Richard Reichert served with the C&MA from 1980-2014. He and his wife began in rural leadership in Loja, Ecuador, planted a church in the city of Guayaquil, taught in theological institutions in Loja, Guayaquil and Quito, and a variety of regional training locations while serving on the pastoral teams of the oldest evangelical church in Quito and one of Quito´s newest congregations, The Church of the Republic. He wrote Missions as a Contact Sport as a training manual for short-term teams and coauthored Un Siglo de Avance (A Century of Advance) with César Mendoza in 1997. His passion for exploring culture and church history is complimented by academic studies at the doctoral level to probe deeper into the church in Latin America. His D. Min. studies at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in 2002 were in the area of "Ministry in Complex Urban Settings." The program matched his appetite to develop leadership in Latin America while comprehending the complexities of urban church planting in the large cities of the continent. For the next seven years he put into practice those studies by developing a theological training program for lay house leaders in Cuba before a four-year assignment to Mexico City.