By Carolyn Curtis
Spread a map of New England on the kitchen table and dust off your history textbook. Locate America’s smallest state, Rhode Island, and recall that its founder, Roger Williams, a twenty-something in 1630, sailed to America from his native London where religious dissenters were being burned at the stake.
Williams and his wife made their way to New England, a stomach-churning voyage of 57 days at sea, and eventually founded the firstBaptist church in the New World.
“Our history is why my wife resists calling New England a ‘pioneer area,’” says missionary Rafael Hernández, executive director/treasurer of the Southeastern New England Baptist Association, which includes 18 churches in Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. “We’re passing on the faith to a new generation to reclaim our heritage.”
Rafael is one of 5,271 missionaries serving throughout North America. He leads a brave group of church planters who are shifting their emphases to disciple making, team building, and vision casting. “We also fish with a broader net to mirror the populations of our association—establishing Portuguese-speaking churches, plus congregations reaching professionals, blue collar workers, and younger generations. We’re an association that’s become on mission.”
The new strategies are working. In two years, they’ve experienced growth in attendance, decisions for Christ, baptisms, and stewardship. “Because of the prayers of Southern Baptists everywhere, God has touched the hearts and minds of many New Englanders. The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® and the North American Mission Board (NAMB) provide us with 90 cents out of every dollar we have to start new works in New England. Without AAEO we simply would not be able to function.”
Missionaries like Rafael rely on the gifts to the AAEO and the partnerships of Southern Baptist churches, associations, state Baptist conventions, and the North American Mission Board to help them fulfill their calling and ministry. One hundred percent of AAEO funds directly support NAMB missionaries and their ministries. Their roles reflect a variety of mission tasks that include evangelistic ministries, starting churches and serving in local Baptist associations.
Rhode Island/Connecticut –Yesterday and today
You don’t need to understand the differences between Pilgrims and Puritans to take pride in the fact that Roger Williams, a Cambridge-educated intellect known for his fiery sermons, contributed much that was positive in a time of massive power struggles in the colonies, a century before the revolution.
A forward-thinking minister, Williams respected the dignity of Indians and dealt with them as equals, angering Massachusetts’ colonists who were grabbing Indian-owned land as fast as the King of England could declare it their own. Banished by Boston elders, Williams was given land by friendly tribes and founded a settlement he promptly named Providence.
Besides honoring God with its largest city’s name and serving as home to the first strong-hold of the Baptist faith in the colonies, Rhode Island was to be the first pure democracy and a cradle for religious freedom. Although battles with the Indians would eventually threaten to destroy Providence and his neighbors in nearby eastern Connecticut, Williams wrote: “Eternity, O Eternity, is our business.”
Flash forward to the twenty-first century. White-steepled churches, postcard perfect and dating from the colonial era, still anchor the village greens and dot the countryside. But many are home to people of New Age religions, one reason why Baptists who request an opportunity to tell New Englanders about God may be asked: Which god do you mean?
Casting the vision—Visualizing the process
Rafael draws on his years as an accountant and financial analyst to lead the family of churches that make up the association. “As a person who pays attention to detail, I visualize the process as well as cast the vision.”
Revival remains a struggle. But adversity is nothing new to Rafael, a native of El Salvador, war-torn when he was a young man. The extremist government jailed his brother-in-law, who owned a pharmaceutical lab. His parents, both educators, were deported to Sweden. “They left with only the clothes on their backs, but God delivered them.”
Now 56, Rafael first came to New England as an undergraduate at the University of Maine (in 2004 he earned his doctor of ministry degree from Andover Newton Theological School). An unexpected scholarship and divine moment led Rafael to the region where he would one day serve as a North American missionary. There he fell in love with Ramona, a fellow student, and the area’s rich history, which he recounts with enthusiasm. Although much has changed since the two states he serves were founded for religious liberty, he’s encouraged by God’s promises to bless work done on His behalf.
Rafael’s vision for the association is in response to the divine opportunities God has placed in their path. Opportunities like starting churches along the I-95 corridor between New York City and Boston. Along that 211-mile stretch of coastal highway live corporate CEOs and humble fishermen. The association is seizing upon new opportunities to share Christ and start churches among this diverse population.
Rafael is training pastors, church planters, and leaders to discern the local culture and apply the gospel to felt needs.
Highly educated—Biblically illiterate
Biblical literacy is surprisingly low for a region where education is so highly valued. Says Rafael: “New Englanders consider this the Athens of America and for good reason. This area produces many educators, scientists, and other great thinkers. Most of the world’s leaders come to New England for advanced education at some point in their lives.”
But Rick Pressley, a Texan who serves alongside Rafael as a church planting strategist, tells how, to test his listeners’ knowledge of scripture, he will ask them to name just one person in the Bible whose name begins with P. “It’s appalling how rarely they can do it,” he says, adding that statistics supplied by NAMB show the area “to be 94 percent unchurched and about 99 percent evangelically unchurched.
“It’s rare to find a New Englander who will not listen to the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ,” says Rick. However, their openness to hearing the gospel is countered by an unwillingness to attend church—often viewed as an irrelevant institution. But residents of Connecticut and Rhode Island are open to proven things.
Rick explains: “If a new church and pastor can prove themselves, many in the community will join in and wholeheartedly dedicate themselves to the ministry. This, barring a miracle, takes three to five years of hard, lonely work with no room for error. Our church planters and missionaries need patience and the ability to run a long time on one ‘atta boy.’ We need God’s artisans to labor here for a journeyman’s fare.”
Reclaiming spiritual ground
Rafael, Rick, and the churches in the association are determined to take whatever steps are necessary to reclaim this spiritual ground for Christ so that eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island will again experience an awakening like the ones that drove New England to greatness in days past.
Says Rafael: “The churches we plant will be vibrant organisms in charge of spreading the gospel, nurturing new believers in the faith, and sending out those called by God.”
The objective is clear. They will keep sharing the gospel and re-make the church into a relevant and vibrant heart for the community.
Carolyn Curtis is an author, editor and speaker who currently divides her time between Fort Worth, Texas and Cumming, Georgia.