When I am watching my pastors be effective for the Lord, and they’re drawing attention to the Lord and nobody knows who Jim Turnbo is, but they see God blessing in that church, that’s what gets me going like nothing else.” So said Jim Turnbo.
His humility and servant-spirit notwithstanding, Turnbo’s “people” — the Native American, Hispanic, African American and Anglo Southern Baptists of western New Mexico — know who Turnbo is and what he is about.
While his official title is director of missions for the Mountain and Western Baptist Associations, Turnbo, 48, is first and foremost a church planter, jointly funded by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) and the Baptist Convention of New Mexico. When he’s not planting new churches, he’s a loving gardener tending established churches, ensuring their continued healthy growth. And in his “spare” time, Turnbo is a coach, developing a cadre of discipled leaders among Baptist pastors and laypeople in New Mexico.
His ministry in New Mexico is sort of a fulfilled prophecy. One of his mentors once told Turnbo — a young pastor at the time — “Jim, there will come a time when God turns your attention from building your own ministry to helping others build theirs.” Two years ago, he began doing just that in the “Land of Enchantment.”
The cities in Turnbo’s two associations are few and far between. There’s Gallup with some 20,000 inhabitants, located on I-40 almost at the Arizona state line; Grants (pop. 9,000), where Jim and his wife, Karen, live, about halfway between Gallup and Albuquerque; and Socorro and its 9,000 residents, due south of Albuquerque.
With New Mexico’s vast deserts, mountains, mesas and small communities — the state conjures up visions of the Old West. To the north of Turnbo are the Native Americans — the Navajo Nation and the Laguna, Acoma and Zuni Pueblos. To his south are the Anglos, including the cowboy culture.
“Eighty percent of our people are in the open country … so you have isolated, relatively small communities,” Turnbo said. “But each pocket of people deserves the gospel and so that’s what we’re here for.
“We have a mission field of 90 percent lostness among the people groups identified in the four counties. These are folks who need the gospel but they’re not in large cities or glamorous locations. Most of them are in isolated pockets in communities that can never support a full-time church. God has placed a core group of Christians here as His instruments for getting the gospel to them.”
Turnbo supports 25 churches, and only four of them have full-time pastors with seminary training. The other 21 are served by bivocational staff, many of whom are “home-grown,” indigenous lay leaders Turnbo himself has developed and coached.
“Developing leadership and raising the level of lay leaders is one of our major priorities, especially with our Native Americans. We have to be about going where the churches are. We can’t just have a meeting and say ‘y’all come.’ We have to be more relational.”
Turnbo says the state’s diversity — along with the geographic size of his mission field — is a big challenge.
With a population density of only 16 persons per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited state in the Union. Some of the churches Turnbo supports are 400 miles apart.
In addition to the Native Americans and Anglos, Turnbo’s mission field includes a large percentage of Hispanics and African Americans.
“This incredible diversity of people groups in a spread-out geography of a vast territory means you just can’t take a program off the shelf and apply it to every one of our churches,” Turnbo said. “You have to do customized assessment and help our churches where they’re at.”
Karen supports her husband as his ministry assistant, a Vacation Bible School coordinator, music leader and as a mentor for other pastors’ wives. The Turnbos have three children. (NAMB)
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