We no longer have the luxury to continue planting one Spanish speaking church at a time. Our U.S. and Eastern District demographics are changing so rapidly that we must think of MULTIPLYING our church planting and training efforts.
In order to do this we have taken steps of faith and are launching our Eastern District Hispanic Mission. It can be clearly identified by two
purposes:
- Church Planting - multiply the number of churches reaching Spanish speaking and bilingual families.
- Training Leaders - increase our pool of trained Hispanic leaders who fit with the EFCA.
We have divided the district into 4 areas for Hispanic church planting:
- NY/NJ : Mauricio and Marta Trujillo are currently planting in Freehold NJ
- Eastern PA: Marcos and Colleen Solt are in the 2nd half of their church planting in Allentown
- Central PA: Lorenzo and Betsy Meson/Christian and Ximena Aguilar are transitioning to Harrisburg after planting in Lebanon.
- DEL/MAR/VA: Currently no church plant but we will begin to strategize for one.
We ask that your church put the church planter(s) from your area on your missions budget.
- The support will be for church planting. Once the church is able to support its own pastor, they will leave and plant elsewhere.
- A portion of support will cover training of new pastors and church planters.
We will provide updates to each region and continue to share what we are doing in church planting and training around the district. We will do this on the template we have chosen for Eastern District Hispanic Mission so it will be easily recognizable.
Speaking of the harvest, God has been giving us a greater view of the church planting landscape over these past several years and the land is no longer barren but we see lots of evidence of fruit and harvest. That’s the basis for Eastern District Hispanic Mission. In previous years, such a venture was a dream but today we have more and more visible evidence of what our vibrant Hispanic churches look like and we want to multiply that number!
The need is immediate. When you add this to your budget, would you please make the checks out to Eastern District Hispanic Mission with the specific church planter’s name on the memo line. If you have some reserve funds from 2007, please consider making a one time gift to jump start the drive. Individuals are also invited to be part of the regular support team and may send contributions directly to the Eastern District office with the name of the church planter they wish to support.
Thanks for praying about this.
