April 24 2000

ARTICLE TOOLS

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The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has a new president, a new office, and a new mission. The 58-year-old organization is busy reinventing itself, reaching out to mainline churches, charismatics, women, youth, and people of color in an effort to "embrace the whole body of Christ.""The NAE is a river of healthy churches moving in unity to transform culture," Kevin Mannoia told the 319 registered participants at NAE's annual convention in Arlington, Virginia, on March 6-8. Mannoia, who started full time as the association's president last July, says NAE's reason for existence has changed from providing an alternative to theological liberalism to calling the church to transform communities.In an effort to recognize evangelical renewal movements within mainline denominations, the NAE board voted to allow member organizations to hold dual membership with other organizations, such as the National Council of Churches (NCC).The association also welcomed its fifty-first member denomination, the charismatic Association of Vineyard Churches.

"There were those who had written off NAE—that it was dying or at least under the oxygen tent," says new NAE chairman Edward Foggs, current minister-at-large and former general secretary of the Church of God (Anderson) Executive Council. But Mannoia's leadership is a breath of fresh air for many. "He's willing to take risks," Foggs says.One of Mannoia's first acts as president was to move the association's headquarters from Carol Stream, Illinois, to temporary facilities in Glendale, California, with plans to find a permanent home in nearby Azusa.Mannoia sees the California office—together with NAE's government affairs office in Washington, D.C.--as making a bicoastal impact ...