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 182^nd 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

Remembering Our Roots, Loving our Neighbors, Working for Justice: A reflection on ABCUSA’s National Leadership Council Meeting in Atlanta

Rev. Mindi Welton-Mitchell, Regional Executive Minister

The National Leadership Council is a yearly gathering of ABCUSA Leaders including the Office of General Secretary, executive directors and officers of our partners such as ABHMS and International Ministries among others, and the Regional Executive Ministers Council. It is a privilege and honor to attend as your Executive Minister. This year, our gathering was in Atlanta and we had time built in to visit the King Center, the American Baptist Historical Society, and Morehouse College. We also spent time with Rev. Dr. Lawrence Edward Carter, founding dean of the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse, and Rev. Dr. Albert Paul Brinson, former director of World Mission Support for ABCUSA.

We began our day at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, part of the National Historic Park that is the King Center. National Park Ranger Marty Smith reminded us that Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t rise up on his own; he was shaped by his father and by the greater family as well as the community. We learned how the community supported each other during segregation, including Black-owned businesses supporting and cultivating the surrounding neighborhood in partnership with the church and community organizations. Ranger Smith reminded us that our job is to raise up and encourage leadership from within, and we have to start with our children, to build the kind of beloved community King envisioned.

That conversation helped frame the rest of the day for me. As we visited the American Baptist Historical Society now housed at Mercer University, on display were several artifacts, including a 1624 primer on the Lord’s Prayer written by John Smyth, one of the dissenters from the Church of England who helped shape the Baptist movement in England and the Netherlands. We also viewed meeting minutes of the Foreign Mission Society and American Baptist Home Mission Societies from the 1840’s, when the mission societies voted to no longer support missionaries who were slaveowners, and the southern churches formed their own mission society and the Southern Baptist Convention. There are many unique artifacts and records at the Historical Society that help tell the stories we may have forgotten.

From there, we went to Morehouse College and visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. International Memorial Chapel. Dean Carter gave us a two-hour tour, sharing with us how Morehouse College is named for Dr. Henry Lyman Morehouse, who was the executive director of the American Baptist Home Mission Society in the late 1800’s. Dean Carter also shared the history of American Baptist support of Black education during and after the Civil War from ABHMS. Though we became known as Northern Baptists after the Southern Baptist Convention formed, we never stopped our ministry and mission in the south, especially in Atlanta, and many of the historic Black colleges and universities were funded and supported by American Baptist Home Mission Societies.

When we had dinner that evening with Dr. Brinson, who grew up in Ebenezer Baptist Church under Martin Luther King, Sr.’s pastoral ministry, he told us that King Sr. taught him as a young boy, “you never do anything for yourself. You do it for others.” As I reflect on everything we learned that day in Atlanta, I’m reminded that this continues to be our legacy. Because of our diversity from our beginning as the Baptist movement, we have seen our neighbors among our own family: those whose rights are restricted, whose dignity is denied, who face persecution and marginalization. We are reminded that we love our neighbor as ourselves as Christ commanded us to, and in doing so, we see Christ among us and at work in us.

My reflection and my prayer from my experience in Atlanta is that we continue to do this work in Wisconsin together. That we remember that we are the region, together, and we support each other. We pray for each other. We see each other. Right now, we see how the recent Supreme Court ruling is a repeat of the same harm done to Black voters from before the Civil Rights Act passed. The current administration’s treatment of immigrants and pausing of visas and programs harms our members and churches. The concerns over war and the possibility of people in our churches being called up to active duty, the cutting of SNAP benefits and the loss of healthcare coverage affect different members of our churches. We know that even if an action doesn’t affect us personally, it affects someone we love, and that is enough to move us into the work of justice.

We are American Baptists. We have long worked for civil rights, for equality, and for justice. Our historic roots were in the struggle for religious freedom for everyone—even people from different religious backgrounds or none at all. We believe that everyone should have the same freedom so we are also free to worship Christ without interference from the government. Our historic principles of religious freedom, soul freedom, church freedom and Bible freedom continue to undergird our call to act for justice today.

May we remember our roots, love all our neighbors, and see one another as this diverse body of American Baptists in Wisconsin, working together for justice for all.

By Rev. Mindi Welton-Mitchell, Regional Executive Minister

“Salvation is Free, but Ministry Costs.”

You may recall hearing this phrase before. Rev. Rick Barlow from the American Baptist Foundation was our preacher at our 178^th Annual Gathering in 2022, and he shared this phrase with us. We know that we must give to support our congregation’s annual operating budgets, our missions we support, and the regional ministry we are all part of. Your United Mission giving helps support both the region and the denomination as a whole (2/3 of what you give stays right here in the American Baptist Churches of Wisconsin, and 1/3 goes on to support ABCUSA and supported ministry partners. To learn more about United Mission giving, visit our website at https://www.abcofwi.org/abc-giving/).

Money is a part of the world we live in. The Bible has around 2500 verses that deal with money, wealth, and possessions, and Jesus spoke about it quite frequently. Yet we don’t like to talk about money in the church. When it comes to uncomfortable topics in the church, I’ve heard that pastors would rather talk about sex than money given the controversy! Much of our uncomfortableness around the conversation is inherited: we learn how to view money from how our family talked about money. If money was a taboo subject in our home growing up, we are less likely to want to talk about finances as adults. Especially in the United States, it has been instilled in us that personal finances are just that: personal. They are not up for discussion with others. A lot of this has to do with shame: we are ashamed if we don’t have as much as others. We are ashamed if we have struggled with job loss or illness or debt. Or, we worry that we will be judged if we have more than others. There are some Bible verses that sadly have been used in ways that sometimes make people feel bad about having money, such as the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-30. It’s not that he had money, but that he chose not to be generous with it that was the problem. Contrast that with Zacchaeus in Luke 19:1-10, who is a rich man who understands his responsibility is to be honest and responsible with his wealth by being generous.

The Bible makes it clear that giving is a spiritual practice. If we are going to talk about discipleship, including prayer, Bible study, and helping those in need, we also have to talk about giving. It is part of what we do as Christians, both in faithfulness to God’s teaching and in faithfulness to one another as being part of Christian community.

Many of us learned about tithing in Sunday School, a practice from the Hebrew Scriptures of giving a tenth of one’s produce or one’s income to God. However, there are other occasions in Scripture where people were asked to give beyond ten percent, for additional offerings at various festivals, or for helping the poor, the widow and the orphan (i.e. the most vulnerable among the people). Tithing is mentioned 32 times in the Bible, but only three of those times in the New Testament, and not in the best light (Matthew 23:23, in which Jesus admonishes religious leaders for only giving of their produce and not practicing justice and mercy; Luke 18:12, in which Jesus tells a parable of a religious leader who bragged about their giving through prayer; and Hebrews 7:1-10, in which the writer of Hebrews refers to Genesis and Melchizedek, and how Abraham was faithful in paying ties to him).

However, instead of asking the question of tithing, we ought to ask more about the spiritual practice of generosity. It’s not that tithing is wrong, but that in and of itself, what does it mean? Some people, sadly, treat it like paying a tax to God, instead of seeing it as a spiritual practice. It’s an easy way of deciding what to give, rather than asking the harder question of what does the Lord require of us. In the same manner, while we know that ministry DOES cost—it’s impossible to avoid it as we all have to live by budgets at the local and regional levels—we need to remind ourselves that God requires of us to be generous in our faithfulness to Jesus. Let’s face it: our tithing doesn’t mean anything if we are not changed by it. If all we are doing is tithing to meet a budget, what are we doing to grow in ministry and share in the work of Christ together?

As I write this, I am watching the Orion spacecraft approach the Moon. I am captivated by this mission, but I’m also reminded of the words of pilot Victor Glover on Easter Sunday: we are on a “fragile, beautiful oasis.” This is it. The one earth that God created for us. The only planet in the vast universe that is ours. Everything in it, according to Genesis 1-2, is ours to care for and share in its resources. God has given us everything! And yet, everything we have been given is a precious gift.

When we look at generosity in the Bible, we see that generosity is a practice that invites blessing (Proverbs 11:25 and 22:9), emphasizes Christ’s own generosity and is part of the practice of justice (2 Corinthians 8:1-15), and an act that comes from God through us (James 1:17). We are instruments of God on earth when we are generous.

In this month after Easter Sunday, as we continue to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, and remember the awe and wonder of the Artemis II space mission (I’m continuing to pray for their safe return as I write this), may we remember God’s generosity to us, and give to God through our local churches and to our region. The American Baptist Churches of Wisconsin supports the work of our local churches and ministries. We are funded through United Mission, and we also receive gifts from churches, organizations and individuals. However, I must also share with you that giving has been declining from our churches in recent years. We cannot do this work Christ has given us to do without everyone’s support, so I ask you this spring, as you see signs of new life around you, where do you see new life in your church? How can we help that new life to grow together? Where have you seen Christ at work in our region that has inspired you? Consider how God has been generous in your life and share in that generosity with your church and with the region. You can always give through your local church, or visit our website and donate here.