Shelby Baptist Association recently welcomed two new churches to its membership — North Shelby Vietnamese Baptist Church and Jesus the Good Shepherd Church, a Hispanic congregation.
The churches ended their watch-care status and became full members of the Shelby association by unanimous vote at the quarterly executive committee meeting in September. Moderator Michael J. Brooks presided.
Allan Murphy, chair of the association’s credentials committee, said, “This is a wonderful day for us, and we’re blessed to have these two great churches with us.”
Murphy — retired pastor of North Shelby Baptist Church, mother church of the Vietnamese congregation — explained that the association’s missions development council works to encourage new churches, then the credentials committee proceeds to encourage the new congregations in their development.
“We talked with both groups,” Murphy said, “and both churches are theologically sound, committed to Baptist practice and cooperative in their approach. Both are trying to bring people to Christ and grow their congregations in God’s grace.”
Associational Mission Strategist Hugh Richardson agreed.
“Their pastors have a strong commitment to evangelism and disciple making,” he said. “I believe that God will use them to advance the Kingdom in our greater Shelby County community.”
North Shelby Vietnamese Baptist is fulfilling a lend-lease agreement with the mother church, purchasing one of North Shelby’s original buildings, and will own it in about two years, Murphy said. Jeremiah Doan is pastor of North Shelby Vietnamese Baptist.
Jesus the Good Shepherd Church meets in the choir room of First Baptist Church, Pelham, and Juan Carlos Castillo serves as pastor.
“The Pelham mission is long-established and legally recognized as a church but was without a pastor for a season,” said Cary Hanks, director of the Central Alabama Baptist Hispanic Ministry Coalition. “They have Bible study, morning worship and a Friday night worship,” he said. “The church has a long-range plan of owning their own facilities. They’re self-supporting and providing 10 percent of their receipts to the mother church.”
The two congregations joined CrossWay Christian Fellowship, currently meeting at the YMCA in Pelham, as ethnic congregations in Shelby Association. Fred Muse is the pastor of CrossWay, which is about 75 percent African-American, according to Richardson.
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