Jack Fitts isn’t just a pastor — he’s a gringo who loves Spanish.
Fitts, pastor of First Baptist Church, Brewton, and a former high school Spanish teacher, led his church to participate in missions trips to Mexico for years.
But that wasn’t enough. He wanted to reach out to the Hispanic community waiting at the Escambia Baptist Association church’s doorstep.
Enter Wendell Ray and Luis Gomez.
Ray is coordinating a new ministry at the church as interim Hispanic minister, and Gomez is a Spanish-speaking member who teaches a Spanish Sunday School class. Both are volunteering their services to First, Brewton.
“We’re trying to help train our Hispanics and get them to reach out to other Hispanics and to train our people and get them comfortable with people who speak a different language,” Ray said.
One way to do that is through the weekly English for Latinos and Spanish for Gringos classes at the church.
So far, First, Brewton, has hosted two Spanish worship services. The first had about 20 Hispanics in attendance and eight public professions of faith.
Fitts is excited about the work the church has accomplished already and the future of the ministry. “We feel like we’ve built a lot of bridges,” he said. “We’re in it for the long haul.”
Folks feel the same way at Iglesia Bautista Hispana (Hispanic Baptist Church), Kilpatrick, in DeKalb Baptist Association. The Spanish-language congregation was started by Ed Ables, a former International Mission Board representative to South America who now works with the North Alabama Baptist Hispanic Coalition.
The coalition is composed of several associations that sponsor his ministry along with the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) and the North American Mission Board.
Ables targeted Kilpatrick for establishing a new Hispanic congregation because of its large Spanish-speaking population, which he estimates at about 4,000.
The SBOM has furnished the fledgling church with a mobile chapel, a doublewide trailer with a sanctuary that can hold 60 people and five Sunday School rooms.
“We really appreciate the state convention furnishing it because without it, we wouldn’t have anything like it, and it’s very well designed for this purpose,” Ables said.
The church meets on Sunday mornings, averaging about 20 in attendance, and Wednesday nights, when the number is closer to 40 since a van picks up children from the surrounding area.
And Ables said with a second van, the church could reach more people.
But the next step he’d like to see the church take would be to get a “real Hispanic pastor and his family living in Kilpatrick.”
This would not only enable the church to be more self-sustaining but also allow Ables, who is currently serving as pastor, to expand his work throughout north Alabama.
“We want to grow,” he said. “But right now, we’re just getting things started.”
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