LINCOLN—Rex Green, pastor of Edmonson Baptist Church in rural Benton County, is proud of how his flock of 40-50 in Sunday worship is making a difference.
Located 10 3/4 miles down Highway H from Lincoln toward the Lake of the Ozarks, the church with its worldview emphasis touches lives from Warsaw to south of Sedalia to Cole Camp over to Stover and on down to the various lake communities.
“We draw our congregation from a nearly 400-square-mile area,” said Green, a bi-vocational pastor who does odd jobs such as selling bread and recording music to supplement his church income. “When the congregation gets out there and they get busy, and they start talking with their neighbors and their friends, then you see that influence really spreading out. I think that’s the way the Great Commission is supposed to work. It’s not (about inviting) a friend to come to church. It’s go out there and be the church in your community and you can have a lot bigger footprint than just a little dinky Southern Baptist church sitting out in the middle of nowhere.”
Last year Edmonson Baptist was asked to be a polling place. Green saw it as an opportunity to return to the day when the local church was the town hub.
“At that point it kind of occurred to me that if people were going to be coming here to exercise their political will, then it makes sense that we should kind of turn back the clock 150 years when people would come to the church as a central community meeting place to not only exercise their political will but to become informed on political matters,” Green said.
“If the church is truly the center of the community, as I believe it should be, then not only are people going to take away better information about who and what they should vote for but they’re going to take away information about why they should vote for those things.”
Green described his church members as mostly older and conservative. They are trained to share the gospel but not in a narrow sense. Politics is included.
“I want people to share grace and truth with gentleness and respect,” Green said. “I think that’s what we’re called to do. Not everybody has the same political opinions that we do, but every political opinion needs to be founded on something.
“I want my congregation to address worldviews. I want them to go out and just in the course of their day, in the course of the people that they meet, and the neighbors that they talk to, to address the issues of worldview. What do you believe? Why do you believe that? Do you really conduct yourself as if you believe that?
“Is your faith lived out in every decision that you make? That’s where Jesus belongs. We are to be living sacrifices for Him, and that means we take Him with us wherever we go. He’s in charge not just on Sunday morning but on Friday night when we’re deciding which movie to go see and on Tuesday when we go to the polls and vote.”
The way that Edmonson Baptist goes about this in its geographical Jerusalem is by not backing away from whatever topic is being discussed.
“You can’t really separate the theological truth from the social and political truth,” Green said. “You have to consider the condition that man is in before people can recognize man’s need for God.
“People are fed up with our culture and our society being as bad as it is. They have to understand that Christ is the solution for that. As a function of just a regular Christian evangelical ministry, politics is going to come up, and I always figure as long as religion and politics are both taboo subjects, if you bring up one you may as well bring them both up because they’re so integrally tied together in this country.”
His message to his fellow bi-vocational pastors in small Missouri Baptist churches is simple: “We can’t do everything, but we can do something.” With salvation in Christ being upheld as the No. 1 priority, all subjects can be included.
“We don’t have to be some multi-million dollar, hyper-organized political action committee,” Green said. “All we need to do is be faithful to the Great Commission and go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that Christ has commanded. That’s one of my prime job descriptors as pastor of Edmonson Baptist Church. I certainly understand that to mean helping people make good decisions in their families, helping people make good decisions in their finances, and helping people make good decisions in their politics.”
Pastor tackles politics through God’s Word ALLEN PALMERI/associate editor apalmeri@mobaptist.org LINCOLN—Green is not afraid to address some of the more controversial issues that feed into American politics from his pulpit.
In fact, from now until the general election Nov. 6, he will be hitting all kinds of hot buttons in a manner where the members of his congregation will be able to grow in their roles as informed voters.
“We’re going to talk about every issue from a biblical perspective that might come up, including homosexuality, abortion, taxes, economic systems,” Green said. “We’re trying not to turn the pulpit into a political machine, but at the same time I think God has something to say about who we vote for and why we vote and how we make those decisions to vote. I think that’s what people want to hear.”
He also is personally motived to do all that he can to ensure a better future for his son, Hunter, who will turn 14 on Election Day.
Green, who has been Edmonson Baptist’s pastor since 2009, had one couple leave the church because of his decision to not shy away from politics. At the time he explained to them that “everyone else in the congregation understands, and as long as the Bible discusses political issues I will discuss political issues.” He cites Paul as an example of “a politically active Christian,” one who ultimately appealed to Caesar for justice.
“Rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s includes giving Caesar our opinion in this country,” Green said. “That means we have to be informed and we have to be motivated to express our political will.”
One of the ideas that Green is implementing is something he calls the issues forum. That is where the church invites candidates to come in and listen to their concerns.
“Think of it as a cross between a debate and a town hall forum,” Green said. “What we would really like it to be is a very relaxed and informal opportunity to have a conversation with the people in what many of us in this area consider to be an under-represented area of the populace. We don’t get a lot of political campaign speeches down here. We don’t get a lot of politicians wanting to come down here and really court this portion of the electorate. There are a lot of folks down here who have never met the local sheriff, and we’ve got a Benton County sheriff’s race coming up this fall.”