Southern has welcomed Edgar Alquinta to the university as coordinator for the Evangelistic Resource Center (ERC). His primary responsibility is to run "mission control” for evangelism in the School of Religion, shepherding the countless trips its students take each year. This robust job description includes recruiting students, fundraising, training young evangelists, and preaching.

Alquinta graduated from Southern in 2009 and most recently served as the senior pastor of Knoxville Central Church. He has also worked for an international tour agency in Chile as a coordinator in charge of hotel accommodations, flight scheduling, local transportation, and city tours. The combination of his previous work experience is what led Carlos Martin, professor in the School of Religion and director of the Robert H. Pierson Institute of Evangelism and World Missions, to extend a formal call to Alquinta to join the ERC.

"He participated in several ERC trips with me during his time at Southern to Guatemala, Ghana, and the Dominican Republic," Martin said. "He has a demonstrated a commitment to evangelism and his tour guide background will be very useful for the position."

Alquinta hopes to accomplish many things while leading the ERC. Among those is to continue to keep in touch with the students after each mission experience and even after the students graduate. He hopes to make Southern the "go-to" place to receive coaching, mentoring, and any other information related to missions in the local field.     

"I believe that the students can become a great asset to local pastors if we continue to keep in touch with them after they graduate," Alquinta said.

During the 2014-2015 school year, Southern’s ERC has several trips lined up and is vigorously working on putting together several more.

"We have been invited to send 80 preachers to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and have also received invitations to go to Mexico," Martin said. "We are all excited!”