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"This Nehemiah Project couldn't come at a more opportune time in our convention's history. We're not interested in simply building an institution. We feel like we have a purpose, and that is to develop as many leaders as our convention needs to lead our churches."
Richard Blackaby
President
Canadian Baptist Theological Seminary
"The Nehemiah program is so smart, so anointed, that we scratch our heads, asking how in the world we didn't do this earlier. Enormous credit goes to Bob Reccord and his folks at NAMB for this bold initiative. It's perfectly to the point of what we're trying to do in seminary, preparing God's best for the work of 'evangelizing and congregationalizing' the mission fields."
Mark T. Coppenger
President
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
"We can only begin to imagine all that God will do as we give serious, determined effort across this country and around the world to plant healthy, lasting congregations."
Williams O. Crews
President
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary
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"The Nehemiah Project is a wonderful example of the new day of cooperation between Southern Baptist agencies and institutions."
Kenneth S. Hemphill
President
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
"The SBC cannot hope to evangelize our nation without dramatically increasing the number of churches we start and without starting a majority of those churches in the great cities of this country."
Charles S. Kelley, Jr.
President
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
"The growth curve in the Southern Baptist Convention is largely going to be led by new churches. One of the most amazing things to conceive is that in the century to come, the churches experiencing the most growth do not now exist."
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
President
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
"Baptists have always used church planting as probably the major means of growth. In a word, the future of the Southern Baptist work depends directly upon the effectiveness and the expansion of our church planting efforts. The Nehemiah Project has, for the first time in history, brought together the North American Mission Board, the churches, and the seminaries in a common effort for teaching church planting, funding church planting, and doing church planting."
L. Paige Patterson
President
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
"At Southeastern, I'm not having to lay the groundwork and cultivate interest in church planting because of our commitment with the New Hampshire Baptist Association to plant churches. … A number of different church planting programs and elements have been in place at Southeastern Seminary, but I believe the Nehemiah Project will be the tool to bring them all together."
William E. (Bill) Brown
Nehemiah Project Director
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
"One of my goals will be to see a force of church planters, fluent in the Canadian cultural context, trained, equipped, and enabled to be catalysts for a church planting movement in Canada."
Ian Buntain
Nehemiah Project Director
Canadian Baptist Theological Seminary
"There's no way or need to do church planting unless you're going to win people to the Lord, teach a new church to reproduce itself, and develop a church that believes the Bible. The Nehemiah Project brings a fresh approach to church starting on Midwestern's campus. Enthusiasm is great, and we look to deploy thirty Nehemiah students through extensions and our main campus by year 2000."
Carrol D. Fowler
Nehemiah Project Director
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
"Southern Baptists have made a commitment to start 65,000 new churches in the next twenty years. To do our part, our graduates must start about one thousand churches a year in the West. We are committed to developing a team working in cooperation with state conventions, associations, and local churches to develop all aspects of the Church Planting System."
D. Allan Karr
Nehemiah Project Director
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary
"Our partnership and project offers a great opportunity to recruit, encourage, and deploy strategically trained and theologically mature church planters to reach the unchurched of North America. We plan to marry academic excellence with the latest technologies in church planting."
Edward J. Stetzer
Nehemiah Project Director
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
"It is my goal to equip church planters to start Holy Spirit driven churches with a kingdom-perspective that will influence this generation and unborn generations. We will work with and through the Baptist state conventions and associations of churches to strategically place our Nehemiah church planters. The Lord is at work in North America and the world, and I am glad to join Him in His work. I am thankful to Southern Baptists for allowing me to serve as their missionary."
Kenneth B. Weathersby
Nehemiah Project Director
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
"In order to plant healthy churches, we need to have an intentionally evangelistic mentality. … My goal will be to help produce church planters with a heart for evangelism as well as evangelistic pastors with a church-planting mentality. Coming from a new-work area enhances my perception that evangelism and church planting really do coexist."
David Wheeler
Nehemiah Project Director
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
"I am elated that within eighteen months, with the cooperation of the presidents of each of our seminaries, the North American Mission Board has been able to establish a North American Center for Church Planting at each of our six U.S. seminaries and our seminary in Canada. Each man who is filling the directorship of one of these centers is not only a proven scholar but also an experienced and accomplished church planter. I am thrilled that each one is an appointed North American Mission Board missionary secunded to the seminaries. It is a marvelous example of the cooperation that has been accomplished as a result of the restructuring of our Southern Baptist Convention and the commitment to cooperation that the presidents of each of the agencies and the seminaries hold. And we've only just begun!"
Robert E. (Bob) Reccord
President and Chief Executive Officer
North American Mission Board