With Appalachians there's a religious culture, but not a Christian culture.
There's a religious culture, but not a culture that knows Jesus.
There's a religious culture, but not one that understands the Gospel.
From Tri-State Bible College and the Appalachian Ministry Institute, this is the Level Paths
Podcast.
My name is Chris Weigel and we're glad you've taken some time to join us today.
Once you're already here, you probably have a pretty good idea of what this is all about.
We're diving into finding ways to creatively lead effective and dynamic ministries in a
region that is home to nearly 23 million people.
It's called Appalachia.
And as this very first episode unfolds, you'll get a more clear picture and a lot more details.
Level Paths, by the way, comes from Isaiah 40 verses 3 and 4.
Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord, fill in the valleys and level the mountains
and hills, straighten the curves and smooth out the rough places.
Sound familiar?
Well, if you've ever driven the West Virginia Turnpike from Charleston to Beckley, you've
seen firsthand what filling in the valleys and leveling the mountains and hills looks
like.
But how do these verses from Isaiah 40 apply to ministry in Appalachia?
Is the Appalachian region any different than other geographical areas in the US?
Well on this very first episode, you'll meet Rex Howe.
Rex is the president of Tri-State Bible College in South Point, Ohio, and he's joined by Matt
Shamblin, an Appalachian research fellow at Tri-State Bible College.
This episode begins to peel back the layers and spell out what is so unique about ministry
in Appalachia.
So let's get right to it.
Here's Rex Howe and Matt Shamblin.
So welcome everyone to the Level Paths Podcast.
My name is Rex Howe and I'm here with my colleague, my partner in crime.
It's good to be here that we could finally get together on this and hopefully be a help
to folks who are in Appalachia.
Yes.
We have been planning and praying for this for quite some time and it's exciting that
it's finally getting off the ground.
We have been talking about engaging Christian ministry in Appalachia for the glory of God,
being clear view in Appalachia.
And we're going to unpack what the goal of the blog is and some of the other stuff.
But Matt, let's start with what is Appalachia?
What are we talking about?
Well, when we talk about Appalachia, there's a lot of definitions that really come to the
forefront.
The Appalachian Regional Commission, which was a commission that's more than 50 years
old now, is going to give us a government definition.
It's going to be an area of about 13 states all the way from lower New York all the way
into Florida.
Not everyone takes it that far.
But we're talking about a number of people to the tune of about 23 million people, 200,000
square miles.
It's a portion of a large percentage of the East Coast, but is there only one state that
actually is fully Appalachian?
And that's West Virginia, which is where I'm from.
And where Tri-State Bible College is just right on the border there.
So this has been a really good fit as we explore Appalachia.
Some would say anywhere that there is coal under the ground, that is Appalachia, which
makes it a very broad definition.
But it's a rural people.
It's a people that have had to strive for identity.
It's not a Southern culture.
It has a lot in common with the Southern culture, but it's not a Southern culture, nor is it
a Northern culture.
Appalachia has its own culture, and that's why this podcast is so important.
So we are in, I've heard you say this before, we're in Central Appalachia.
Is there anything unique about Central Appalachia?
Maybe you watch Netflix and you watch the J.D. Vance's movie.
The book made to a movie called Hillbilly Elegy.
And there's been so much backlash because of what's portrayed there.
But what is portrayed is often a culture that is found in Central Appalachia.
Some have called it America's ghetto.
They have given it that title of America's enduring social and economic problem.
Central Appalachia has a mix of a Southern culture.
It has a mix of a Northern culture.
It is not Bible-belt.
As a matter of fact, it's one of the least churched areas in the nation.
But it is an area that is ripe for the gospel.
People make that mistake.
They see churches on every hillside.
There's a lot of assumptions that there's a Bible blanket over the area.
Those of us who have ministered in the area and grown up in the area and seen some of
the darkness of the area.
Let's talk about that.
What are some of the unique spiritual perils?
That's going to help us in a little bit, I think.
Talk about some of the mountains and valleys of Appalachia.
What are some of the mountains and valleys of Appalachia, the spiritual perils that prevent
us from seeing the glory of God?
What are those things?
In his book, Appalachian Values, Loyal Jones, who really is the brain trust of all things
Appalachia, writes about several values that are identifiable in Appalachia.
One of those is its religion.
It's not necessary to say that Appalachia, though it be a religious place, is a Christian
place.
Religion has found its way into the culture to literally define who we are as a people,
without us even knowing it.
When I started to study Appalachian values, not the book necessarily, I'm talking about
what makes us unique.
I did so really out of the desire to be able to more effectively reach Appalachia with
the gospel.
That's where I found myself ministering.
That's who I am.
I hate this phrase, but I had to unpack who I was in order to understand who I am.
With Appalachians, there's a religious culture, but not a Christian culture.
There's a religious culture, but not a culture that knows Jesus.
There's a religious culture, but not one that understands the gospel.
That becomes a major pitfall, a major peril in trying to communicate the gospel, because
very quickly, very easily, that community Appalachian language steps over.
Though we may be using the same language, we're using a different diction here.
Now, we talked about this example of the homecoming in Appalachia.
I remember these growing up as a kid.
It was a big deal.
You had people showing up at homecoming that it was like a family reunion.
People coming from all over, tons of food all day at church, but then the next week,
it was back to normal.
What do you mean by religion, but not necessarily Christian?
Maybe the homecoming is an example of that?
The unique Christian community Appalachian happening is that homecoming.
Some of our listeners may not know what a homecoming is, but a homecoming is a gathering
of a church community for the sake of community and the sake of getting folks back together,
not for the sake of the gospel.
It's not uncommon for a church building to exist that does not regularly have church,
but they will annually have homecoming.
Think of that.
This gathering that we call homecoming doesn't have in any way the purpose of preaching the
gospel, explaining the Bible, applying it to their lives, seeing lost people raised
from death to life.
That's not the purpose.
The purpose is to get the people from that particular holler or that particular community
together to see one another again.
So many folks had to leave Appalachia for work.
My father tells a story about needing work, and so they went to Ohio.
They went north into Ohio in order to find a job, and so they would come back, and that's
what homecoming is.
Just imagine the center of the community at one time was their little church, and often
these are one-room white-brained churches.
The center of the community is that church, though the people who come back to that homecoming
may be grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins who never actually
attended a worship service of Jesus Christ in that building.
Yeah.
I'm thinking of Dr. Michael Svego has a book called Retro Christianity.
In that book, he talks about the essential marks and works of a local church, and the
marks are orthodoxy, ordinances, and order, so leadership, and then the marks are evangelism,
edification, and exaltation.
If those things aren't happening week to week, you don't really have a New Testament church,
but what you do have is a community, family-oriented, cultural center, but absent of a really great
commission type of a ministry.
You know, years ago, I was in conversation with some folks in New England, and it's not
uncommon in New England for there to be what was at one time church buildings, but they've
become community buildings.
No one in the community ever remembers a time when it was a church building.
It's a community building, and you see that really replicated in this idea of Appalachian
homecomings.
We're going back, we're going to get together, and even have a picnic in the local cemetery,
which I think is so bizarre.
The point is not about Jesus.
The point is about community and getting together for those people who were on that hilltop
to get together and see one another and relive that tradition that essentially was lost as
they went to Ohio, went to Michigan, went away for work.
And so it's kind of the reliving of Appalachia.
And the truth is, you also see this in reverse too.
It's not uncommon for where these families had left Appalachia to go to a place to work,
to go find Appalachian churches in northern places, in western places.
So there's an Appalachian church out west.
There's an Appalachian church in Michigan in a very non-Appalachian culture, because
then we're going to take our culture with us.
We're going to take a little bit of Appalachia with us and meet there on Sunday.
So again, that religion, but not Jesus, again, is yet bled into that place.
All right.
So we've talked about some of the mountains, and we'll get into this more throughout the
podcast.
What are some of those spiritual perils in Appalachia that people who are in ministry
or just church members, church people, Christian people wrestle with as they try to seek God
and see His glory in this area?
What are some of the views of God's glory that we see in Appalachia?
What are some of the glorious things about the Lord's work in Appalachia that you've
experienced?
So we can look to its history.
We can look in its culture, and we can see that remnant of religion.
Loyal Jones says, religion has shaped our lives, and we have shaped our religion.
When you drive through Appalachia, you see little white-framed churches on every mountaintop,
up every holler, on every corner.
Most of them are closed, and some of them are dilapidated now.
But the reason I bring that up is because that homecoming that we talked about, that
religion that shaped lives, tells us that there was an incredible, great move of God
in the past in Appalachia.
And that gives me incredible hope for today.
And that methodology that we've tried to modernize, actually, we need to go back.
And instead of trying to bring southern or northern or whatever religious culture to
Appalachia, we need to reach Appalachia where it is.
We need to contextualize because that's what happened in the past.
This great move of God was that men, missionaries, came on horseback.
They would reach people from the community, young men from the community, disciple them,
and then send them out on horseback, and they'd be preaching on a charge, one pastor for multiple
churches.
And God moved.
You see these buildings, and you know at one time there was a thriving, growing Christian
community there.
And so when I think about the move of God, I think about that.
There are people, young men right now all across Appalachia, who are going back to that,
young men from their communities who are going back to those communities and doing the hard
work of planting churches in those communities.
And God is using them in incredible ways.
Unfortunately, and this is why Tri-State Bible College matters so much, that a lot of times
what happens is guys leave Appalachia, and they go away to seminary, they go away to
Bible college, and they don't come back.
Because the truth of the matter is, the churches aren't large here.
If the average church in America has 60 people in it, the average church in Appalachia has
40.
It's lags behind in so many different ways.
And so instead of coming back to do that hard work and have to work a job and then be a
Bivocational Pastor, a lot of them don't come back.
But God still has His men on the field.
The fields are still white under harvest.
It's the laborers that are few, but the laborers are there.
And so what's happening is these guys are staying in Appalachia.
God's burdening their hearts for Appalachia.
And God is blessing their ministries in Appalachia.
We see churches being planted, and we see churches multiplying in Appalachia.
And so I would say what's old is new again.
What God did, He's doing again.
We just need that equipping mechanism once again.
Podcasts just like this to hear, hey, God is at work.
He's at work in Milton.
He's at work in Huntington.
He's at work in Barboursville.
He's at work in Morgantown.
He's at work in Paintsville.
On and on we could go.
He's at work in Ashland.
I hope with this podcast, to fan that flame.
Amen.
Hey, is he at work in Wheelersburg?
I'm really hoping he's at work in Wheelersburg.
Is that possible?
Isn't that where you live?
That's where I live.
I don't know.
Can anything good come from Wheelersburg?
All right.
Well, brother, let's talk about Tri-State Bible College's vision, the Appalachian Ministry
Institute's purpose.
And then I want to come back a little bit to the history of the church in Appalachia.
I think it's something that people are not very aware of.
Even those of us who have studied church history at an academic level, we've studied it through
the Reformation and then into the modern church and then maybe some of the major modern church
movements.
When it comes to Appalachia, no one writes about it.
What happened here?
Even though I'll say this, when I was pastoring out in Little Lisbon, Illinois at West Lisbon
Church, the people in the area knew the history of the church movement and how the Norwegian
Lutheran movement came over, how the church developed from there.
They knew about the revival that happened in Norway that led to the pastor coming over
and starting all the churches in the area and the 44-year history of the on horseback
going to all the congregation.
They knew the history.
But being an Appalachian person here, I don't know the history until talking to you.
I didn't know the history of how the movement started.
I want to come back to that, but I want to talk about Tri-State Bible College because
as you said, I came back here because I feel like it's an essential part of what God is
doing in our region.
And we exist to help people fulfill their ministries.
That was Paul's final command to Timothy with regard to ministry things.
He told him, Timothy, fulfill your ministry.
And what that means is to complete what remains.
We feel like we have some great churches in the area.
We want Tri-State Bible College to be a kind of a unique community where church leaders
and pastors from the churches in the area are coming together in one place to offer
access to a community of biblical scholarship and to help people fulfill their ministries
and have lives that glorify God.
So that's what we're about here.
As we've been talking, we've felt the need for an Appalachian ministry institute as
an extension of the Bible College.
And you mentioned this, but why do you think that TSBCs uniquely position the meet that
need?
There is no other academic institution that's focused on teaching the Bible and helping
equip men and women for ministry that's situated in Central Appalachia.
And what's often happened is young men, young women go away from Appalachia to get educated
and they never come back.
What must happen is that Appalachians are equipping Appalachians to do the ministry in Appalachia.
This matters so much.
And that's one of the things that I hope we have in our Appalachian ministry institute
is that we bring people who are currently practicing ministry into our institute that
we can hear and we can learn from because the truth is ministry is difficult in Appalachia
and those who are finding it not so difficult and God's blessing, we want to learn from
them.
We want to hear from them.
The history of Appalachia is so much influences and informs us where we are, but that being
said, old Appalachia is not modern Appalachia.
In fact, Appalachia has changed more in the 20th century than the rest of its history
combined.
And so when we think about Appalachia, we can't just talk about all of the history.
We have to talk about Appalachia today.
That history informs us how we got where we are.
It does help us understand who we are.
But today we've got to reach this culture.
And some folks are doing this.
Some guys are doing some incredible work around Appalachia.
We just want to bring focus to that and our Bible College is a great place, great way
to do that.
One of the outcomes that we've been measuring here at the Bible College, between all of
our faculty, how many years of ministry experience combined our faculty have?
It's hundreds of years because our faculty, they're not just academics.
I mean, they are their scholars in their own right, but they are also pastors.
They're Christian leaders, Christian workers.
We've got people at the Huntington City Mission.
We've got assistant pastors.
We've got all kinds of people who have just accumulated years and years of ministry experience
that are teaching our students here.
And we talked about this as we were dreaming and praying about this ministry, that what
we want to do for people who are ministering in Appalachia is we want to affirm them that
this is part of Christ's commission.
Your ministry is important.
We want to affirm that.
When we have our Appalachian Ministry Conference coming up in September, so you all want to
save the date for that.
We're looking at a date in September of 2021 for that.
We want to affirm people who are doing ministry in Appalachia.
Secondly, we want to encourage them.
As you said, it can be a tough place to do ministry and to serve Christ.
So we want to encourage.
There's a lot we could fight about in Appalachians.
God knows, love to fight.
But we want to be a place where people can get genuine encouragement.
And then finally, we want to equip.
I mean, that's what a school is, right?
It's a training place.
We want to give skills and resources and relationships because relationships with a good network
of Godly men and women equip us too.
And so those are our purposes to affirm, encourage and equip.
It's not the North or the South, and it's not the Midwest either.
The Appalachian region is without a doubt unique, and it does in fact have its own challenges
when it comes to reaching her people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
And that's why Rex and Matt are hosting the Level Paths podcast.
Are you a pastor or maybe you're at a church in the Appalachian region and you're looking
for more effective ways to minister to the people right where you are?
You can reach out to Rex and to Matt at Tri-State Bible College by emailing rex.how at tsbc.edu
or Matt Shamblin at tsbc.edu.
And if you'd like more information about Tri-State Bible College and the Appalachian
Ministry Institute, visit tsbc.edu.
On the next Level Paths podcast, the history of the church in Appalachia.
Many attempts were made by those mainline denominational churches.
Basically come in, move into Appalachia and fix what's broke.
And that system failed almost instantly in Appalachia.
The Level Paths podcast is an outreach of Tri-State Bible College and the Appalachian
Ministry Institute.