GLENDIVE, Montana – This time, the emphasis on starting a church in Glendive is on raising up locals from the community.
The first time a church was started here – a photo shows the wooden church building’s dedication in 1955 – it was by southerners who came to work in the area’s oil fields. They later bought a parsonage two blocks away. In time, a two-story, red brick educational building was added to the church’s half-acre property in a residential neighborhood.
In the bust that followed the oil boom, and the years after, the church withered until it disbanded in 2020.
A block party trailer from sending church Valley Community in Miles City helps build relationships at Hopebridge Church’s community event outreaches. (Photos via BP)
Two years later, Church Planter John Corder came to replant, but he died in 2024 of a heart attack before the plant even launched.
“I don’t want to just plant a church; I want to see something that grows out of this place,” New Church Planter David Stahlman told Baptist Press. “Transplanting is not sustainable. We’re trying to raise the core team from the community. The people here need the Lord and they need each other. We really want to develop a solid body that grows into a healthy church.”
His vision is for 100 pastors, missionaries and church leaders to grow out of Hopebridge Church (now in pre-launch, Bible study mode) and for eastern Montana men and women to impact Montana, the western United States and the world for Christ.
Valley Community Church in Miles City, Mont., where Jeff Cahill is pastor, is the Glendive plant’s sending church.
“Calling David Stahlman to plant a church in Glendive fulfills this church’s God-given vison to take the Gospel down every dead-end road in eastern Montana,” Cahill told Baptist Press. “Glendive [an hour northeast of Miles City on two-late roads] is a key location for a regional work.”
Cahill had already lined up two mission teams for eastern Montana before the Stahlman family arrived last May. Four additional teams plus summer missionary Josh Eaton from Kentucky served in Glendive last summer as well. Groups came from Tennessee, Virginia, Missouri and South Carolina.
Valley Community’s block party trailer was in use nearly every week in Glendive, with popcorn, sno-cone and cotton candy machines, plus a bounce house, grill and games helping build relationships during Bridge Days, Crazy Days, Dawson County Fair and other community events. The town has three main parks, each in a well-defined area of town, each the site of a Hopebridge outreach.
“We handed out Bibles at a couple events,” Stahlman said. “There were two boys, about 8 or 9, who came up. ‘What’s a Bible?’ they asked. There’s a huge hole – a huge lack of knowledge – in eastern Montana. There’s several churches here in Glendive, with a population of about 4,800, and maybe 600 people in church. You really have to work the soil here and wait for God to move.”
Two Missouri mission teams help the Stahlman family paint a historical cabin in the Makoshika State Park, just outside the town of Glendive.
David and Cheryl Stahlman, with three of their four children in tow (the oldest stayed in Missouri but has decided to move to Glendive this spring) arrived in May 2025, after having served for six years at the rural Lighthouse Baptist Church in Gerald, Mo. In ministry 17 years – youth leader, associate pastor, senior pastor – it’s Stahlman’s first stint as a church planter, endorsed by the North American Mission Board in November 2025. (See related story.)
“The first hundred days, more than half included mission teams and vision teams of people and churches thinking about getting involved in the ministry here,” Stahlman said. “We kind of wanted to show up and settle in, but instead, we hit the ground hard.”
One church on a vision tour said they could only be there on a Monday and Tuesday. “While we were planning what we might do with a team on those days, we got a call from the school superintendent about feeding the school staff on an in-service workday,” Cheryl Stahlman said. “I had met Diana Bricker through Montana Southern Baptist Women; she used to have a catering business.”
“God had it all worked out,” the church planter’s wife continued. “With Diana and that mission team, we fed 150 people in 15 minutes on Monday.”
“That opened doors,” the church planter said. “A principal asked me about starting an after-school robotics group. That’s right up my alley; I’m an IT guy. Cheryl was thanked by several teachers for the church’s generosity in the meal and the team that served them. What we’re doing is showing people here’s a church that loves them, engaging with them where their needs are.”
Stahlman first came to Montana in 2022 when his wife, then Missouri’s WMU executive director, came as part of a Missouri contingent to their Montana partner’s annual meeting.
“I’ll go with you,” the pastor told his wife. “I always wanted to see the mountains.” Not only is Glendive not in the mountains; it has barely any trees, he added. It’s farming country, ranching country, oil country, but he knew God was in the move to this new place of ministry service.
“I’d been praying [while still in Missouri], ‘Could I just have some soil, improve it and leave it to my kids?’ Glendive has the largest state park in the state,” Stahlman said with a laugh. “God said, ‘You asked for soil.’
A wooden Southern Baptist church building that dates to 1955 is now Hopebridge Church, where about 15 people gather Sunday evenings for supper and a pre-launch Bible study. Southern Baptists years ago also built a parsonage and a two-story, red brick education building on the property.
“I want to see Glendive alive for Christ,” the planter added. “Sixty percent of the people here don’t affiliate with any church.”
What’s it like for Cheryl Stahlman, formerly deeply entrenched into Missouri’s Woman’s Missionary Union? “I think it’s lonely,” her husband said.
“I know this is what God was telling us to do,” Cheryl Stahlman countered. “I could have stayed in Missouri forever, but you could just tell God was pulling us in this direction.”
She continues to homeschool her two youngest. Noah is 14; Matthew, 16. Hannah, 18, is a student at Dawson Community College in Glendive and is working part time. Mia, 20, is a student at East Central College in Missouri while working full time. She plans to move to Glendive this spring. The church planter’s wife also substitute teaches on a nearly full-time basis while her sons do their assigned self-study in their dad’s office.
Cheryl Stahlman, who self-describes as “the extrovert in the family,” meeting people wherever she goes, also prepares the Sunday evening meal that precedes weekly Bible study at the church, which so far, three families – about 15 people – attend.
The church plant’s mission statement, Stahlman said, is, “’Lift high the king, live the gospel and love the people.’ We want to magnify what God is doing.” The tag line after Hopebridge’s name is Bridging every road to the hope of Christ.
“This is where I want to be,” the church planter added. “God has so knitted my heart to this place. God has told me to ‘Get ready. Keep yourself right next to Me and be ready.’”