Mountain & Western Baptist Associations

1. Jim Turnbo, Regional Missionary Mountain & Western Baptist Associations New Mexico, USA

2. Mountain & Western Baptist Associations • Two Associations • Four Counties • Over 23,000 sq miles • Population: 125,000 • 95% Lost!!! • Challenge is reaching diverse people groups, scattered in small pockets across great distance.

4. Mountain & Western Strategy • Goal: Healthy churches, on mission in & beyond their communities. • Emphasis on helping existing churches to realize their potential • Emphasis on planting new churches where there is no effective gospel witness • Emphasis on developing leaders equipped for service in their ministry context

5. Native American Churches • Laguna-Acoma • Tohatchi • Gateway, Window Rock • Grace, Rock Springs • First Indian, Gallup • Wingate • Church Rock • Iyanbito • Dalton Pass • Alamo

6. Other Churches with Native Outreach • First Baptist Gallup • First Baptist Thoreau • Candy Kitchen • First Baptist Grants • Immanuel Milan

7. Church Strengthening Principles to Follow when Serving with Existing Ministries: Let local needs drive the agenda. Make connections with local leadership to eliminate the middleman. Build the partnership around the church rather than a given task. Commit to multi-year partnerships.

8. Church Strengthening Principles to Follow when Serving with Existing Ministries: Elevate Christ and His church in ministry, rather than your group. Focus on projects that equip the church for ministry or that extend its outreach. Perform ministries that the church realistically can one day do itself. Avoid fostering unhealthy dependency.

9. Church Strengthening Principles to Follow when Serving with Existing Ministries: Understand that leadership is our limiting factor; model simple, relational discipleship. Learn the worldview of the peoplegroup you are serving. Communicate a clear gospel message in a way the people can understand it. Connect those you witness with to local church leaders.

10. Church Strengthening Principles to Follow when Serving with Existing Ministries: Work toward an indiginous church ministering Christ in its community; not a church like yours back home. Ask your partner, “What is necessary for your church to be all that God wants it to be?” Pray all year long, not just before the trip. Smaller teams tend to be more effective than larger groups.

11. Church Planting • Priority Sites for New Churches: • Zuni Pueblo • Ramah / Bird Springs Restart • Pueblo Pintado • White Horse Canyon • Manuelito • Mirano Lake • Any community with no effective gospel witness where God raises up a “Person of Peace.”

12. Church Planting • Zuni Strategy: seeking out a Strategy Coordinator who will lead the Zuni effort. • Learn worldview • Establish Prayer Support • Discovery trip / prayerwalk • Learn Bible Storying / T4T • Engage • Seek person of peace • Reproducing house churches • Informed by IMB Strategies

13. Church Planting • Operation Antioch:Identify potential persons of peace through whom we can plant a church. • 3 yr minimum partnership • Standard first trip projects • Subsequent projects determined by resources of group and needs of the community • Prayer network, worldview study, and storying components of the strategy as well • Leaders from the harvest

14. Leadership Development • Partners best support local leadership development when they: • Model teaching approaches that fit the people and that can be readily reproduced by them. • Model discipleship approaches that are simple and relational. • Provide training that is oriented to this mission field. • Long-distance training is helpful when consistent and when focused more on “here” then “home.”

15. Mountain & WesternBaptist Associations Dr. Jim Turnbo, Regional Missionary PO Box 2496 Milan, NM 87020 Phone: 505-240-4939 E-mail: jturnbo@mwmissions.org