The following article is from the August/September 2013 issue of fellowship! magazine. You may download a pdf version of this story here.

Being missional

UBC’s Nash offers profile of missional presence

By Courtney Lyons

One of the ongoing challenges of ministry for Craig Nash, community pastor at University Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, is equipping home groups and individuals in his congregation to understand and live into their missional identity.

Nash, an alum of Baylor University’s Truett Seminary who serves on the board of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Texas, views his role as a facilitator or active networker, working to help his congregation to respond promptly and practically to pressing needs in their community.

University Baptist is certainly a different kind of Baptist church. An innovative congregation where the popular David Crowder Band helped lead worship for many years, UBC serves a city with a significant young adult population thanks to nearby Baylor University and McLennan Community College.

With a diffuse sense of mission, Nash and UBC take an organic, rather than programmatic, approach to community ministry. For Nash, being a missional presence involves helping UBC members to meet the needs of their neighbors in the low-income community surrounding the church.

Nash works to connect members with certain gifts and talents to help meet the specific needs of neighbors. He did just that with a Baylor student majoring in business and a neighbor with a fledgling auto repair business. The owner, a recovering addict, hoped his repair shop would serve as a place of employment for others seeking to stabilize their lives.

With his graduation approaching, the business student desired to see the church continue a relationship with his new friend. The student asked Nash what it would mean, practically speaking, for UBC to be the presence of Christ to this neighbor?

UBC’s response to the student’s question was to put together a team with expertise in business management. The team met regularly with the man and his family and new relationships were formed. This type of active, collective involvement is what being missional looks like to Nash.

Many of the students at nearby Cesar Chavez Middle School have experienced the ongoing missional presence of UBC members. Nash arranges for undergraduates to have lunch regularly with students at Cesar Chavez. This “lunch buddies” ministry has led to additional involvement after school with the middle schoolers, as UBC members volunteer to help with weekly soccer practice and other school activities.

Staying connected is a central component of Nash’s missional vision as well as the vision of UBC. And social media is an important tool that Nash utilizes in his role as community pastor. An avid Facebook user, Nash’s use of social media helped make possible an incredible rapid response to the devastating explosion in neighboring West, Texas.

In the aftermath of the fertilizer explosion that left 14 dead and nearly 200 injured, Nash and UBC instantly sought ways to help, organizing a meal for two West churches — First United Church of Christ and West Brethen Church — affected by the blast.

The explosion also had terrible consequences for the residents of a nursing center in West. Residents had to be relocated and placed in facilities an hour drive or farther away. Many of the residents’ caregivers were themselves elderly and lacked transportation to visit their displaced relatives. Upon learning of this unfortunate situation, Nash notified UBC home groups, sought donations and organized volunteers to help the residents stay connected with their family members during this chaotic time.

Through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, UBC has a two-year partnership with the Batey 50, a community of about 250 people nestled deep on the Dominican Republic’s sugar cane fields. Since 2011, UBC has been sending groups to provide the Batey 50 with clean water and to build a school. Nash views UBC’s commitment to international missions as an important way to deepen the congregation’s awareness of the necessity of offering a missional presence on a global scale.

Nash’s personal commitment to missional engagement is seen in another aspect of his ministry as community pastor — hanging out at a neighborhood bar. Several years ago, Nash began frequenting a bar within shouting distance of the church each week, where he naturally became known as “The Preacher.”

Regulars at the bar were mostly folks who had grown up together, worked together and retired together in the working class neighborhood surrounding UBC. These regulars gathered to maintain a connection with each other. At first, many thought it was a bit unusual to have a preacher in their midst. Now, as they have come to know and trust Nash with both their names and personal stories, they have given him a new, more affectionate name.

Nash is no longer called “The Preacher.” Instead, he is now known at the bar as “Our Preacher.”

And that’s what being missional looks like.

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