Goal: 50,000 Hispanics become Southern Baptists within five years

(RNS) A Southern Baptist task force has urged leaders of the nation's largest Protestant denomination to take "unprecedented" measures to evangelize the growing number of Hispanics in the country.

Goals include baptizing more than 50,000 Hispanics by 2010 and starting 250 new Hispanic churches each year during that same period. The effort to start new churches, if successful, would give the denomination a total of 3,980 churches by 2010.

The task force members said the denomination must work among both Hispanic church members and non-Hispanics to evangelize Hispanics in their communities and workplaces.

The task force also recommended that the denomination's mission board create a bilingual Web site to communicate with Hispanic Baptists and seminaries should offer training for Hispanic leaders at a range of education levels.

Task force leaders noted that there must be outreach to Hispanics who are not English speakers as well as those who are.