The downside of being a part of an "independently minded" church/denomination

If you haven't noticed already, I consider myself to be a student of history.  I would like to think that through incessant reading, on often esoteric subjects, I have a decent understanding of not only where I am in the world today (and along with me, my church, and our denomination), as well as where I/we stand in the flow of history.  That being said, I could write at length about the positive aspects of being a part of a congregation-governed local church and of a loosely affiliated denomination that is not run from the top-down.  However, few things in life come without a cost or trade-off.  The local nature of our church, and the looseness of our affiliation as American Baptists does come with a negative aspect as well.  One of the primary negatives is that a local church can sink on its own without the denomination noticing right away, or if they do, without them having the resources/directive to step in and save it.  {Note: The American Baptist Churches of Pennsylvania and Delaware, ABCOPAD, our region within the American Baptist Churches of the United States, has only 5 full time staff covering that large geographic region and 301 churches; a very small number compared to other denominations}  In addition to a lower level of direction/support from above, which is not an indictment of our regional staff, they're amazing, local American Baptist (and various other independent churches, baptist or otherwise) also have difficulty when it comes to supporting future ministers and missionaries in regards to their education, training, and placement.

I won't bother to go through the details of my own decade-long journey from college graduate to part-time youth pastor, to part-time teacher, to part-time pastor and part-time teacher, to full-time pastor; that sentence alone should convey that it wasn't a smooth journey.  As a baptist pastor raised in an independent church (Galilee Baptist in Saranac, MI does not belong to a denomination), I was entirely on my own regarding my call to the ministry, and having received a top-notch education at Cornerstone University, I was on my own trying to find work as a minister.  My experience may be worse than most, but only I would imagine in a difference of degree, not a difference of kind.  Being independent meant that I could take any job that appealed to me, which is great, but it also meant that I had to find and land that job on my own (not so great).  The path I've walked, and my wife Nicole along with me, has taught us powerful lessons in patience and humility, but it has not been an easy one, and hardly seems like the ideal scenario for someone called by God to minister to his people.

Going through a similar experience to my own, in some ways, are the newest missionaries supported by First Baptist of Franklin, Brian and Lynette Smith, of International Ministries (aka American Baptist Foreign Missions Society), who are currently crisscrossing the country raising support by visiting dozens of churches for their upcoming work in Haiti partnering with Haitian Baptist Convention.  In a less independent denomination, the Smiths would not be nearly as "on their own" regarding finding the financial support they need to go to Haiti as missionaries, nor would they be trying in the future to communicate with supporters from dozens of churches spread across the country in order to maintain that support.

Are there blessings associated with a great amount of freedom/independence as a minister/missionary/local church?  There are, but they like so much else in life, come at a cost.  I don't know who I would be as a man, a husband, and a minister had I not spent so much time "in the wilderness" awaiting the chance to put my call to the ministry more fully into action.  I know that part of my usefulness now stems from my experiences then, but I also know that it isn't wise for the Church to make things harder on those who are willing to serve, a difficult road to serving God full-time is a pressure that may usefully mold some, but crack others.

So, what is my response to all this?  I have no intention of leading my church away from ABCUSA, it is our heritage and our home, and our personality as a church has been shaped by our place within ABCOPAD.  Overall, I do believe that the positives of being a locally governed church outweigh the negatives, but it is necessary that we recognize the negatives (for all church/denominational structures have them) and do what we can to minimize their impact.  That being said, when someone from my congregation expresses an interest in the ministry, as a pastor or a missionary, you can be sure that I will be taking an active role in helping him/her find the path that the Lord is calling them to follow, they will have, at the least, my help in finding the way forward.

If you just finished reading this post, and are now thinking to yourself, "I'm glad my church/denomination doesn't have any negative trade-offs from its leadership structure", you missed the boat; time to step back and look objectively.