“There was a time, probably a year ago, it was really heavy. I really felt like, maybe somebody else can do a better job. And then just all of a sudden, here come all these baptisms. And I think, well, I don’t think the Lord’s done with me yet.”
In March, Joppa Missionary Baptist Church celebrated the 300th person baptized during David Wright’s 24 years as pastor. That is an average of more than one baptism per month for over two decades.
300 BAPTISMS — Pastor David Wright baptizes his 300th person, Ashton Eddington.
That number would be significant for most churches, but for a small-town church that reported Sunday morning worship attendance of 77 in their most recent Annual Church Profile (ACP), that many baptisms is striking.
Go down to Joppa
With a population of 350, Joppa sits on the north bank of the Ohio river, downstream between Paducah, Kentucky, and Cairo, Illinois. Like its biblical namesake, where the backslidden prophet Jonah tried to flee God’s presence by hopping a ship, this tiny Illinois village is a port town, of sorts.
Joppa was founded around a riverboat landing in the 1800’s. Now only a local public boat ramp for fishermen remains. The real port lies just west of the village, where an industrial facility loads a half-million tons of cement onto barges each year, then ships it away to build up someone else’s town.
And just as Jonah continued lower in his Joppa journey, the tiny Illinois community can feel down in more than one sense of the word. Less than a dozen zip codes in the state are farther south. The population has dropped almost 15% in the last 20 years. And the closure of the nearby power plant in 2022, a provider of more than 100 jobs and over $800,000 in annual county tax revenue, took its toll.
“It had a big impact on the whole county,” said Terry Mathis, the Associational Mission Strategist of the Union Baptist Association with its office in neighboring Metropolis.
“But they are all putting together what they have to help others. They’re being the center of a town that has fallen on hard times, again, because of the closing of that plant,” Mathis said. “But through that (the church) has reached out and done a greater work of ministry and made people aware of Christ.”
Wright is keenly aware of the difficulties his neighbors continue to face, but talking with the white-haired pastor, the tough times in Joppa rarely come up. Instead, he exudes enthusiasm for the most recent wave of baptisms and love for his church and community.
Pray, love, baptize
“This is such a loving church. They’re so in love with one another. I’m not saying that we don’t have problems, because we do. But it’s just built on love,” Wright said.
It is that love for one another and love for the community, along with a consistent commitment to prayer, that Wright credits for so many baptisms during his tenure. “We are really trying to be a house of prayer, and we really are big on giving.”
What he describes as big on giving is the church’s generosity. “They are one of the most giving and helping churches I’ve ever seen,” Mathis commented.
That generosity shows up in their commitment to consistently send about 25% or more of tithes and offerings out in support of missions including Cooperative Program (CP), their local Union Baptist Association, as well as through special offerings such as the Mission Illinois Offering for state missions, Lottie Moon Offering for International Missions, and Annie Armstrong Offering for North American Missions. That consistent generosity adds up over time, allowing a rural church like Joppa Missionary to give nearly one million dollars for missions during Wright’s pastorate.
The church is also quick to serve community people in need. Wright points to the generous hearts of the church’s kitchen committee as just one illustration. When a non-member family from the community experienced a sudden death, the church quickly hosted a dinner and took up a love offering to help with funeral expenses.
But it’s prayer that Wright offers as the long-running labor that is resulting in so much spiritual fruit at the church.
“When I first came here, I was really big on prayer. I believed that prayer is so vital in a church and in a marriage and in our lives,” he said.
That led to an invitation for a deacon to join him in prayer during the hour before Sunday school. It quickly grew to three deacons, then another mission-hearted member, then an open invitation to the church.
“Now 24 years later, we meet in one of our Sunday school classrooms and we’ll run anywhere from 30 to 35 and we just pray,” Wright said.
He describes people praying through lists of needs, physical and spiritual, praying through classrooms, in the sanctuary, at each pew—for families who regularly sit there and for visitors who will sit there that day. There’s prayer at the piano and prayer at the pulpit, and prayer walking around the outside of the building.
“I just don’t think you can go wrong by becoming a house of prayer” Wright said. “And I think that’s why God is blessing us so much, is because we’re trying to be more and more in tune with him by praying and talking and listening and going and doing as he wants us to.”
That listening recently opened the door to another avenue for the church to love God and love their community. And it is responsible for the most recent wave of baptisms.
Just a kid’s meeting
EDIBLE RAINBOWS— Kids build lesson-connected crafts during the Wednesday night ministry.
Mandy Greer has attended Joppa Missionary Baptist Church since birth. She teaches English at Massac County High School. When the news of the impending power plant closure broke a few years ago, there were realistic fears that the small community would also lose their local school. The whole community was concerned. Greer recalled a conversation during that time with a friend.
“She’s like, let’s pray that God doesn’t shut it down. And I said, no, let’s pray that God does something. He might have something bigger in store,” Greer said. “So, I just started praying for something big to happen.”
In the meantime, another church member, Pam, had started a van ministry to bring local kids to the church. Despite their unchurched backgrounds, the kids simply had a desire to be at church at any opportunity. Even if that meant that on Wednesday nights the kids, ranging from pre-K through sixth grade, were just sitting in an adult Bible study.
Greer began to take notice as she continued to pray for God to do something big. “It was maybe a year into these kids showing up at church that I felt like God was saying, ‘I’ve already started something big. And it’s starting with these kids.’”
After a brief conversation with her pastor, a Wednesday night children’s ministry was born.
“It’s just a kids’ meeting. We’ve not got a name for it,” Wright said. “But this is one of the key factors in the last year’s baptisms and salvations.”
Greer serves as the primary teacher, with about eight other adult volunteers helping out with teaching and supervision. Her husband now serves, too. “He just absolutely loves these kids. He’s a lot nicer to them than I am,” she said, jokingly.
On a typical Wednesday night the church ministers to 20-35 kids, providing a meal, Bible lesson, and activities, though that number is growing. And while the church sees the growing numbers as a blessing, it hasn’t been easy.
“It’s been hard to adjust because we’ve never had all these kids coming in who don’t have parents at church with them. And it’s been a struggle,” Greer said. One of the greatest challenges has been teaching the Bible to a wide age range of kids with no biblical background at all. She has contacted Michael Awbrey, an IBSA Leadership Development Director with years of children’s ministry experience, who is working to help them find the right curriculum and develop sustainable ministry plans.
“But the church has been so supportive. They’re willing to finance the food and we’ve had people give money, but it’s been a big change.”
The next 100
The upside of that big change is baptisms. Like most churches, 2020-2022 were challenging years for ministry. Baptism numbers during that span were the lowest since the beginning of Wright’s ministry at Joppa. The children’s ministry has breathed new life into the church again, with 15 baptisms in 2023 and eight more in just the last few months.
But it’s not only the kids who are being reached. Greer shared that an entire family is now coming to the church because of a girl who was recently baptized, with the older sister and grandmother also being baptized. And last September, Wright baptized a father and his three kids, all in one service.
That leads back to Wright’s 300th baptism—a teenage boy, small enough for the self-described “good-sized guy” to immerse side-by-side in the church’s narrow baptistry, designed for the administer to stand outside the water.
“When I first started, I said, Lord, I sure would like to have 100 baptisms,” he remembered.
“My 100th one was a little skinny girl. Well, I said, God, you’re a big God!”
The prayers for baptism number 200 began, and again, about eight years later, the prayers were answered.
In March, after number 300, one of the church trustees told him, “We’re praying for 400.”
Wright, who began ministry in his mid-forties, is not sure if he will be around for the next milestone, but is excited just to have the opportunity.
“Whatever comes would be great. We’ll still rattle the bushes and try to tell them about Jesus.”