January 14, 2025
VILLA RICA, Ga. – Georgia Baptist Convention President Kevin Williams will lead a group of pastors and other church leaders to Guatemala on Monday for a five-day trip that he hopes will result in new churches springing up in the Central American country.
“We’ll go into new areas where we know we want to plant churches, where there are no churches,” Williams said.
Williams will be accompanied by:
* Pete Mattix, pastor at Lake Country Baptist Church in Eatonton, and Tony Nix, a member of the church who serves on its Missions Committee.
* Kenny Sexton, pastor of Satilla Baptist Church in Wray.
* Samuel Ayala, missions consultant with the Georgia Baptist Mission Board.
* Gary Bulley, director of the P2P Training Network.
* Garry Eudy, president of E3 Volunteers.
* David Singleton, general director (USA) of E3 Volunteers.
* Salvador Zapeta, general director (Central America) of E3 Voluntarios Centroamerica.
* Kevin Cruz, director of ministries ((Guatemala) for E3 Voluntarios Centroamerica.
Williams, pastor of First Baptist Church of Villa Rica, has been engaged in church planting in Guatemala for many years. He’s hoping the upcoming trip will convince additional Georgia churches to get involved.
The Georgia church leaders will meet with Guatemalan preachers who want to plant churches and who could benefit from having Georgia churches’ involvement.
“My goal is to get pastors into these places and just see what happens,” Williams said. “We want them to come back later with some of their church members, and the next thing you know, you have a new church work going on. Church members see that serving the Lord isn’t just a meeting once a week and having a sermon preached to them. They see that it’s going into the world and doing what Jesus told us to.”
