printer-friendly 
email a friend
Saint Mark UMC pastor to lead national New Church Start Division
Rev. Junius Dotson |
Written: 12/17/2008
WICHITA—Rev. Junius Dotson, senior pastor at Saint Mark United Methodist Church in Wichita, will lead a team of 18 pastors to help start more than 650 new churches in the next quadrennium. Dotson recently was elected president of the New Church Start Division during the annual United Methodist General Board of Discipleship meeting in Nashville. He will be responsible for collaborating with the Path 1 Initiative to help identify, facilitate and train 1,000 church planters.
“I am excited that my colleagues would have such confidence in my ability to work alongside them in such an important initiative,” said Dotson. “Responding to the challenge will not be easy, but with much prayer and diligent work, we will work to build a very solid foundation of leaders so that we will effectively win souls for Christ.”
Path 1 is a United Methodist team whose mission is to provide leadership to re-evangelize America—going to the “unchurched and dechurched” and collaborating with healthy existing churches.
Rev. Tom Butcher, coordinator of Path 1, said, “Junius has the vision, track record and passion to offer our team sound coaching, leadership development and strategic execution to equip the 1,000 church planters to start new churches.”
Before coming to the Kansas West Conference, Dotson started a church in Silicon Valley, Calif., which became a model for new church starts.
Dotson believes effective ministry is about training, developing and empowering leaders to establish ministries that address the needs of the “whole” person—body, mind and spirit.