The History of Converge & St. Croix

On December 3, 2020, Pastor Will Woods celebrated his 51st year as pastor at Altona Baptist Church on St. Croix. Last week, our Converge MidAmerica team caught up with Pastor Woods as he reminisced on the history of Converge churches on the island. Here are some highlights from our conversation.

Q: Pastor Woods, how long have you been involved with Converge MidAmerica?

A: Well now, that goes back to 1973/74 when I first met Clif. I was living on St. Croix and was working as the pastor at Altona Baptist Church when Pastor Clifford Bubar arrived. He was a missionary from Maine who was sent out by the Baptist General Conference* (BGC) to plant churches on the island.

He and I got to know each other over the years, and he encouraged me to consider becoming part of BGC as my church was growing. By 1975, Altona Baptist Church had grown to the point that we needed to consider expanding but, at the time, we didn’t have the financial means to fund an expansion ourselves. We joined the BGC in 1976, along with the other Baptist churches on the island and, through BGC, we received a loan that enabled us to buy a new property and build a new church.

Over the years, through the presence of BGC, we were able to set up four Baptist churches on the island – one for each side of the island – north, south, east, and west.

*The Baptist General Conference later changed names to Converge.

Q: Aside from financial support during your church’s expansion, what other support and resources did you receive from Converge?

A: The financial support was a big deal because it enabled us to reach more people. Our church grew because of the new facilities. Over the years, Converge has also supported us by sending speakers with training and teaching for church strengthening. Local pastors in the Converge networks have also had increased collaboration to coordinate our ministries and evangelism on the island. And one other highlight has been when other Converge churches have sent mission teams to St. Croix. We’ve had teams from churches as far away as Michigan and California. Whether they were helping with Vacation Bible School or working on repairs, these trips have been a great support to our church and a great way to build fellowship.

Q: What words of encouragement would you share with new church planters?

A: I have two things I would say to new church planters. The first is be sure of your calling (*Pastor Woods laughs*) and the second is this – be faithful to God.

Q: How has COVID affected the churches on St. Croix?

A: Like churches across the globe, distancing and masking has been a challenge for our churches. Currently, we still have around 30-35% of our congregation not able to attend in-person. But we have maintained our fellowship, and we are especially grateful for our connection with the Converge MidAmerica team as we think about coming out of COVID even stronger than before.

Q: Give us a window into what you see down the road for the churches on St. Croix.

A: I think that with the support of Converge MidAmerica we are looking forward to strengthening our current churches. The expertise and training from Converge is going to build up our members and we are looking for opportunities to expand to plant more churches on nearby Caribbean islands.

Q: Any closing words to our Converge family?

A: Please continue to pray for us and all the pastors on St. Croix as we work together with MidAmerica…and make a trip to the Virgin Islands to hear from us and share and to see what we are doing!

Chapelstreet Church: Shepherd’s Heart Food Pantry

This week, we’re excited to highlight one of our partner churches in Geneva, IL: Chapelstreet Church.

Chapelstreet Church has been a Converge MidAmerica member for many years. In 2000, they opened a small food pantry called Shepherd’s Heart to help address food insecurity in the community. What they didn’t know is how God planned to grow their humble, two-shelf closet into a sprawling community care center.

When they started offering free food to their Geneva neighbors, they gave it with no stipulations: you didn’t have to be a member of the church, or even a believer in Christ, to receive help from the pantry. Their only expectation was that the Lord would give them opportunities to share Jesus with those they served. The first year, Shepherd’s Heart saw on average 70 people per month, praying over them and sending them out with nonperishable items, hygiene products, and an invitation to return each week.

But, they knew there was more to hunger than just a lack of food.

“We didn’t want to be just a band-aid.” Erin Wise, Director of Shepherd’s Heart, explained that it didn’t take long to realize the need was far greater in Geneva than just hunger. They set to work creating teams of volunteers who could walk alongside these citizens, equipping them with skills and resources to get back on their feet.

Among these are a Budgeting Team, Compassion in Action Team, Job Coaching Team, Legal Clinic, and Master’s Hands Ministry. Anyone who sets foot in the door at Shepherd’s Heart has access to these resources.

Today, 21 years later, Wise reports that the pantry serves over 1,400 people per month. “The numbers have really gone up and so has God’s provision,” says Wise.

Shepherd’s Heart now operates out of space about 20 times the size of that little closet, with more volunteers, and more opportunities to share the love of Jesus each week.

If you would like to partner with Shepherd’s Heart, please visit their website where you can find information about their monthly donation program and how to volunteer.

Casa de Oracion: Celebrating Our New Space!

We are extremely thankful for the purchase of a building for our church. God has provided in a wonderful way!

It’s been six years since we started Casa de Oracion. We had a rough start with the loss of a young member of our team. We used three buildings during these six years— our beginning at New Hope Christian Community, three years at The Stadium, a building of The Chapel Grayslake, and the last two years at Westlake Christian Academy—part of which we ended up recording a live feed from New Hope because of the pandemic.

We give thanks to God for the faithfulness of our members and the generosity of the churches around us. Several churches offered the use of their building, sent financial support during the pandemic, prayed for us, and encouraged us to keep moving forward. We are thankful to God because in two months we were able to raise more than $100,000 for the down payment of the building, mostly from our own members, but also in part from generous offerings from other churches and friends.

After a month of hard work, last week we were able to celebrate the inauguration of the building. Several pastors from Converge MidAmerica were present sharing the word and praying for us. Pastor Danny Parmelee, Vice President of Church Planting, was also among us blessing our congregation.

Thank you Converge for your great support! God has used this network of churches greatly to bless us and push us forward. Glory be to Him forever!

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Estamos muy agradecidos por la adquisición de un edificio para nuestra iglesia. ¡Dios ha provisto de una manera maravillosa!

Han sido 6 años desde el inicio de nuestra iglesia, Casa de Oracion. Tuvimos un inicio difícil con la pérdida de un joven de nuestro equipo. Llegamos a usar 3 edificios distintos durante estos seis años, nuestro inicio en New Hope Christian Community, tres años en The Stadium edificio de The Chapel Grayslake, y los últimos dos años en Westlake Christian Academy, parte del cual por la pandemia estuvimos grabando videos en el edificio de New Hope.

Damos tantas gracias a Dios por la fidelidad de nuestros miembros y por la generosidad de las iglesias que nos rodean. Varias iglesias ofreciendo el uso de su edificio, mandando ofrendas a nuestra congregación durante la pandemia, orando por nosotros y animándonos a seguir adelante. Damos gracias a Dios porque en dos meses pudimos reunir más de $100,000 para el enganche de la compra del edificio, en gran parte ofrendas de nuestra propia congregación, pero también ofrendas de otras iglesias y amigos.

Después de un mes de mucho trabajo, el fin semana pasado pudimos celebrar la inauguración del edificio. Varios pastores de Converge estuvieron presentes compartiendo la palabra y orando por nosotros. El pastor Danny Parmelee, Vicepresidente de plantación de iglesias de Converge, también estuvo entre nosotros bendiciendo a nuestra congregación.

¡Gracias Converge por su gran apoyo! Dios ha usado en gran manera a esta red de iglesias para bendecirnos e impulsarnos a seguir adelante. ¡La gloria a Él por siempre!

Cristina Di Stefano

Casa de Oracion

Adapting Our Church in the Pandemic

Grace Bible Church has been a part of Converge long before I became the pastor as they were founded and led by the late Pastor Rod Walker. I became pastor in March 2020 right at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. Thankfully, Converge MidAmerica has been there for me through prayer, encouragement, extremely helpful seminars, and personal visits by Bryan Moak and Gary Rohrmayer.

We are serving our local communities through praying for our community. We provide prayer request forms for them to submit. We do prayer walks through the community to engage them through prayer. We have partnered with our local Urban League to provide food for families who are hurting because of job loss. We also have a civil servants’ day where we honor and encourage our first responders and other civil servants.

The pandemic hit our communities very hard, and we had to shut our live services down and go to virtual services in March 2020. We provide a livestream via Facebook for our Sunday morning service using a “skeleton” crew. We also transitioned to virtual Zoom meetings for our Bible study and Children’s Ministry.

We have been doing live services this year with a limited capacity, socially distanced seats, masks, and temperature checks. In order to keep many of our older members engaged, we started a front porch prayer ministry where myself and an associate pastor go to members’ homes and pray with them and encourage them on their front porches.

Please pray with us that God would keep us focused on the mission of “loving God, loving people, and making disciples.”

Pray that God will bless the partnerships we have with our community to expand ministry beyond the walls of the building.

Pray that God would continue to give us innovative ideas and methods to expand our reach to be the salt and light throughout St. Louis, MO.

Ulysses Ross III
Grace Bible Church
Florissant, MO (northern suburb of St. Louis, MO)

Defining Our Next Steps

When our church celebrated our one-year anniversary, I realized that we were actually going to make it as a church. We had all the things going that a healthy church seems to have from outside appearances. We had weekend worship services, children’s ministry, outreach events, small groups, and a few other teams in place that were needed to be a church. However, we knew there was something missing. We were great at gathering people, but honestly, we stunk at defining clear next steps for growing in Christ.

Next Steps to leading a missional church was an event that we attended when Grace River was 18 months old, and this event changed everything for us. We learned about how to create and execute 8 healthy systems to make our church thrive. It was these systems and the Natural Church Development Survey (NCD) that enabled us to take this next step as a church.

We didn’t see a harvest of people meeting, knowing, and following Jesus until we started really focusing on the systems that would make our church healthy. What I didn’t know back then is God wanted to grow our church way more than we did. He was just waiting on us to have the systems in place to help make disciples. If you are looking to remove some barriers and make the practical changes necessary to impact your community for Christ, Next Steps is for you!

Chris Highfill
Planter and Lead Pastor
Grace River Church, St Peters, MO

In the last 2 months, Grace River Church has had 6 baptisms and 7 people have accepted Christ.