It’s a long way from Jasper, Ala., to Alberta, Canada. But International Mission Board (IMB) missionary Mike McGough — who finds his roots in northwest Alabama — was prepared for the move by growing up in a military household.
Born in Jasper, McGough moved around throughout his childhood and teen years. He even lived as far as Fairbanks, Alaska. Yet he found himself back in Alabama for two important milestones in his spiritual life. He was baptized in 1964 at First Baptist Church, Double Springs, in Winston Association.
In 1975 he publicly accepted the call to ministry at Lynn Baptist Church, also in Winston Association.
Currently, McGough and his wife, Nancy, have returned to Alabama on stateside assignment to Birmingham. While Mike McGough attends classes at Samford University, the McGoughs are enjoying the hospitality of the missionary house at First Baptist Church, Trussville.
The McGoughs have been assigned to Canada since 1987. Before that, Mike McGough had served as pastor of churches in Kentucky and Tennessee and taught at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
Answering the call
After receiving his doctorate from the seminary in May 1987, he and Nancy McGough answered the missions call with the IMB (then the Foreign Mission Board). Mike McGough said, “I knew that education was part of my call, but I figured we would be sent south, perhaps to South America.”
Meanwhile in Canada, the newly formed Canadian Southern Baptist Convention worked to begin a seminary. McGough became one of the first two professors of the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary (CSBS) when it opened in August 1987 with 20 students.
Today CSBS lies on a 145-acre campus overlooking the town of Cochrane, Alberta, 23 kilometers west of Calgary, and has more than 100 students. Richard Blackaby serves as president of the seminary.
Seminary work
The seminary offers several one- to three-year graduate programs, including a two-year associate’s diploma in Christian education and a three-year master of divinity degree. Mike McGough is excited about plans to add a “relatively new” degree within the coming year, a master’s degree in church planting.
He said this degree meets the great need for more church planters in Canada.
“Most of the students are studying to become pastors or church planters,” he said.
Mike McGough said the growth of CSBS is “quite a success story.” The secret of its success is prayer, he noted, saying, “It was a much prayed-for entity by Canadian Baptists.”
But Mike McGough has not spent all of his last 17 years in the classroom. The McGoughs have also taken an active role in church planting in Canada. They helped to start Bow Valley Baptist Church in Cochrane in 1987. They also led in planting Mountain View Christian Fellowship in Calgary in 1995, where they are currently members. Mike McGough has also served in several interim pastor positions and has been the chaplain of the Alberta Cattlemen’s Fellowship for the last four years.
Mike McGough described his family’s home on the eastern slope of the Canadian Rockies as a beautiful place to live but admitted the weather required an adjustment.
“I’ve seen it snow every month of the year there, but it doesn’t shut things down here.”
Interestingly, Nancy McGough had also gotten an early taste of the Canadian climate by also living briefly in Fairbanks, Alaska. Born at Fort Benning, Ga., she was reared in a military household as well, and moved often.
Today, she calls Chesapeake, Va., home because she has family there. She received a master’s degree in religious education from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
Nancy McGough said she moved to Canada with her husband not entirely sure what her role might be, but she is now the founder and editor of the Baptist Horizon, the newspaper of the Canadian Southern Baptist Convention.
Within the McGough’s first year in Canada, Nancy McGough was asked to start a paper, and in 1988 the first issue was produced.
She laughed when she recalled how the new paper was named. “We held a contest to name the paper and received entries from all over Canada — entries such as Heavenly Nuggets. In the end, we chose Baptist Horizon from a paper that had existed briefly years before.”
Nancy McGough had a variety of experiences to prepare her for starting a paper from scratch. She was an undergraduate journalism major and had worked for a Norfolk newspaper. She had also worked in the public relations office of Southern Seminary and had written for Woman’s Missionary Union. But she said it was her experience as a youth, producing her church’s student ministry newspaper that helped her most.
Baptists in Canada
Baptist Horizon is now printed 10 times per year and mailed to churches for distribution. Nancy McGough said it is the goal of the paper to “unite the widespread family of Canadian Baptists.”
The couple’s current stateside assignment has given Nancy McGough her biggest taste yet of Alabama southern hospitality. She has enjoyed the opportunity to speak to missions groups across the Southeast, and she has thrown herself into activities at their host church, First, Trussville.
“I have really enjoyed being a part of two Women on Mission groups and Wednesday night activities,” she said.
“The church has been wonderful to us, and the home has been a great provision.”
The McGoughs have been married 27 years and have one son, Micah McGough, who lives and works in Montreal. They will return to Cochrane in June.
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