NAMB's Loren Russell

DOVER, Del.-Loren Russell, regional team leader for the Partnership Missions Mobilization Group/Cooperative Strategies Team of the North American Mission Board, will be the featured speaker at this year’s Pre-Convention Worship Celebration on Nov. 9 at the Dover Sheraton Hotel in Dover, Del.
The Delaware Association Mass Choir will lead the worship for this special Sunday night celebration, which begins at 6:30 p.m.

A native New Yorker, Russell received his bachelor’s degree in business from The Metropolitan College of New York (formerly Audrey Cohen College) and his master of divinity degree from Drew Theological University. He and his wife, Evelyn, make their home in the Bronx, New York.

Russell had a long career as a financial planner and money manager before establishing his own financial consulting company. Once called into the gospel ministry, Russell minimized his entrepreneurial endeavors, eventually working as the public relations director for a major foster care agency in New York.
He simultaneously took on multiple roles in the church as trustee, adult Sunday school teacher, Bible instructor, men’s ministry director, and minister of education.

His ordination as a minister of the gospel and his diversified background uniquely qualify Russell to work well with people at any level of their Christian walk.

In addition to his ministry, Loren is very active in community affairs.

One quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. epitomizes his philosophy of life: “We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.”

By Shannon Baker, BCM/D National Correspondent

Ed Stetzer

DOVER, Del.—This 2008 BCM/D Ministers’ Conference, at the Dover Sheraton Hotel, will feature guest speaker Ed Stetzer, research director for LifeWay Christian Resources, on Monday, Nov. 10.

The conference, which precedes the BCM/D annual meeting, begins with a coffee and light breakfast time at 8 a.m. This year’s conference theme is “Marketplace Ministry: Leadership in the 21st Century,” and is designed to help pastors equip their leaders with the tools necessary to move preaching out beyond the walls of the church.

Stetzer is well known in “Baptistdom” and beyond. He’s planted churches, transitioned declining ones and trained planters and pastors throughout the world. He is an author of many books, including “11 Innovations in the Local Church” with Elmer Towns and Warren Bird; “Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can Too”, with Mike Dodson; “Planting Missional Churches”; and “Breaking the Missional Code: Your Church Can Become a Missionary in Your Community.” Stetzer is also a columnist for several magazines and an in-demand speaker.

Mike Logsdon, pastor of First Church, Easton, is president of this year’s conference. Logsdon got the idea of the theme “Marketplace Ministry” while he was on a mission trip to Turkey and walking through the ruins, through Ephesus and through the agora, the marketplace, gathering area and heart of the ancient cities. Logsdon said the agora was where much of the action of the book of Acts occurred.

“We tend to think of preaching being centralized to the church, but it’s not,” Logsdon said.
Logsdon said he invited Stetzer to be the guest speaker for the conference after meeting him at a conference.

“He has a broad range of appeal, from church planters to very established traditional pastors. He does a lot of stuff in the sense of the church moving out from its walls and being the church – not just ‘doing’ church,” he said.

Written by Sharon Mager, BCM/D Correspondent