NAMB & Southern Launch Nehemiah Project

                                                                                                                                                                  Vol. XI, No. 10, Nov/Dec 1998

The North American Mission Board and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary have jointly named Edward J. "Ed" Stetzer to head the first seminary center for church planting as part of the board's Nehemiah Project. The Nehemiah Project ultimately will establish a church-planting center on each SBC seminary campus in the United States and Canada. Stetzer began his assignment at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY, Sept. 16, and NAMB leaders anticipate all partnerships and directors will be in place by the fall of 1999.

Stetzer, who helped start three of the largest and most successful churches for Southern Baptists in the northeastern United States, is the professor/director of the center for church planting at Southern's Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth. He will develop and teach church planting-curriculum and recruit students for the church-planting track as well as arrange internships for Nehemiah Project church planters.

NAMB officials intend the Nehemiah Project to help reverse the growing number of unchurched people in North America. According to researcher George Barna, the United States is the world's third-largest unchurched nation, whose unchurched population exceeds 195 million. Only 3 to 5 percent of Canada's population claims affiliation with evangelical Christianity and there is only one Southern Baptist church for every 225,000 people. Also, 10 to 30% of new Southern Baptist church plants in North America fail every year. David Putman, recruitment development associate for NAMB and the agency's coordinator for the Nehemiah Project, attributes the failure rate to "church planters who are ill-prepared for the task." "Each center will prepare church planters to start healthy churches among people who don't know Christ," Putman said. "In addition to seminary education, church planters will have practical, hands-on training and mentoring they need to be successful." [BP]