Sitting around three tables in the corner of a local restaurant in Newberry, a small community kept alive economically by a state prison, leaders of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Baptist Association reflected on life and ministry in their area.
Each participant had driven at least two hours to attend the meeting and still had covered less than half the width of the association.
“The key to happiness is being where God wants you,” observed Herschel Smith, director of missions. “But that does not mean the work is any easier.”
Ron Libey, pastor of First Baptist Church, Gwinn, explained that First, Gwinn, was his “dream church.” He served as a deacon in the church before retiring from the Air Force. Then in 1992, he returned as pastor.
“I could have gone anywhere, but this is where the Lord wanted me and this is where my heart is,” he declared. But the work is slow and the work is hard.
“I pray to get one life or one family a year that realizes what it is like to be sold out to Jesus,” he shared. “Then they can influence others in their families or their friends.
“The truth is I might get one family every two or three years.”
Sue Skutley, association treasurer, said she has been a member of a Baptist fellowship in Marquette for eight years and the mission church has seen no growth. “But it is not because of a lack of trying. We have done everything we can think of but nothing has worked.”
The mission church held a 2008 Seder service that drew many people, Skutley noted. “But they never came back,” she said. “We followed up but could not get anyone.”
Now the church is trying a Saturday night worship service for people who said they might come if there was “something other than a Sunday morning service.”
Libey echoed that sentiment. He said in 2008, with the help of an Alabama team, First, Gwinn, sponsored a program focused on hunting and fishing. “We thought it was the perfect answer for our area, which is so devoted to recreation.”
The night of the program, the church was filled and people listened to the testimonies shared by Alabama Baptists. “But then the folks just went on with their lives,” Libey lamented. “They never came back.”
Skutley, known for her “gift of witnessing,” recalled numerous times of sharing Christ with others. “The people are polite. They listen but they will not open up,” she said.
Smith acknowledged that during his 16 years as director of missions, he has often seen moments of discouragement and doubt.
“Our people try hard but they get no results,” he said.
His wife, Fran, added that family tradition is strong in the Upper Peninsula. She related one incident in which a person interested in Christ said he would have to go to a Baptist church in another community because his family members would never allow him to go to a Baptist church in the town where they all lived.
“Here, if you are born a Catholic or a Lutheran, you are a Catholic or Lutheran for life,” she said.
Fran Smith recalled one lady who began reading her Bible after visiting a Baptist church. Then she began teaching what the Bible said in her church. It was not long before she was asked to leave because what the woman read in the Bible was not consistent with the teachings of that denomination.
Libey shared of a woman asking “what’s all this stuff about being born again” after one of her children attended a program at First, Gwinn. “I just handed her my Bible and asked her to read John 3. Then she asked me why her church did not teach that, and I told her I could not answer for her church’s teachings.”
A few days later, the pastor of the woman’s church called Libey and told him never to visit people from that church again.
Judy Webb, who with her husband, Mike, leads a Bible study in Sault Ste. Marie, bubbled over with news of three children who had just made professions of faith and were to be baptized.
When she and her husband joined the group, she told everyone, “My niche in life is to get these children to Jesus.”
Music is a key to growth for some churches. At Christian Fellowship, Newberry, Pastor Mike Ash is an accomplished musician. He is using that talent to reach others by hosting a “jam session” at the church during which everyone is invited to bring his or her instrument and join in “the picking and singing.”
Through this outreach, Christian Fellowship is reaching people who have never been in church before and some are being saved.
It was classical music that helped set Houghton Baptist Church on the road to reaching people. The pastor there offered violin lessons and piano lessons. Now the church is on the path of steady growth.
These victories indicate that Baptists in the Upper Peninsula are on the right track, Herschel Smith said. He asked Alabama Baptists to pray that churches would not get so caught up in their struggle to survive that they lose sight of people who need the Lord.
Of the seven Southern Baptist churches in the Upper Peninsula, only two average more than 50 in worship.
Smith described the 2008 simultaneous revivals led by Alabama Baptists from Sand Mountain Baptist Association, Moody and elsewhere as “great.” One team is coming back this summer.
But churches in the Upper Peninsula were disappointed with the Alabama response for 2009.
“We filed several requests for teams to work with us for this year, but none of those requests were picked up by Alabama Baptist churches,” Smith shared. Still the group around the table was not discouraged. “We want to be ready when it is God’s time to harvest,” everyone agreed.
For more information about work in Michigan, contact Reggie Quimby at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 239.
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