I often say I have one of the best jobs, because I love this ministry God has called me to do here in Wisconsin. Every Sunday, I get in my car and I head to another church. And though I sometimes preach or bring greetings, my favorite part is listening to the people after worship share about their church. Now, I know I don’t get to every church in a year, but I love hearing what God is doing in our churches. Here are some highlights:
- Milwaukee Chin Baptist Church just spent a week at Camp Tamarack with their youth, who didn’t want to leave camp to go home!
- Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Madison celebrated 115 years in May, and are getting ready to break ground on their new Family Life Center.
- Iglesia Bautista Renacer recently held a 12 hour service overnight, with 40 people attending and 26 staying overnight.
- Federated Church in Green Lake is partnering with Rev. Max Ramsey of Immanuel Church, Brookfield, and StreetLife Communities to better understand homelessness.
God is doing amazing things through our churches here in Wisconsin! I am always glad to learn of baptisms, ministries, worship and fellowship that remind us we are part of something greater than ourselves and that God is continuing to move within us. I’ve been blessed to hear of and witness baptisms in so many of our churches! But I’m really appreciative of the churches that are moving out of their comfort zone and looking to what God might be doing anew. This requires Deep Listening: listening to those outside of our churches. Listening to those of different backgrounds. Listening for the ways the Spirit is calling us: to do, to be, and to change.
Deep Listening invites us to be appreciative of what others are sharing with us—even if it’s something we aren’t used to or comfortable with. It means sometimes going to places that are unfamiliar, and being present among people we don’t know. We have to adjust to different ways of communication, different values of what is important.
After four years here in Wisconsin, I’ve learned that with over fifty churches, we have over fifty different church cultures! For some, it’s cultural what someone should wear, from our head (such as hats on occasion) to our toes (whether one should wear closed-toed shoes, or whether it’s acceptable to wear sandals—and in some of our churches, it’s okay to be barefoot!) There are culturally different ways we worship, different ways we take Communion and the offering, even different conversations about how old someone should be before they seek baptism. And some of those happen between congregations of a similar background! I love sharing how in some of our churches, I experience the Spirit moving in silence and quiet reflection, and in others, my FitBit registers a workout as we praise God. I may have my own personal preference, but when I am open to listening to the Spirit, I find I can experience God in all our different settings—and learn something new about God, others, and myself.
Deep Listening requires humility, remembering that none of us have the full truth, the fullness of understanding that will be revealed to us one day. That humility is important for us as the most ethnically and culturally diverse Protestant body in Wisconsin—and also the most theologically diverse. Sometimes there is tension. Sometimes we are downright uncomfortable. But as we’ve had conversations at Camp Tamarack and at our Board of Managers meetings, there is a difference between being uncomfortable and being unsafe. We all at times are going to be uncomfortable when people have different values.
It’s 2026 and we don’t need to walk on eggshells. We have had churches leave because they don’t agree with what some of the other churches believe. This tends to happen in waves: in the 1930’s and 40’s, it was over issues of science and the Bible. In the 1960’s and 70’s, it was over the Civil Rights movement and social justice. In the 1990’s and 2000’s, it was over human sexuality. There’s not much that comes our way to divide us that we haven’t already talked about, and we know that there will be other issues in the future. We are blessed as Baptists with our freedoms: You are free to read, study, and interpret the Bible with the best scholarly tools available. You are free as a church to make decisions about doctrine and state your convictions for your own membership and leadership. What we cannot do is tell other churches how to order their worship, choose their leadership and determine their membership. But we can sit with humility and recognize, as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 “Now we see in a mirror, dimly; but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
Of everything, the greatest gift we have is God’s love. The commandment of Jesus is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And to truly love each other as our neighbor, we have to be able to practice Deep Listening and humility—to listen to one another as a child of God, to be empathetic, to long to understand—even if we don’t understand, or are uncomfortable. And sometimes we know in order to keep the relationship we take a break from the hard conversations.
Our region motto is “Diverse Members, United in Christ” from Romans 12:4-5: “For as in one body we have many members and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” That last line—“individually we are members one of another”—means we maintain our own autonomy. Each one of us is free to worship and believe in God as our heart and the Spirit directs us, but also that we need each other. This is fundamental to being a Baptist. We must belong to each other.
If you haven’t already, please consider registering for our 182nd Annual Gathering, October 9-10 at Emmanuel Chin Baptist Church in Greenfield. Our theme is “Radical Hospitality in a Hostile World.” May we consider how to practice Deep Listening with humility, and rejoice together at what God is doing through our churches!
Rev. Mindi Welton-Mitchell
Regional Executive Minister
