Because of the scattered populations in North and South Dakota, most pastors affiliated with the Dakota Baptist Convention typically drive at least three to six hours one way simply to attend a meeting or a conference.
But convention leaders are implementing an initiative to bring ministers together in a more efficient manner.
The idea began last August when David Olford of Olford Ministries International in Memphis, Tenn., led a two-day preaching seminar at Capitol Heights Baptist Church, Pierre, S.D.
The event was streamed on the Web to five locations in North and South Dakota so that ministers who could not travel to Pierre could take part.
Following the successful pilot, a partnership between the pastor of Capitol Heights, O.H. Nipper, and Olford, son of the late preaching icon Stephen Olford, was formed to provide further training for pastors in the Dakotas.
At its annual meeting, the Dakota Baptist Convention voted unanimously to establish the Dakota Baptist School of Theology & Leadership (DBSTL), which is led by Nipper and is anchored around providing seminars via streaming video on the Internet so pastors can connect online rather than spending numerous hours on the road.
With Olford Ministries providing the core curriculum, LifeWay Church Resources and a group of Southern Baptist educators are enlisting pastors to serve as adjunct professors in various disciplines. DBSTL and Olford Ministries are streaming video of Olford’s three-hour Monday-night preaching seminars. The Dakota school also has permission to broadcast the seminars again each Saturday for those who were unable to catch the earlier session.
The first series of live webcasts began Jan. 23.
The school also is establishing distance-learning centers in the two-state region to enable bivocational pastors, deacons and leaders to travel less than two hours to participate in the online program.
Because residents of North and South Dakota are scattered, high-speed Internet, which would provide optimum conditions for the webcasts, is not yet available in every home in the area.
The distance-learning centers would provide the essential Internet connections.
“We believe it’s key to train pastors and lay leaders in the Dakotas, and [DBSTL] helps us to break down some of the barriers of geography … to have different sites where people can come to a virtual classroom, and allows folks to be able to log in on their own computer if they have DSL or high-speed,” said Jim Hamilton, executive director of the Dakota Baptist Convention.
“It really breaks down a lot of the barriers that stop us from equipping and educating our folks.”
Hamilton said pastors and lay leaders will be able to plug into the system at low cost.
“Some of the modules are … as low as $50 … very, very cheap,” he said. “It’s at the very minimal cost that we can get it down to make it.”
No other convention is using live streaming video in a concerted effort to train pastors, Nipper said, so the Dakota Baptist Convention is breaking new ground in an effort to meet the unique needs of its leaders.
“Our initial vision was for the Dakotas, and God has, as He always does, made it much larger than that.” (BP)
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