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Writer's picturePaige Patterson

One Small Church-One Prodigious World

Born and reared in Texas, I erroneously concluded that my six decades of exploratory roaming down almost every farm-to-market road, state highway, and interstate were sufficient to get me any place I needed to investigate. After Rachel Watson’s visit to our Sandy Creek Foundation headquarters and hearing of the amazing work of her dad and

mother, Pastor Richard Watson and his wife Connie, I had planned a pilgrimage to the New Hope Baptist Church of Gorman, Texas. Finding any location in Texas, I imagined, had to be about as difficult as preparing a succulent breakfast for my black Labrador Retriever, Chayil.


There were three reasons motivating my intended pilgrimage. First, for an astonishing 48 years of the Southern Baptist Convention of Texas New Hope Baptist Church Pastor Watson served as pastor. Second, Richard and Connie Watson have been married for 58 years with a model family—5 adult children, all of whom are serving the Lord, and ten grandchildren with more on the way. All five children were homeschooled, primarily during a time when such a thing was immensely unpopular. Connie had an extensive Bible Drill program in her home and in the church, which has paid spiritual dividends in the lives of many. My third reason for finding this church was to measure its disproportionate contribution to missions, which has far exceeded the size of the congregation. Armed with a congratulatory letter generously provided by SBTC executive director Dr. Nathan Lorick, Sunday morning I headed west accompanied by evangelist Bill Sword and driver Husam Elias from Khartoum in the Sudan of North Africa.


The bustling metropolis of Gorman posed no difficulty for seasoned Texans. The problem was that our hope of locating New Hope in Gorman was quickly doused. We had to locate a country road along a probable Comanche Indian horse path, which wound its way past grazing cattle and fields of extensive irrigation equipment until we arrived at New Hope in the center of a green pasture! As we arrived, one thought raced through my mind before I could prevent it: Who located a church here? What drug did Richard Watson, a trusted central West Texas pharmacist and bivocational pastor, imbibe to persuade him to serve this church for more than forty years? And how could this church begin a mission movement thousands of miles removed from the cattle in this pasture?


The story I now tell is one—one that I cannot rehearse entirely. Years ago when Ben Meith led the organization called International Crusades—originally established by a missionary to Japan named Dub Jackson from Abilene, Texas—Pastor Watson was a part of a mission effort to a country notorious for its persecution of Christians. Selected by Meith to journey with a small contingency of men to a large city, Pastor Watson happily accepted. The native pastor of the church in that large city invited Pastor Watson to see the original village and to preach early in the morning prior to his scheduled assignments for the day. Returning home, he told the New Hope congregation about this native pastor in this faraway land and his burden for these unreached people. They unanimously felt called to send support. That man became an incredible church planter and he named many churches for this generous Texas church, because of his love and appreciation for New Hope. Even more astonishing is that this man never requested money except from God!


Consequently, when people from smaller churches often express a level of frustration about their limits of mission involvement opining, “Can a small church with a bivocational pastor located in a pasture far from the village where it receives its mail ever make an impact on a prodigious world of 8 billion people?” I say certainly so! Pastor Richard and Connie Watson and their five beautiful children—Rachel, Leah, Stephen, Grace, and Jordan—have pioneered the way. And in a country far away, a church planting movement exists today honoring Christ and carrying the name of that small nondescript congregation, which regularly serenades the fortunate cows of the pasture where it is located. However small the church and regardless of its location, the pastor can lead that church to make a monumental difference in a world in need of a Savior.

 

Paige Patterson, President Sandy Creek Foundation

 

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