Fieldwork’ not just catchphrase for rural Texas church plants

Three years ago, Carl Schneider left his businessman persona behind in San Antonio when he and his wife and five children relocated to the southeast Texas town of Edna to pastor a small congregation that had formed from a Bible study group.

Two years ago, Jerry Jewell tried twice to take a seminary course that covered the gospels, but ended up in a missiology course in which church planting was a topic, and next found himself in a church-planting class.

Then God opened the door for him to live out a vision he’d been given for Living Hope: The Church in the Field, in his central Texas hometown of Copperas Cove.

Both men have learned that cultivating new ground to plant a church literally means working out in the field to reach the lost on their own turf.

Wild hog hunting

Carl Schneider, who previously served as associate pastor of family ministries and missions at a San Antonio church said, “I suppose the biggest change is the way in which we do things. For my role as pastor, I no longer strive to fit the ‘businessman’ model?they don’t trust me if I look and act like I’m trying to sell them something. So I look like the other men of my community, and I’ve learned to do the things they do alongside them.”

In a town of 6,000, with lots of farmers, ranchers, and hired hands, looking like the other men means denim. Schneider said it isn’t unusual for him to have a pair of work gloves in his back pocket, “and as far as my pocket knife goes, I don’t leave home without it.”

Schneider has learned to care for livestock, harvest cotton, and hunt wild hogs over the three years he has led Lakeway Fellowship.

They have grown from 15 original members to a congregation of over 60 regular attenders. His family’s menagerie has also grown?from one dog they brought from San Antonio to two dogs, two rabbits, two minnows, one crawdad and nine turkeys, “for the fair,” Schneider said.

He has also learned to be patient and slow down?”to think tortoise, not hare,” he said.

Of the 15,000 county inhabitants, about 75 percent are unchurched, and content to be so. Schneider has discovered that most see the church as irrelevant and untrustworthy. The message Schneider senses they have received from churches is “we have an important message for you. You must come here so we can tell you, you must clean up to come in, and shame on you if you don’t.”

It took Schneider about a year to cultivate a genuine friendship with the husband of one of the original members. Through that man, Schneider became acquainted with another family, and it took another two years to develop a relationship with them.

The patriarch of that family told Schneider, “The last time I went to church, I was a little boy. When my dad and I walked in, the preacher said, ‘Looky there. The devil just walked in the door.’ So my dad turned around, walked out, and we never went back.”

When the man told Schneider the story, Schneider responded, “That man was a jerk,” and the man thought Schneider was referring to his dad. Schneider said, “I don’t mean your dad. That preacher was a jerk.”

The man said he had never thought of it like that, and added, “I just figured if I was the son of the devil, I didn’t need to go back. So I didn’t.”

Schneider assured him that he was always welcome at Lakeway Fellowship. Since then, the man still hasn’t come, but his wife, daughter-in-law and two grandsons have. But Schneider believes even they would not have come had he not been willing to en