From the day Alabama Baptists approved a partnership with Baptists of Michigan, I have anxiously anticipated telling the story of what God is doing through Southern Baptists in that place. To understand that desire, one has to know some of my life story because it is tied to two places — Alabama and Michigan.
Some of my early memories involve riding in a wagon to revival services at nearby churches in Lawrence County, Ala. I still remember the night sky as we rode home. Some of us children would lie in the bed of the wagon and count the shooting stars as they dashed across the heavens.
My family farmed my grandmother’s 80 acres. There I started school and learned about life.
But life on the farm was hard and we were not successful. In the early 1950s, my father took half the money from a year’s cotton crop and went to Michigan in search of work. My brother and I stayed on the farm with our mother, went to school and earned what money we could doing chores for neighbors. About two months later, my father returned and packed us up and we all moved to Michigan. My father worked in the automobile factories. My mother worked in a hospital as a licensed practical nurse.
We did not find a church home those first few years. But when Southern Baptists began a mission called First Southern Baptist Church, Ypsilanti, we were soon active. My mother transferred her membership from Central Baptist Church, Decatur. She had been a member there when my father worked with the Decatur Fire Department.
Two weeks later, following a Saturday evening conversation with Pastor Sam Cathey, I walked the aisle of that little church and gave my heart to Jesus Christ. Two weeks after my decision, my brother accepted the Lord. Four years later, during the last service of a weeklong revival, my father made a profession of faith. People had prayed for my father so long that they sang songs while he and I went home and got a change of clothes so he could be baptized that night.
By that time, our church had relocated and changed its name. Now it was North Prospect Baptist Church. For the most part, we were all displaced Southerners. Fifty years ago, Michigan was a promised land of economic opportunity and a lot of Alabama families who struggled to make ends meet migrated northward.
It was there I was called to preach and later ordained. As a teenager, I helped start two churches, doing everything from door-to-door visitation to revival leadership to working as a volunteer in new ministries. I was one of the youngest messengers to the organizing convention of the Baptist State Convention of Michigan.
When I returned South to attend a Baptist college and prepare for what I anticipated would be a life of pastoral ministry, I was surprised to learn that other preacher boys had not had the same opportunities afforded me by being part of what Baptists called in those days “pioneer missions.”
At times, I have thought about what my life might have been like had Southern Baptists not started a mission in Ypsilanti. Would my family have become active in another kind of church? Not likely. Would I have heard the gospel? Would I have been saved? Other church groups preach the saving grace of Jesus Christ, but it is unlikely I would have been in a place to hear it.
Had Southern Baptists not cared about the thousands of families who migrated to the North for jobs, I could be lost and living a very different kind of life.
Today the economic situation is reversed. Even though Alabama is going through difficult times right now, the economic situation in Michigan is much worse. Most of the auto plants — long the economic engine of Michigan — are closed or have cut back production. Now the state is attempting to diversify its economy, something Alabama did a decade or two ago. Michigan’s unemployment rate, home foreclosure rate and most other economic indicators place the state near the top of the economically distressed category.
Southern Baptist churches in Michigan have also changed. Today the churches focus on reaching Michiganders, not displaced Southerners. Leadership is coming from homegrown talent. The story of Wayne Parker at Merriman Road Baptist Church, Garden City, (see story, page 7) is not that unusual anymore. Baptists of the state are ethnically diverse with worship being conducted in 13 languages and cultures. Some churches use traditional worship, some contemporary. The key ingredient is that the churches are attempting to reach the people who live around them.
One thing is still true — Baptists in Michigan have few resources and need help. Calhoun Baptist Association in the Anniston area has more total members, resident members and financial contributions to its churches than the Baptist State Convention of Michigan. Yet the ministry opportunities in Michigan are several times greater than those of a single Alabama Baptist association.
Michigan Baptists need missions partners to come alongside them in imagining opportunities for ministry, help them turn opportunities into realities, encourage them and let them know they are not alone in the work of the Lord.
Alabama Baptists are doing wonderful things in Michigan. We hope the Spanning the Globe focus in this week’s issue (pages 5–14) will communicate some of the victories. But much more is needed. Michigan is not the other side of the world. There is not a language barrier. It is not overly costly to travel there. A church can establish a partnership that can endure for three or four years, each year building on the work of the previous year.
It has been more years than I care to share since I left Michigan, but one thing still gnaws at my soul — what might have happened to me had Baptists not cared about the eternal destiny of people who migrated from the South to the North. And I cannot get away from wondering how many more people like me are in Michigan waiting to hear the gospel. How many souls will be eternally grateful because Alabama Baptists care enough to fulfill the promise of partnership with the Baptist State Convention of Michigan?
Share with others: