Church Within a Church: North Jefferson Hispanic Outreach
Dawson Memorial Baptist Church’s Hispanic Congregation was recently commissioned to start a “second generation” Hispanic church in Northern Jefferson County. Since its establishment in 1991, the Hispanic church in Homewood has grown to become one of Alabama’s largest Hispanic Baptist congregations and includes members who are originally from fifteen different nations. The church has flourished under a unique “Church Within a Church” model that allows the church to be both autonomous and also remain a vital part of the larger congregation. Bayron Mosquera, Dawson’s Hispanic Pastor, serves as a member of Dawson’s Ministerial Staff and as the Senior Pastor of his congregation. The congregation annually conducts a Vacation Bible School that reached 142 children last year and included 60 volunteers. The twenty-five-year-old church recently sent its first short-term international mission team to Ecuador in 2016. Pastor Mosquera sums up the church planting effort… “Our congregation wants to be obedient to the Great Commission and in order to do so we are committing to ourselves to preaching the Gospel of salvation to the people in North Jefferson County and establishing a church in their community.”
Alabama has experienced growth in its Hispanic population over the past ten years- a large number residing in north Jefferson County where there is not a significant outreach effort focused on the Hispanic community. An effort to form a coalition of partners to support the planting of a congregation there has begun. Eventually this coalition, led by Dawson’s Hispanic Congregation, will include churches from the North Jefferson Baptist Association, the Birmingham Baptist Association, as well as the Alabama Baptist State Convention. Learn more at www.dawsonchurch.org †
