Go West

As Doug Hixson rambled down the interstate in rural South Dakota, he warned of a premature end to his telephone conversation.

“The likelihood of this call dropping is like 80 percent,” Doug, the pastor of Connection Church in Spearfish, said. “Happens all the time out here.”

Cell phone coverage is hardly an issue for David Collister, who pastors CurrentSV, a young church in the heart of Silicon Valley surrounded by a million people inside a 10-mile radius. And, while Zeke Tomaselli, the pastor at Ohana Church in Hilo, Hawaii, doesn’t really have any technical issues, either, he is forced to fight mainlanders’ perceptions of his home state as nothing more than a vacation destination as he engages his fellow islanders with the gospel.

Doug, David and Zeke are three very different guys in three very different locales, bound together by their common desire to share God’s love in areas of the United States where Christian culture is not as prevalent as it is in Mobberly Baptist Church’s East Texas backyard. Along with other pastors from South Dakota, Hawaii, San Antonio, Alaska and San Francisco, they lead churches that Mobberly has assisted in planting over the past half dozen years.

Connection, CurrentSV and Ohana are thriving examples of Mobberly’s strategy of planting churches in the western United States, where according to North American Mission Board statistics, almost nine out of 10 residents have no relationship with Jesus Christ and there is just one church for every 16,000 people.

“Our desire is not only to plant churches in the West, our desire is to plant churches that plant churches,” said Eric Perkins, Mobberly’s Serve Pastor, who is tasked with overseeing Mobberly’s church planting and missions efforts. “Our philosophy on church planting comes directly out of Acts. As one church began, the believers were discipled and sent out, and started more churches. As churches multiplied, the gospel began to spread literally all over the world.”

Few churches are multiplying as fast as Connection Church. Six years ago, the Dakota Baptist Convention saw very little successful church planting in its area. After a previous church disbanded, the town of Spearfish no longer had a Southern Baptist Church.

“When we moved up here, we were told there would be no receptivity to the gospel,” Doug said. “We’ve found the opposite to be true.”

Indeed, Connection Church built bonds in Spearfish and people, many of whom Doug said had a knowledge of God and religion but no real relationship with Jesus, connected with the gospel. Within two years, Connection Church planted another church in nearby Belle Fourche, and then another one in Sioux Falls, located on the eastern side of the state. Last year, another Connection Church was born in Sturgis, famous for its annual motorcycle rally.

“We thought a Southern Baptist Church in our environment wouldn’t be accepted as easily,” Doug said. “The common denominator is when you love people and care about them and invest in their lives, and as they see that you aren’t out for a number on a page, you earn the right to share the gospel with them. God is using that to bring people to Him.”

David Collister and members of CurrentSV have had to work hard to build a similar trust with people in tech-centric Mountain View, California. The church is located between the corporate headquarters of Apple, Facebook and Google, just three of literally thousands of local nerve centers of high-tech startups. Only four percent of the million or so people within 10 miles of the church are gospel-believing Christians.

“The sad irony of the Silicon Valley is we are creating these amazing social media platforms, but on the other hand, we are creating more of an atmosphere of isolation and loneliness,” David said. “This is a very driven and busy culture, so it’s easy for important things like meaningful friendships and community to get squeezed out or deprioritized. That’s one of the reasons community is at the core of our vision as a church.”

Many of the people that David speaks with who reject Christianity tell him they do so because of hypocrisy, self-righteousness and judgmentalism.

“In other words, people are rejecting Christianity because of how they feel about Christians, and not because of Christ,” he said. “As tragic as that is, it gives us an opportunity to share the gospel. The last time I checked the New Testament, Jesus had more than a few choice words about hypocrisy, self-righteousness and judgmentalism – namely, don’t!

“When our friends, coworkers and neighbors say something like, ‘Christians don’t get it,’ – and we hear that a lot – we get to say something like, ‘You’re right. Christians don’t have it all together. But that’s the point. That’s why Jesus came.’ And we’ve found out through conversations like these that alongside a loving, gospel-centered community, people are responding and wanting to be a part of a community where they’re welcomed wherever they are spiritually.”

In Hilo, Hawaii, Zeke Tomaselli is already seeing slight changes in his congregation. When Ohana Church first opened its doors, nearly everyone that Zeke and others from the church were reaching were native Hawaiians, most of whom relied heavily on government assistance and had little, if any, previous contact with the gospel. And, while Zeke says he would still consider Ohana Church to be in what he calls the “pre-Christian people group phase,” the congregation has added to the mix several middle and working-class people from various ethnic backgrounds, some of whom have at least some experience with the gospel.

“What a great balance of people groups we have,” he said.

Hilo is Zeke’s hometown, and reaching the community with the gospel is exceptionally personal for him. He said when Ohana was launched, research showed approximately 95 percent of Hilo’s 50,000 residents do not attend church.

“However, there are over 150 churches in the city,” he said. “That’s 16 people for every church. That broke my heart. The state average is even worse.”

So Zeke and his family went to work, first meeting others at a local park, where they would bring beach toys, children’s toys, food and musical instruments. Eventually, several people that they came to know from those trips made their way to Ohana Church.

Zeke also serves as a football coach at a local school, and some of Ohana’s fledgling membership began to help him during offseason workouts on Wednesday nights, building gospel-centered relationships. Last summer seven athletes came to faith in Jesus Christ.

Also, Zeke and Ohana Church lead weekly chapel services for about 40 students at a local Christian school, the first of its kind in Hilo. Approximately 60 percent of the students there do not attend church.

Above all, Zeke and Ohana Church aim to spread the gospel across Hawaii and the Pacific. Recently, it partnered with New Life Church, a new church plant in Kona, Hawaii that Mobberly is now partnering with, too. Church leaders are also exploring opportunities to plant in Japan and in what Zeke termed “two hostile locations in Southeast Asia.”

Church planting is a difficult endeavor. Getting people to recognize that the church even exists is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the challenges faced by pastors and their team as they begin their work.

“The process of starting from scratch is nothing like you could ever dream it could be,” Doug said. “There is so much in an established church that you take for granted, like having people scripturally grounded enough to teach a children’s class, or having someone you trust enough to take that Sunday’s offering to the bank. And, when you are new in town, you don’t have the advantage of knowing people’s life history and spiritual history. It can make it hard to know exactly how to invest in someone’s life right away.”

Zeke echoed Doug’s thoughts on the challenges of finding qualified and trustworthy leaders, especially in a culture with little recognition of the gospel.

“We need some mature believers that can assist me in raising up healthy gospel-centered leaders,” he said. “I’m not complaining, but when 90 percent of the people at Ohana Church come to Christ through our ministry, we are limited in genuine, gospel-centered leadership.

“It would be amazing if churches like Mobberly were able to send long-term leaders from their own congregation to assist churches like ours with leadership development.”

Zeke didn’t waste words when he spoke of one of the most difficult issues pastors face as they start a church, either in a faraway location or even somewhere familiar.

“Church planting feels lonely,” he said.

Trying to find other pastors or anyone else who follows Jesus that they can relate to isn’t always easy.

“The reality is that life gets busy,” Eric Perkins said. “You often feel isolated as a church planter. You feel all alone as you walk through some very difficult times.

“When you are on the front lines of ministry, every day is a spiritual fight,” he said. “Satan is attacking you and attacking your family.

“Then you have the financial pressures. A lot of these guys could be pastors of much larger churches in the South, but they have chosen to walk away from that because God called them to plant a church elsewhere. Many times, that means they are walking away from financial security and they are walking away from family and friends.

According to David, finding work-life balance is tough for any pastor, but probably even more so for one in a brand new church. He said he knows in theory the importance of taking breaks, resting on the Sabbath and drawing boundaries, for example, but in practice it is much more difficult to execute.

“It can be hard to find the right rhythms,” he said. “On top of that, the uncertainties that come with starting a church only adds to the intensity of the pressure.

“I feel that might make it sound noble and sacrificial, but the truth is, I need the gospel just as much as the next person. But I find much solace in knowing that it’s through our weaknesses that His strength is made perfect, and that it is He that is building His church; not we.”

A young church planting other churches also faces a different set of obstacles. Connection Church is experiencing the highs and lows of the adventure right now.

“It’s crazy,” Doug said. “It’s risky. Unless God tells you to plant a church, you shouldn’t do it. It could have all fallen apart at any moment. If it wasn’t for God telling us to do it, it wouldn’t work. It’s everything that the book of conventional wisdom tells you not to do.

“To be perfectly honest, it comes at a price. For the church in Spearfish, we’ve invested so much outside that now we’re playing catch up. The people here have been extremely generous with their time and resources and investing in these other plants. A few months before we launched in Sturgis, we said, ‘We’re fully into this one, but we’ve got to slow down and probably take a pause for a couple years (before planting another church),’ because the toll it’s taken on our church is evident. It’s probably slowed our growth some. I don’t know that we’d do it any differently, because I think we’ve been obedient to the Lord, but it comes at a pretty high cost and with a pretty big risk.

“But it’s the heart of our church. Our church sees that and knows that. We love being a part of that. We’re thankful the Lord has given us an opportunity to be a part of that.”   

“I love hearing about people whose lives God has changed through the story of the gospel they’ve heard through Connection Church. The stories of transformation in families and individuals are amazing.”

Just as Doug and his Connection Church team are seeing the rewards of their efforts as lives are transformed, so are David, Zeke and their teams.

“Conversations are producing questions like, ‘Does God really forgive the way you’re saying He forgives?’” David said. “At the beginning of a conversation I had with a friend, he told me, ‘Christians don’t get it.’ Two hours later, he had put his faith in the Lord. That is God through and through. Like many we meet every day here, my friend had many misconceptions about Jesus and the faith. But God was working, and my friend put his faith in Him.

“It’s also fun to be a part of a team that takes their faith so seriously to step out and have spiritual conversations with their co-workers and friends. It’s hard to be a lukewarm Christian in the Silicon Valley, but many of them are engaging in – and seeing the fruit of – gospel conversations.”

The pastors from churches around the country that Mobberly has helped plant form a spiritual and professional network that allows them to lean on one another for support and encouragement. They often speak with each other and with Eric and other Mobberly pastors and staff members, who serve as a resource to help them navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead as they serve their communities. 

“Knowing that we had Mobberly at our back gave us confidence,” Doug said. “The people at Mobberly have been praying for us for seven years, and God gave us confidence to step out. I don’t know how many times I’ve called Mobberly staff for advice. Having that kind of resource at our fingertips is invaluable.”

Mobberly members, from teens to senior adults, have made several mission trips to assist church plants across the west, helping bring awareness of the local church and sharing God’s love throughout those communities. From helping set up and serve at block parties, to bringing donuts to local businesses or even going door-to-door installing new fire alarms, Mobberly members have supported these churches personally, as well as financially by giving to Mobberly’s Ministry Action Plan.

That financial backing plays a major role in helping provide an amount of stability to a church in its infancy.

“It makes an impact in tremendous ways,” David said of Mobberly’s financial support as CurrentSV continues its early growth. “It helps us host and organize events to gather people from the community. It helps us run the day-to-day operations of the church. It helps us have the equipment we need to make everything in our ministry happen.

“In short, we wouldn’t be seeing the gospel impact we’re seeing today if not for churches like Mobberly partnering alongside us.”

That partnership extends past the local churches and even the pastors all the way to their families, something that’s not lost on Doug and the other pastors.

“Mobberly has really loved us and cared for us,” he said. “Probably the thing I’ve appreciated the most is the way Mobberly invests in our wives. The role of a planter’s wife is so underappreciated. The way you guys invest in church planters’ wives is worth a million bucks. To have people like you love my wife and kids like you do…you’ll never know how much that means to me.

“Like Zeke says, it can get pretty lonely,” Doug offered. “Our church family becomes our family, but partners like Mobberly are our family, too. Just to know that we are on peoples’ radar and that we’re not forgotten, and that there are people earnestly praying for us and who genuinely care about our family and our ministry is a really big thing for us.”

For David, the striking cultural differences between the San Francisco Bay area in Northern California and the Piney Woods in the heart of the Bible belt of East Texas are more than a conversation piece. They are a rallying cry.

“I love sharing about Mobberly with our team, because it’s a powerful testament to God working through His greater body of followers,” he said. “It’s so fun and meaningful to say that there’s a church in East Texas that believes in this mission and is actively supporting us.”

Originally appeared in Mobberly Magazine in 2017