Heroes of the Plains

In the course of a day we may meet and speak with fifty folks--farmers, table servers, donkey peddlers, gas attendants, tattoo artists, or unassuming passersby ("Where in the heck is Washington Street?").   But of the hundreds of folks we've been honored to meet, there is one subset of people that rise like cream to the top of the milk (an archaic agricultural image).  They are my heroes of the plains.  They are the pastors.

Pastors were among the first to follow homesteaders into the dry, waterless lands of eastern Montana and western North Dakota.  They prayed with families in need, shared their food, blessed and spoke hope into bereaving families saying goodbye to yet another family member who had succumbed to small pox or the flu.  They did their best at preaching even while trying to tease their own acreage into crops.

So Rick and I have have an up close and personal encounter with these pioneer-spirited pastor types.  And with every pastor or leader I've met, I have asked them the  same question:  "How can I pray for you?  What one thing do you want me to pray for you as we depart?"   Pastor Dave spoke most eloquently for his prairie colleagues:  "Pray that we will be able to lead our congregations back out into mission . . . that they will be the church outside the church in our communities."

So pray for these brave soldiers, these prairie hopegivers, these stand-in-the-gap folks who have followed Jesus down, not up, the ladder in order to minister to the remnant of folks who still eke out a living on the plains.