Missionary at home starting churches on the range

FALLON, Nev. (NAMB)—After a week of driving, having put 900 miles on his car, Mitch Bryant watches the sunset as he pulls into the driveway of his home. Driving between churches in Nevada is nothing like what he was used to back home in Arkansas when he would visit fellow pastors.

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Now, as associational missionary for Lahontan Baptist Association, he thinks nothing of driving 175 miles to visit a church.

His association is one of only four in the state and covers an area of 45,000 square miles. It includes five counties in west central Nevada and boasts of 16 churches and six missions. He bases his ministry from the town of Fallon, 60 miles east of Reno.

Bryant battles a variety of problems in trying to stitch the churches together into a Baptist quilt thrown over this part of the state. One of the biggest is the loneliness and isolation that permeates the lives of the pastors and their families.

“The population out here is really scattered. Most of our people live in population centers near a county seat, but once you get outside of the city limits you don’t see many residents. There are some groups of people who live on cattle and dairy farms and ranches but those are even more isolated than the towns are,” he explains.

Bryant and his wife, Sandi, are among nearly 5,200 missionaries in the United States and Canada supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. They are featured during the March 6-13 Week of Prayer and North American Mission Study, which this year focuses on the theme, “Answer His Call.”

In an area where it’s not uncommon to drive 60 or 100 miles to buy groceries, people socialize when they can, but don’t look for opportunities to spend hours behind the wheel of a car.

Bryant calls his wife “my right hand and my left hand.” They serve as encouragers to pastors and their wives and help provide resources and leadership training to laity.

“The distances really take a toll on the wives,” Sandi Bryant explains.

That’s not the way it’s always been for the couple. The couple was satisfied with their ministry in Arkansas where Mitch Bryant was in his fifth pastorate. But he was introduced to Nevada through the invitation of a friend to conduct a revival in Boulder City.

He sensed a call to help struggling churches in the state and before long came as pastor of one of those churches. A few years later he stepped into his current position as associational missionary.

“It’s hard for a church to have a full-time pastor out here because the congregations are so small—the average size is 40—and the sources of income are relatively scarce,” says Bryant. “By far, most of our churches are bivocational in nature.”

In addition to working with pastors, the couple also works with churches that are pastorless. They train the pastor search committees, help them secure resumes, and walk them through the process. And when that is completed, they work with the new pastor and the congregation to develop leadership from within the congregation to take a larger role in the life of the church.

Lay leadership is important since a bivocational pastor cannot be in every place they are needed.

Jolinda, a dealer in a casino which her family owned, is one such example. The Bryants met her through their children who both attended the same grade school.

“‘Jo,’ as we call her, was a Christian, but was backslidden,” says Bryant. “Through our relationship with her, she began attending church and rededicated her life to the Lord. Within 12 months, she brought 30 of her friends and family to faith in Christ. I had the privilege of baptizing most of them.”

Ethnics have moved to the area and are having a strong presence in its towns and communities.

The association has Native American, Hispanic, and Korean congregations and will soon launch a Filipino church, and lay leaders will be needed to help those new works grow and reach others.

The couple is grateful for Southern Baptist support through the Cooperative Program and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.

“Those two are primary sources of income,” Sandi Bryant explains. “We would not be here without stronger churches across the denomination supporting those offerings.”