Southeastern recently announced a new partnership with the National Latino Evangelical Coalition (NaLEC) and the renaming of the Hispanic Leadership Center. The center will be renamed to the Adolfo Carrión Hispanic Leadership Center.
The partnership with NaLEC’s extensive network of churches across the U.S. will help increase SEU’s outreach to Hispanic and Latino students and equip them for leadership positions in ministry and other vocations. As SEU’s dedicated partner and a leader in the Latino Pentecostal and evangelical movement, NaLEC will promote, present and highlight SEU exclusively as the school of choice for the entire Hispanic and Latino Christian community in America and abroad.
This will enable the university to partner with more church networks that are developing leaders from diverse backgrounds. It will also connect the university’s current and future population of Hispanic and Latino students with one of the leading organizations in the Latino Pentecostal Association in North America. In the 2020-21 academic year, 2,070 Hispanic students were enrolled at SEU, which accounts for approximately 21.68% of student enrollment.
In the future, the university and NaLEC plan to develop curriculum in Spanish that would be used for college credit and certification programs for Latino-led churches and communities.
NaLEC, a national coalition of several thousand Hispanic evangelical congregations in the United States, was founded by Rev. Dr. Gabriel Salguero. Salguero is an SEU board member and the pastor of The Gathering Place in Orlando, Fla. NaLEC’s mission is to respond to a real need for Latino and Latina evangelical voices committed to serving Christ, empowering the Latino church, serving the common good and pursuing justice in the public square. NaLEC seeks to create national awareness about the growing number of Latino evangelicals who stand ready to impact their generation.
“Southeastern University is an ideal partner for the U.S. and global Latino Pentecostal communities. Their commitment to empowering and equipping the Hispanic Pentecostal church and its growing cadre of leaders is unparalleled,” said Salguero. “NaLEC and its member churches are honored to collaborate with SEU as it seeks to serve the fastest-growing segment of U.S. Pentecostalism. We are grateful to be a part of this landmark initiative that will yield abundant fruit.”
The Adolfo Carrión Hispanic Leadership Center will encourage and create educational opportunities for Hispanic students, build relationships across the nation through partnerships with the local church and fulfill the university’s mission of equipping students to discover and develop their divine design. Through this partnership, SEU will be able to better serve NaLEC pastors and congregations with affordable and accessible education through a direct partnership to the Lakeland campus and through delivering this education at the local church level.
“SEU wants to be leading the way with Latino churches to raise up the next generation of leaders while partnering alongside what the Assemblies of God is already doing in the nation,” said President Dr. Kent Ingle. “We look forward to partnering with the NaLEC. We are honored to rename our Hispanic Leadership Center in remembrance of an influential leader who served Christ and others.”
