It was a cool Wednesday night in the Ozarks during the fall of 2011, my wife and I had moved to West Plains, Missouri only a few months before and we were starting to get connected with a new church and a new town. This evening could have been reserved for a small group, or a local church service, but instead we were invited to a different type of religious experience; Saint Louis Cardinals baseball. Game one of the World Series between the Cardinals and the Texas Rangers was about to get underway when we arrived at the house of some new acquaintances just before the first pitch.
Growing up in the rolling hills of Tennessee, I had been to small groups, dinner parties, and even sporting event watch parties before, but this one was a little different. One reason this was so different was because the passion on display was unlike anything I had seen before, but the other was the local cultural norms of these South Central Missourians. It definitely wasn’t the Southern Christian culture that I had been raised in, saved in, and served in. It wasn’t unbiblical; just different.
That night I was exposed to a valuable lesson helping to shape my personal and professional missiology; to reach others we have to embrace them right where they are. This missiology is true for churches reaching people and that is true for a ministry serving local churches like General Baptist Ministries. It is this missional model that Jesus exemplified over and over again.
In John chapter 1, the gospel writer’s prologue tells the story of Jesus leaving a culture and stepping into another culture so that he can reach that culture. It is this same model that Jesus displayed throughout his three and a half year ministry giving him the reputation of being a “friend of sinners”. These people many times weren’t really sinners, just culturally different.
What Jesus did was uncomfortable to some, sinful to others, but effective at his mission to reach people right where they were. It has been the same model foreign missionaries have been taught for years, yet when this concept is applied stateside we can get as uncomfortable as a young Tennessee pastor at a “small group” that could have been sponsored by one or two St. Louis based companies.
As Americans we have some interesting realities in our cultural geography. Our country has the fourth largest landmass of any country in the world, yet many times it is treated like one people group with one culture. For comparison, the continental United States would encompass all of continental Europe along with the United Kingdom and Ireland! That is over 40 different countries and many more people groups in the same area as the continental United States. Yet the mindset remains that Americans are all the same with the same way of doing things.
We know this isn’t true, though. America is one large place made up of many regional cultures. Some geographers proclaim up to 11 distinct regional cultures. We see these regional differences on really important topics like the right name for a carbonated beverage, the word choice for a few people, or the dialects by which we say those words. If we can be that encamped on things that don’t really matter, what about other regional issues like the Christian’s use of alcohol and tobacco? A woman’s place in the church? The church’s governance model or worship preferences? The expectation of the role of a pastor? Learning in the pulpit or in the classroom? Many not sinful, just culturally different.
It is these differences in people groups that require a specialized approach to serving our churches and pastors right where they are, and that approach is the genesis behind the Regional Ministries for General Baptist. A ministry with the purpose of serving as a bridge between the various local ministry partners and the services and resources of General Baptist Ministries. A ministry to span cultures and reach people right where there are, just like Jesus did.
This was the heart behind the Restructure Task Force developing this new ministry, and my heart as we begin the process of implementing it; providing culturally contextualized services to help ministry partners right where they are.
How we plan to do that is relatively simple as we create two grassroots opportunities for people to get and stay connected. The first way launches this year, with the introduction of regional conferences. These meetings branded as “For the Regions” events will become networking and training events held every other year in each region that we serve.
The other opportunity to reach people is the development of regional support staff made up of pastors and leaders from the regions they serve. These teams will be the bridge between the needs of local churches and pastors and the services and resources the General Baptist Ministries offers for them.
A crucial step in executing these two opportunities, was the foundational work by the Restructure Task Force in developing a regional structure for General Baptist Ministries. This structure takes each individual partner church and groups them into a service region. These regions don’t alter the church or any local associations, it just makes it easier for General Baptist Ministries to be able to be here for our local churches and leaders.
We as a Regional Ministries team want to be there for you to help plant new churches, to revitalize your congregation, and/or help you be a “sending church” to the nations. Many of us are also pastors in the trenches with you and we want to work with you through the Church Leadership Network to help all of us become better leaders together. If you think we can help you, please put us to the test. Let us help find the right resource, opportunity, or network that might be exactly what you need but don’t know you are looking for.
That is what that World Series watch party was for me. The Cardinals won that night in a low scoring pitchers duel. The series went back and forth leading to an epic game six and to “tomorrow night”. In 2020, ESPN ranked the 2011 World Series as one of the top five fall classics of all time. But for me, it led to some great friendships, a new passion, and the cementing of a missional philosophy that has stuck with me 11 years later. All because I said yes to the right invitation, walked into a new opportunity, and found the thing I didn’t know I needed that was perfect for me.
Let us help do the same for you.
About the Author: Dustin Thompson is the Vice President for Regional Ministries of General Baptist Ministries, and he is also the Executive Pastor of Generation Church in Portland, TN. He is married to his wife Melissa, and together they have two kids and a dog who loves to cook.