By Cameron Crabtree
In discussing evangelistic burdens in the Northwest, conversations often turn quickly to the challenges of reaching a diverse and growing population. Inevitably, those discussions zero in on the major population centers of the Seattle and Portland metro areas.
With well over 5 million people — roughly half the population of Washington, Oregon and north Idaho — it makes sense to think critically about using ministry resources in the most strategic manner possible.
Thankfully, it appears the Northwest Baptist Convention’s primary mission partner — the North American Mission Board — is readying itself for renewed, long-term efforts aimed at impacting people groups in those areas where traditional ministries have struggled to have lasting spiritual effect.
But to focus only on those two urban centers would result in missing the whole picture of ministry possibilities in the Northwest. Across the Northwest there are smaller metropolitan regions with significant population groups just as needy for the gospel message.
Certainly, the influence of the populations around Seattle and Portland are noted during highly charged political seasons, but the Northwest is home to another 5 million people spread across massive geography. In fact, every region in NWBC has at least one metropolitan area, consisting of cities that are home to at least 50,000 people.
A report compiled recently by NAMB leaders — using federal government statistics from 2009 — showed Washington as having 12 such metro areas, constituting almost 90 percent of the state’s population. Oregon, according to the figures, is home to six such areas, constituting almost 80 percent of the state’s residents.
But to focus only on the statistics and their inherent challenges would also miss part of the picture — God cares about every single life counted in and asks each of us to share his love for them one life at a time. Here in the Northwest, there’s no end to the ways his church can express the good news.
A book popularly circulating among pastors these days asks leaders to consider what their churches can do better than 10,000 other churches. The only real answer to the question, of course, is to care for the people who are already there and to demonstrate concern for the people they can influence through their relationships.
God forms churches and calls their leaders in myriad places and to diverse groups of people. But together, we must develop a movement of “missionaries” committed to sharing Christ through new churches and to strengthening existing congregations in the Pacific Northwest to the point of renewed vibrancy. They go hand in hand.
Without any doubt, ours is a spiritual enterprise. And it’s one of such magnitude and importance that we dare not neglect God’s power working through us as the only thing enabling us to shape our wills to the task ahead.
