churches have been successful in reaching Native Americans and are heavily involved with that ethnic group in the U.S. and Canada, he added.

Nearly 400 Korean Baptist messengers attended last year’s annual Korean Southern Baptist meeting in Carrollton, with 52 of the 190 churches represented accepting the IMB challenge to embrace unengaged, unreached people groups.

“I was amazed,” Shin said. “Out of 190 churches represented, it is a big number.”

Hyoung Min Kim, pastor of Denton Korean Baptist Church in Denton, has led his congregation to plant churches in Texas and sends teams overseas, and is eager to embrace unengaged, unreached people overseas. “To reach all the ethnic groups in the world, not just missionaries … but all the local churches should be mobilized in order to reach all of the world,” he told IMB reporter Alan James.
Prayer is the key to embracing the difficult places, he added.

“Without prayer it is impossible to reach those ethnic groups.”