Every Sunday night, Lisa Rose meets with a small church. They’re precious to God and precious to her, but she said there’s something else about them that’s significant too — and she doesn’t think they even know it.
“I don’t think they realize in the big picture of eternity how historically important they are,” she said.
Mixtec Church, which meets in a building provided by Highland Gardens Baptist Church in Montgomery, joined Montgomery Baptist Association in October 2023.
Rose said to her knowledge, there’s no other official Mixtec Baptist church in the world. It’s a “historical moment” — and the answer to a lot of prayers.
The Americas’ most unengaged unreached group
Back in 2007 when Rose first learned about the Mixtec, she said the International Mission Board had identified them as the most unengaged unreached people group in all of the Americas.
At the time, she was serving as MBA’s director of compassion ministries, and when Mixtec people began arriving at area ministries, she and others thought they were Spanish speakers. But they weren’t.
The Mixtec people are indigenous to Mexico, but they have their own language. Roughly 800,000 Mixtec live in Mexico, with another 200,000 or so living in the U.S., mostly in California.
“We found out that what they spoke was called Mixteco,” Rose said. “I started doing a lot of research.”
And she and others started building relationships with the Mixtec. At the beginning, they only knew of one Mixtec believer — a young woman who had been introduced to Jesus while in foster care.
‘Very difficult culture to share the gospel’
“But even though she had come to faith, she had not yet experienced Christianity in her own culture,” Rose said.
Mixtec culture is deeply tied to ancestor worship and devotion to the saints, and it’s a very difficult culture to share the gospel in, Rose said. “The work has been long and hard. But we’ve come a long way.”
Over time, God opened doors for her and others to start Bible studies with some of the Mixtec families they’d befriended. That led to the first few believers, which led to the start of the church in 2017.
“I’ve known many of the adult believers since they were in elementary school and seen them grow up, become Christians and mature in their faith and in beginning leadership skills,” Rose said. “They’re learning to share their faith and learning not to fear their culture.”
Rose said she and others have also seen God do other amazing things to draw the Mixtec people to Himself.
‘Just one of those God things’
In late 2018, she and John Halbrooks, a member of First Baptist Church Montgomery who serves as pastor of Mixtec Church, went to Choctaw Baptist Association to share with them about the Mixtec people. Terry Long, the association’s director of missions, had a heart for the people group but hadn’t met any Mixtec yet.
Or at least that’s what he thought — he took Rose and Halbrook out to lunch that day to introduce them to a man at a Mexican restaurant whom he had led to faith months ago, and as they talked, they found out he was Mixtec.
“It was just one of those God things,” Rose said. “Terry’s face was incredible when he realized that he had led a Mixtec man to the Lord without knowing it.”
The following year, Rose and Halbrooks saw another miracle — a way to help reach the Mixtec in Mexico in one particularly hard-to reach area. Some IMB missionaries there had tried to make connections in the community and found the door slammed shut — that is, until some of the Montgomery Mixtec reached out to their family members there and asked if their friends from the U.S. could come visit.
Doors opened in Mexico
They said yes. And over meals and shared stories, the doors were opened. Four years after that visit, IMB missionaries saw the first person in that area come to faith in Jesus.
“By the time he got baptized, he had shared the gospel with several members of his family, and they are actually meeting as a Bible study with a meal on Sunday nights, very similar to what we do here in Montgomery,” Rose said.
At the same time, God was at work in another city in Mexico among the Mixtec. In summer 2022, two student missionaries from Alabama got to see the first baptisms there. A few months later, 15 more new believers were baptized all at one time.
More were baptized there as recently as January.
“The Mixtec are still unreached, but it’s an engaged people group now,” Rose said.
Rose retiring from planting work
In addition to the church in Montgomery and the IMB’s work in Mexico, believers are sharing with the Mixtec in other places in the United States, like Bakersfield, California and Richmond, Virginia.
And in Montgomery, Rose feels like it’s time for her to pass the baton to the growing group of Mixtec believers. She’s retiring March 15 from her planting role with Mixtec Church.
“I feel very at peace with the timing,” she said. “I think sometimes we need to step back in order for our younger believers to step up. I have begun to see that already over the past few months, and so I’m very, very excited about what the future holds for them.”
In recent months, the church has been learning to “story” the Bible so that they can share the gospel in a natural way.
“Since then, our Mixtec believers have become more confident in their faith and are starting to take leadership,” Rose said.
Discipling future pastors and missionaries
For now, Halbrooks will continue leading the group, but both he and Rose pray that it won’t be long before God raises up a Mixtec pastor, or a Spanish-speaking pastor with a heart for the Mixtec.
Rose said she thinks about that as she directs the volunteers who teach children’s Sunday School at Mixtec Church. In all churches where kids and teens are being discipled, volunteers are shaping the next generation of leaders, and that’s important, Rose said. But it hits a little different with this first-generation group of believers, and she encourages volunteers to remember that.
“A pastor might come from them one day,” Rose said. “And maybe one day they’ll go to Mexico and be missionaries to their own people.”
Neal Hughes, MBA director of missions, said there’s been so many full circle moments in this ministry. He said “we won’t know until heaven if this is true,” but he’s heard it’s possible that one of the reasons some Mixtec moved to Montgomery in the first place is because of a ministry Heritage Baptist Church had in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1980s as part of an MBA partnership there.
Involvement from the beginning
“We believe, and others do as well, and the Mixtecs in Montgomery have given testimony to this as well, that when the door came open for them to come down out of the mountains and migrate to America, there were three places where people had touched their lives — Bakersfield, California; Richmond, Virginia; and Montgomery, Alabama,” Hughes said.
Whether it happened exactly that way or not, he said he knows this — it’s been a blessing and a privilege to be at ground zero of what God is doing among the Mixtec people.
“The genesis of this from the very beginning has been Lisa — she went from an acquaintance to deep love and passion for the Mixtec unreached people group,” Hughes said. “It shaped and molded her ministry.”
Several Montgomery churches have been involved in ministry to the Mixtec in their local area for years, and Hughes said he attributes a lot of that to Rose.
“She and John have worked well as a team, but Lisa has really been at the heart from the very beginning and has led to multiply leaders to help this ministry,” he said. “She’s played a vital role in the core development of these disciples of Christ.”
Rose said for her, it’s been a joy.
“I’ve gotten the privilege along with several others to be able to open up the door to the gospel both here and in Mexico,” she said. “It makes my heart sing.”
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