March 12, 2001
Northwest Baptists minister in
nation's least-churched region
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___PORTLAND, Ore.--The first thing Baptist pastors in the Northwest want Texas Baptists to understand is that life is different here. This isn't anywhere close to the Bible Belt--geographically or culturally.
___The second thing they want Texans to know is that doesn't intimidate them.
___Yes, Baptists in particular and evangelical Christians in general are a minority in much of the Northwest. But doing God's work is hard wherever you are, they explain.
MULTNOMAH FALLS, east of Portland along the Columbia River Gorge
___Yet by virtually any standard of measurement, Washington and Oregon together may form the most-unchurched region of the United States. Only 15 percent of the region's 9 million residents claim any Christian religious affiliation.
___"Being a Christian in California or Texas or Florida is popular. Here, being a Christian means you're weird," said Alfredo Valencia, pastor of Iglesia Vide Nueva in suburban Portland.
___Among the 4 million residents of metropolitan Seattle, for example, only 10 percent say they go to any church more than twice a year. Only 4 percent of the population attend an evangelical Christian church, and only one-half of 1 percent are Southern Baptist.
___"Throw a dart anywhere on the map and you'll hit a place that needs a church," said Gary Irby, new-work strategist with Puget Sound Baptist Association.
___"There are more people in Wal-Mart on Sunday morning than in any church in this area--maybe than in all the churches combined," said Joe Gonzales, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in rural Hermiston, Ore.
___In this environment, it's not a matter of people having grown up in a church and dropped out. Rather, this is a place where generations of families have not had any meaningful connection with a church.
___"People here are biblically illiterate," explained Jeff Iorg, an Abilene native who serves as executive director of the Northwest Baptist Convention. "To evangelize here is extremely relational, because you have to walk with them over time and help them understand the gospel."
___Imagine a population nearly the size of Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex combined. Then imagine 85 percent of that population completely unchurched.
___That's the territory of the Northwest Baptist Convention.
___Imagine one of the largest churches among that population being the country's leading New Age church.
___That's the situation in Portland, home of the New Life Enrichment Center, the largest New Age congregation in the United States.
___Imagine a place where there are coffee shops at nearly every major intersection but churches are spaced miles apart.
___That's the lay of the land in Seattle, where coffee is king and Jesus is not exactly a hot commodity. "You can drive on any major artery for miles and not see a church," Irby said.
___Imagine a public school district selling property virtually on the grounds of the local high school to the Mormon church for a seminary for indoctrinating students in a time-release program.
___That's the lesson learned in Kennewick, Wash., where Baptist high school student K.C. Rosser notes she and her Christian friends "usually are mistaken for Mormons."
___Despite these challenges, Baptist pastors and lay leaders in the Northwest are determined to see the glass as half full rather than half empty.
___"It seems like there might have been some things missing here, like programs for children," noted Jeff Strickland, a Lubbock native and chemical engineer who now is a lay leader at Kennewick Baptist Church in Kennewick, Wash. "But in the last four years, I've seen growth in my children I couldn't imagine happening in the South."
___"Every area has its barriers," noted Keith Evans, pastor of Greater Gresham Baptist Church in suburban Portland. "Overall, there is an anti-Christian atmosphere here, a hostility toward Christianity. But that's not true on an individual basis."
___Evans believes a 1993 Billy Graham crusade in the Portland area was a turning point for good. "The Lord is at work in this area," he said.
___One positive thing about the unchurched state of the Northwest is people don't have a lot of religious baggage standing in the way of a healthy relationship with God, Evans added. "It's not the norm to have generation after generation of Christianity to fall back on. ... Here, people go to church because they want to."
___And the potential for creating a positive influence is equally profound, he and others assert. The Northwest is home to such big-name enterprises as Microsoft, Intel, Boeing, Starbucks and Amazon.com.
___Reaching the people who work in those international companies could have a far-reaching impact, they insist.
___That's why Northwest Baptists today are emphasizing the need to create what Iorg calls "culture-current churches."
___At its beginning, the Northwest Convention primarily served transplanted Southerners--including many moving from Texas. By emphasizing their common Southern roots, these Baptists found enjoyable fellowship and comfort together. But they created a subculture in the Northwest that was not conducive to reaching outsiders with the gospel.
___Iorg recalls with pride the day his predecessor, Cecil Sims, "threw down the gauntlet" at a Northwest Convention annual meeting in the 1980s. "We're through starting Southern churches," Sims declared.
___That declaration launched development of a "Northwest strategy" aimed at creating indigenous leadership and starting churches that would appeal to all Northwesterners, not just transplanted Southerners.
___A major component of the plan has been the Northwest campus of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Iorg said. Starting this seminary campus in Vancouver, Wash., was "the most strategic decision in the convention's history," he said.
___To grow indigenous churches, the convention needed to begin retaining indigenous leadership, Iorg explained. But in the past, those called to ministry out of Northwest Baptist churches went away to seminary--usually either to Golden Gate in Mill Valley, Calif., or to Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth.
___And then they never came back to the Northwest.
___Because of the distance to the nearest Southern Baptist seminary, commuting was not even an option. "We are farther from Mill Valley than the other five SBC seminaries are from each other," Iorg said, noting the distance from Portland to Mill Valley is 600 miles.
___"How would you like to live in El Paso and drive to Fort Worth every week for classes?"
___So, through an innovative arrangement with Golden Gate Seminary, the Northwest Baptist Convention funds the Vancouver campus where students may do all the coursework leading to the master of divinity degree.
___Some students drive four hours or more one-way each week to attend the classes, and some leave home in the wee hours of the morning to make 8 a.m. classes on Mondays.
___After 20 years, the seminary strategy has begun to pay big dividends. The Northwest campus has graduated 135 students and has a current enrollment of about 90.
___More telling, perhaps, is this statistic: The last three presidents of the Northwest Baptist Convention have been graduates of the Northwest campus.
___"We are producing indigenous leaders and growing a Northwest strategy," Iorg said.
___The stream of Southerners coming to help with the Baptist work in the Northwest hasn't stopped. But those who come today are quickly plugged into the Northwest strategy.
___Iorg was such a transplant himself.
___The Hardin-Simmons University graduate and his wife moved to Portland in 1989 to start a contemporary church--only the second such congregation in the Northwest Convention at the time. Seven years later, he was elected executive director of the convention--at the age of 36.
___"This was a significant statement of the convention's commitment to the future being different than the past," Iorg explained.
___Today, the Northwest Baptist Convention is 53 years old and counts 425 churches and missions among its fellowship. Members of these congregations worship in more than a dozen languages. One-fourth of the convention's churches worship in a language other than English, and the convention's largest church is not English-speaking but Korean.
___The second-largest Romanian Baptist church in the United States is located in Portland. The first Japanese Baptist church in the United States to purchase land and build their own facility is located in Portland.
___Southern Baptists nationwide will pour additional resources into the Seattle area in 2002, as Seattle becomes a Strategic Focus City for the SBC's North American Mission Board. Additional evangelistic, church-starting and ministry emphases are planned for that year.
___"I'm predicting we're going to see spectacular results from that--particularly in church planting," Iorg said.
___Starting churches is a primary strategy of the Northwest Convention and the 17 associations within the convention, Iorg said. "We feel like in the long haul church planting is the best strategy for growth."
___Emphasizing an indigenous strategy in the Northwest does not preclude the need for Texas volunteers, Iorg insisted. In fact, were it not for the contributions of thousands of Texans through the years and even today, the convention would not be able to pursue its indigenous strategy so strongly, he said.
___"People have been incredible in their willingness to serve," he reported. "Texas Baptists have a can-do attitude."
___The partnership between the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Northwest Baptist Convention began in 1997 and will run through 2002.
___"Texas Baptists have a choice opportunity working with Baptists of the Northwest for church strengthening and church planting," said Don Sewell, director of the Texas Partnerships Resource Center. "We are glad to assist any Texas Baptist church in finding just the right opportunity in that beautiful part of our country that so needs the good news.
___"Churches and associations in the Northwest are looking for Texas churches who will work with them in a sister-church relationship," he added. "This kind of pairing will greatly benefit both parties. Thanks for praying about tackling such a wonderful and gratifying challenge."
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