Mark Millman is optimistic about the future of church planting in the state of Wisconsin.
He is overseeing 14 churches that are in the process of being planted in America’s Dairyland. Ethnic and international churches, he noted, are the most responsive at this point. Eight of the 14 churches are primarily international.
Millman is Wisconsin’s church planting catalyst for North American Mission Board and has served as the associational mission strategist for Greater Wisconsin Baptist Association for more than 20 years. There are 44 churches in the association, which encompasses a large portion of the state. There are two other associations in Wisconsin. Lakeland Baptist Association is in the Milwaukee area, and Bay Lakes Baptist Association is in the Green Bay region.
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Millman said a “can-do” attitude is necessary to plant churches in a largely secular state in which those who are religious are predominantly Roman Catholic. But in the capital city of Madison, there is definitely an antireligious bias. Most of the people there don’t attend church and many would call themselves atheists or agnostics, although they may have a culturally Catholic background.
‘We are discipling people’
Millman would like to raise up leaders from within the state, generating interest in church planting and multiplying, even if they do not become part of the Southern Baptist Convention.
There are some exciting new churches in the region, and Millman quickly pointed to Kieler Community Church in Kieler, Wisconsin, in the southwest corner of the state near Dubuque, Iowa.
Trevor Bohn and his wife, Molly, are planting a church in the meeting room of a pub, which is across the street from the large Immaculate Conception Catholic Church.
Bohn said the town is primarily oriented toward Catholicism. Even if people don’t attend the church, they understand the church to be the focal point of the town. A lot of people have a Catholic background but do not understand very much about the gospel.
“We are discipling people. Some understand the language of church, but it is getting past the religiosity that is a challenge,” Bohn said. Kieler Community is the only Protestant church in the town of 497 people.
Bohn is a Wisconsin native from the town of Waukesha near Milwaukee. He moved to Platteville to attend the regional campus of the University of Wisconsin. There he was part of Rolling Hills Church in Platteville, which is a Southern Baptist congregation. After university graduation, he became an elder in the church and was teaching in an area public school. One day Millman challenged the church to plant other churches, and the Lord began dealing with Bohn and his wife. They have been in the process of planting the new church for the past year in the town of Kieler, located 20 minutes down the road.
About 40 to 60 people are attending the new church. They have baptized one person so far, and there are many people — Protestant and Catholic — exploring Christianity with them.
Another church that Millman said is doing well is Antioch International Madison Wisconsin Evangelical Church in Madison. The church is made up of Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants. Meeting in the facility of Midvale Baptist Church, Antioch International has about 75 to 100 attendees. Three languages are spoken in the congregation — Tigrinya for the Eritreans, Amharic for the Ethiopians and English for the children and because it’s the common language.
The pastor is Meskerem Thomas, and he is also a chaplain at a local hospital. He is assisted by two other elders, Aydiko Gembro and Gutema Hogi. The church is currently helping to establish an Ethiopian church in Minneapolis as well.
Thomas said they receive a lot of help from the Greater Madison Association and the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention.
“The Midvale Church and their pastor are gracious hosts as well,” he said.
Across the city to the east is Emmanuel Church, which meets in the facilities of Door Creek Evangelical Free Church. José Marco is the pastor. He and his wife, Marylu, planted this church in 2021. He is a native of Argentina and studied at the Rio Grande Bible College in McAllen, Texas, as well as the Word of Life Bible Institute in Argentina. About 55 people attend Emmanuel Church.
Marco remarked that they have first-generation Hispanic immigrants from across Latin America, and there are second and third generations there as well. All have different needs and characteristics. The culture changes from the first generations as they have children and grandchildren who grow up in the U.S., and the progression moves from speaking Spanish to English. The Marcos strive to meet the needs of all of them.
Marco strictly encourages the immigrants he meets to have legal affairs in order as they are on a path to residency and citizenship.
“I tell them, ‘The Lord will bless you if you do. You cannot have the blessing of God if you are breaking the law.’”
Relational people
Marco receives support from the North American Mission Board as a church planter, and the church is involved in the association and the state convention.
“We have found over the years that those who take advantage of association and convention relationships through our events last longer than those who try on their own,” said Trey Turner, executive director of Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention. “Church planting is relational and it requires relational people.”
Millman said all three pastors — Bohn, Thomas and Marco — are successful church planters and pastors. He said the winters in Wisconsin can be rough with 50 to 100 inches of snow and windchills at 35 degrees below zero. But that doesn’t deter most Wisconsin residents.
“They just embrace it,” Millman said. “We don’t cancel church much unless the wind blows hard.”
Church planting in a convention with about 200 churches — about 100 of them in Wisconsin — is a challenge, but they seem to be bearing up well.
For more information on the association and the ministries Millman is overseeing, visit the website at www.wisconsinbaptist.org.
