VALLEY FORGE, PA (ABNS 3/19/13)—American Baptist International Ministries (IM) is pleased to introduce two new Directors who began their three-year term of service on January 1, 2013.

Rev. Katherine (Kathy) Longhat, Muskogee, OK, is director for the Center for American Indians – Students of Promise at Bacone College in Muskogee, OK. She has served as pastor of the Rainy Mountain Kiowa Indian Baptist Church in Mountain View, OK and Watonga Indian Baptist Church in Watonga, OK. Longhat’s passion for cross-cultural mission is combined with an ability to communicate IM’s missiology and mission opportunities among the Native American Indian constituencies. Longhat is an accomplished musician and soloist.

“ABC runs through my veins from my earliest memories,” Longhat muses. “One of the oldest Native American ABC churches in Western Oklahoma is where the majority of my Kiowa family were faithful members who were baptized, married and buried there. While I may have attended other denominations in my past, it is the American Baptist Church that has challenged me and has helped me truly understand what it means to be the ‘beloved community of Christ to all people.’”

Dr. Allen Yeh, Buena Park, CA, is professor of Missiology at Biola University in La Mirada, CA and is founder and chair of the World Christianity consultation at the Evangelical Theological Society. God called Allen to mission at the 1996 Urbana student mission conference. He has engaged in short-term mission in five countries in Asia and Latin America and is co-author of Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey & Adoniram Judson, Mission Pioneers (forthcoming from Wipf & Stock Publishers in 2013).

Yeh is passionate about the American Baptist movement. He says, “I love the ABC for its history and legacy. Adoniram Judson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Carl F. H. Henry are three of my heroes…. I am passionate for multi-ethnicity, which is another drawing point of the ABC for me. But I want to see not just multi-ethnicity in the denomination as a whole, but within individual congregations as well.”

For more information, contact Catherine Nold: catherine.nold@abc-usa.org.

American Baptist International Ministries was organized in 1814 as the first Baptist international mission agency in America. It began its pioneer mission work in Burma and today works in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas serving more than 1,800 long-term and short-term missionaries. Its central mission is to help people come to faith in Jesus, grow in their relationship with God, and change their worlds through the power of the Spirit. It works with respected partners in over 70 countries in ministries that meet human need.

American Baptist Churches USA is one of the most diverse Christian denominations today, with over 5,200 local congregations comprised of 1.3 million members, across the United States and Puerto Rico, all engaged in God’s mission around the world.