Outreach Announces Frank Dimmock as Africa Mission Specialist
The Outreach Foundation is excited to announce that Frank Dimmock will join the mission staff on January 1, 2017, as an Africa mission specialist. For thirty-five years Frank served the church in Africa as a Presbyterian Church (USA) mission co-worker, focusing on ministries of health and development. More broadly, his central interest is the welfare of children. Since 2013, he has worked with Presbyterian World Mission as the global poverty alleviation catalyst, based in Louisville.
A native of North Carolina and graduate of North Carolina State University in pre-medicine, Frank has a master’s degree in public health and completed doctoral work in international public health and epidemiology from the Tulane University School of Public Health in New Orleans. In 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Davidson College for his long and effective service to the church.
Frank and his wife, Nancy Miller Dimmock (daughter of retired Presbyterian mission coworkers David and Polly Miller) have eight children, six of whom are adopted. In addition to engaging in ministry in their home and raising their children, Nancy co-founded and coordinated the Ministry of Hope crisis nurseries in Southern Africa, a ministry serving abandoned and neglected infants and vulnerable children.
Frank, when serving as the World Mission Africa health liaison, also supported early childhood development centers in rural Ethiopia and a safe house for at-risk adolescent girls in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Drawing upon his decades of experience and deep relationships across the continent of Africa, Frank will build the capacity of church partners in Africa as he networks the Christian Health Associations in Africa and as he shares best practices with partners and congregations working with vulnerable children and families. A new dimension of Dimmock’s ministry is trauma healing, so critical in the African context, and he will be training local facilitators in healing the wounds of trauma. His work with U.S. congregations will provide opportunities for Presbyterians to participate in the deep faith and transformational work of the church in Africa.
Executive Director Rob Weingartner observes, “Frank embodies all that is best about Presbyterians serving in God’s mission. His life is centered in Christ, he is committed to sharing the Good News, he is highly-educated and a recognized mission expert. He loves building creative mission partnerships that respect and draw upon the richness of different cultures. And he has an unshakeable confidence in the power of God’s love to transform lives and communities.”