George Russ is someone
people can’t help but like.
Spend a little time with
Russ and you will walk away feeling life is great. When Russ gets excited his
voice gets louder and his eyes widen and those listening get even more excited
about the subject. He knows where the great restaurants are and though he’s
probably done the tourist thing a million times he still gets excited sharing
about it. His energy seems endless.
It’s a good thing Russ is
energetic, because as executive director of the Metropolitan New York Baptist
Association his work is cut out for him. The association serves 20 million
people within a 50-mile radius of Times Square. About 500 people groups are
represented and every Sunday morning congregants in the 260 association
churches speak more than 20 languages. In the largest borough, Queens, the
Flushing Meadows zip code alone includes people from 133 nations.
Cultural and ethnic
diversity is just the beginning. The association works among economic and
educational diversity. Some areas they serve are poor while in others, such as
Greenwich, Conn., (the wealthiest county in the United States of any county
with more than 50,000 people), an average home sells for $2 million. The Bronx
High School of Science is one of the top in the country, while another school
in the Bronx saw an incoming class of 1,400 graduate only 24.
Even with the
facts laid bare, Russ is not discouraged by an enormous task. “The whole world
is here,” he said. “Whatever happens here affects the world. In the providence
of God He has us here. I have seen so much to be excited about, to rejoice in
by just visiting these churches that I’m not discouraged at all. I’m really
not.”
BSC photo George Russ, right, executive director of the Metropolitan New York Baptist Association, talks with Mike Sowers of North Carolina Baptist Men, who is coordinating the New York partnership, and other leaders about working in a large mission field. |
Russ has only been director for
six months but has served New York all his life. He was born in Jamaica,
Queens, and his wife grew up in Brooklyn. They met on Long Island and still
live there.
Russ never really thought
about full time ministry in his home state until he heard a Christian leader
say this: New York will never be won to Christ until her native sons are
leading the church. “That never left me,” Russ said.
Russ took this challenge
seriously and after seminary pastored a church on Long Island. This church of
12 had never had a full time pastor. Russ learned he was “called to shepherd a
community and not just the people in the church.”
Before coming to the
association Russ served 26 years with the Baptist Convention of New York and
worked in areas of evangelism, including community ministry. He wants to target
community transformation as the association enters a partnership with the
Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. He wants to “turn the church inside
out and serve the community. Love the community until they ask you why,” he
said.
Opportunities to serve are
endless. Just focusing on the New York City public school system, which is the
largest school district in the world with 1.1 million children, is a task in
itself.
The partnership will be
reciprocal, as North Carolina Baptists and New York Baptists learn from one
another. Russ identified three areas where New York may be able to help North
Carolina Baptists: urban church planting, reaching international students and
pastoring multi-ethnic churches. “It’s one thing to say this is what heaven
should be like,” Russ said. “It’s another thing to pastor people who have very
different expectations of what a church is and what a pastor does and what
worship should be like.”
Thinking long-term, Russ
noted several “glaring places” of need. Long Island is one, so is the Bronx.
“We have 600,000 Hispanic speaking people in the Bronx and we do not have one
Hispanic congregation in the Bronx,” he said. The Jewish and Muslim populations
continue to grow and “Russian speaking people are coming by the thousands to
Brooklyn.”
A key scripture for Russ as
he ministers in the city is Jeremiah 29, when Jeremiah tells the exiles in
Babylon to make their home in the city and to seek the peace and prosperity of
the city. This native son is doing more than that — he is praying the
prosperity of one city will change the world.
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