Texans train on ‘the next great mission field’

Three Texas Baptists spent the week of Aug. 7 in South Dakota, teaching 24 Native Americans leadership skills in crisis resiliency, suicide intervention and volunteer chaplaincy.

And all three—Bobby Smith, director of chaplaincy relations for the Baptist General Convention of Texas; Will Bearden, a BGCT associate endorser and pastoral care chaplain; and Georgia Risenhoover, coordinator of the BGCT’s Hands on Ministry volunteer chaplaincy training program—say they learned as much, or more, than they taught.

Potential for revival

“It was an eye-opening experience,” Smith said. “I believe the (Native American) reservations in this country could well be the next great mission field for Texas Baptists. And maybe, just maybe, a great revival will break out on one of these reservations and spread across America and the world.”

His sentiment echoed BGCT Executive Director David Hardage, who described the spiritual plight and spiritual potential of American Indians a few months ago. And in 1975, evangelist Billy Graham said: “The Native American is a sleeping giant. He is awakening. The original American could become the evangelist who will help win America for Christ.”

Building trust

Mark Littleghost (left) and Tanner Sager were among the Native American Christians who visited the Granbury area at the invitation of The Church on Thistle Ridge in March. They gave testimony of their Christian faith in several churches and other venues. They also spoke about the poverty Native Americans face on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota.Joe Donnell, executive director and founder of Warriors Circle, who sponsored the Texas Baptists’ venture, called their teaching not only beneficial, but also a beginning of trust.

Many Native Americans have a great distrust of white people, which he is trying to help overcome, said Donnell, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Tribe.

“This teaching of leadership skills provided to us by Texas Baptists is a step in the right direction, but it’s going to take much more,” he said “The three people who came here earned the trust of those they taught, so those they taught will go back to their respective reservations and share the information they received from this training.”

Part of the tribe

In a special ceremony, Risenhoover—whose father was born on a reservation and a sixth-generation descendent of Chief War Eagle—was adopted back into the tribe.

“I was moved by and appreciative of the ceremony, because most of all, it was a validation of the spiritual truths about Christ that I was teaching them in regard to chaplaincy,” she said.

“But it did make me want to dig deeper into my heritage and to do more to help a mostly lost nation of Native Americans find Jesus as their Savior and Lord.”

‘Third World countries within our borders’

Smith said he was moved by the poverty and hopelessness he both saw and felt.

“Most of us attend sanitized churches where the majority of members have no concept of what’s happening on reservations in America and in Canada,” he said. “But if people did know, I’m convinced that they would want to do something about it.

“These reservations are Third World countries within our borders, where alcoholism and drug abuse are rampant, where suicide, rape and murder are considered normal, and where Mexican drug cartel gangs roam at will.

“The government can’t fix what’s wrong on reservations, but Jesus Christ can—if we can recruit enough Christians who want to do the work required and Christians who will provide the support to do it.”

Discipleship training

Donnell is doing his part through his Warriors Circle three-phase discipleship training program. He houses 16 students in his basement and trains and feeds them for four months. He can only do that three times annually. But he hopes to obtain a facility that will house and train 300 students at a time.

“That would be ideal, since it would enable us to get six times more disciples on the reservations annually than we can at the present time,” he said. “Obviously, the quicker that can be done the better. People are dying every day on the reservations, and most have never accepted Christ.”

The Warriors Circle’s discipleship training includes:

• Inner-healing, which helps students recover from trauma. It enables students to get to the root causes of issues that control their lives, he said.
• Biblical training, social awareness, spiritual formation, leadership development, career development and ministry outreach.
• A foundation necessary for employment, linkage with educational opportunities, job opportunities and internships.

“We really have to start from ground zero, which is why a relationship with Texas Baptists is important to us,” Donnell explained. “Texas Baptists have people with the expertise and spiritual training that will provide our people with the tools to lead.”

Smith is bringing eight Native Americans, including Donnell, to Texas Baptists’ annual Chaplaincy Training Conference, Sept. 13-16. They will be exposed to eight tracks of continuing education.

“The spiritual training that a person receives at our conference is deep, very deep,” Smith said. “And hunger for the word of God and how to implement it in their culture is one of the primary things I witnessed during the teaching we did in South Dakota. The Native American disciples who are witnessing on the reservations have a seriousness about the Great Commission very much akin to what I think Christians must have been like in the first century following the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. They’re intense.”

Risenhoover agreed. “Although I own land on a reservation, have relatives who lived on a reservation and an aunt who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, I visited a reservation only once when a child,” she said. “I never truly knew the plight of the American Indian until I met Joe Donnell, who I discovered is one of my distant relatives.

“Joe has educated me about some of the things taking place on the reservations that are even more important than lack of jobs, education and what many of us consider normal essentials of life. That’s an absence of God in the lives of the people.”