New England Baptists On Promoting Life in a Changing Culture

As part of our Across State Lines emphasis, New England Baptist partnered with the ERLC’S Psalm 139 Project to donate an ultrasound machine to Aspire Now Pregnancy Care Center in Vermont, a pro-choice state. 

On today’s episode, you’ll hear from Terry Dorsett, executive director of the Baptist Churches of New England, about the unique challenges facing New England Baptists, particularly when it comes to advocating for pre-born lives. He also discusses how cooperation with other state conventions like Tennessee and Alabama, fellow SBC entities, and local churches makes pro-life ministry possible in a region that is largely abortion permissive.

New England Baptists face other ministry obstacles and opportunities as well, including family issues, pornography and gambling. Even with these challenges, there are encouraging signs of growth. According to Lifeway Research, New England is the only region in the SBC that has grown over the past five years. Terry has served in New England since 1994, first as a pastor, then a church planner, a director of missions, and finally a church planting catalyst before becoming the executive director of the Baptist Churches of New England in 2015.

Now let’s turn to Elizabeth Bristow’s conversation with Terry Dorsett.

Episode Transcript: New England Baptists On Promoting Life in a Changing Culture

Narration:

Welcome to the ERLC Podcast, where our goal is to help you think biblically about today’s cultural issues. I’m Lindsay Nicolet, and today we’re talking with the Baptist Churches of New England. 

Narration:

As part of our Across State Lines emphasis, New England Baptist partnered with the ERLC’S Psalm 139 Project to donate an ultrasound machine to Aspire Now Pregnancy Care Center in Vermont, a pro-choice state. On today’s episode, you’ll hear from Terry Dorsett, executive director of the Baptist Churches of New England, about the unique challenges facing New England Baptists, particularly when it comes to advocating for pre-born lives. He also discusses how cooperation with other state conventions like Tennessee and Alabama, fellow SBC entities, and local churches makes pro-life ministry possible in a region that is largely abortion permissive. New England Baptists face other ministry obstacles and opportunities as well, including family issues, pornography and gambling. Even with these challenges, there are encouraging signs of growth. According to Lifeway Research, New England is the only region in the SBC that has grown over the past five years. Terry has served in New England since 1994, first as a pastor, then a church planner, a director of missions, and finally a church planting catalyst before becoming the executive director of the Baptist Churches of New England in 2015. Now let’s turn to Elizabeth Bristow’s conversation with Terry Dorsett.

Elizabeth Bristow:

Terry, welcome to the ERLC Podcast and thank you for joining us.

Terry Dorsett:

Well, I’m glad to be here. It’s great to join you today. 

Elizabeth Bristow:

Thank you. To start us off, can you tell us a little bit more about how long you’ve been serving in your role with the Baptist Churches of New England, and just a little bit about what you do there?

Terry Dorsett:

Well, I’ve been here in the role for a little over 10 years. I actually started on April 1, 2015, which is April Fool’s Day. So that keeps me humble. Every year on my anniversary, they say they called me as their executive director on a day that fits who I am. So that works out great. So a little bit of humility. 

Elizabeth Bristow:

But it wasn’t a joke. 

Terry Dorsett:

That’s what they say, yes. 

Elizabeth Bristow:

I love it. Are you from New England originally?

Terry Dorsett:

I’m not originally from New England. I’m from the Midwest, from Illinois, but I moved to the South to Virginia when I was 16, and I married a Southern girl and so I got exposed. I grew up in a wonderful Christian home, but not a Southern Baptist home. But I got exposed to Southern Baptists through my wife, and I thought to myself, “Wow, what a great way to do ministry.” And so I became a Southern Baptist and was a Southern Baptist for all of two years when the South Carolina Baptist Convention began a partnership with New England Baptists, and I was sitting in their annual meeting and thought to myself, “Well, that sounds like a great thing.” And so I came on a one-week mission trip to New England thinking that it would be one week, and I caught the mission bug that week, and six months later we moved here, and we’ve never left. That was 1994. And so we planted churches in Vermont and then we planted churches with the North American Mission Board in Connecticut. And then 10 years ago, I came here to the state office and we’ve been here ever since.

Elizabeth Bristow:

That’s quite the journey. Thanks for sharing about it. Tell us what’s going on in New England right now. What are some of the unique challenges and opportunities that New England Baptists are facing?

Terry Dorsett:

Well, right now we’re in a period of incredible growth. A lot of good things have happened. Now historically, New England’s been a difficult place for evangelicals. You know, New England’s very secular. New England is very educated. New England’s very affluent. And when you have a lot of education and a lot of affluence, you tend to think you don’t need very much Jesus. But that’s been our New England heritage for the last one hundred years. But for the last probably 10 years, we have seen really great growth, great strength. For the last five years, we’ve had incredible baptisms. Almost every year we’ve set record baptisms and we have been, according to all of Lifeway’s research, for the last five years, we’ve been the only region in the SBC in which we’ve had net growth year after year. So we’re very excited about it. We have 396 churches here in New England, and probably by the end of the year, by the end of 2025, we will have busted the 400 mark for the first time at the number of churches. And we’re pretty excited about that.

Elizabeth Bristow:

That’s incredible. Sounds like God is really on the move in New England. That’s really neat. So recently the Psalm 139 Project has partnered with the Baptist Churches of New England and is working to better promote a culture of life across your region. What has that looked like when you’re in a generally more abortion-permissive area?

Terry Dorsett:

Well, of course, many of the people in New England don’t even grasp what that means. It’s different inside the churches, but outside the churches, it’s not even a discussion. Most people in the general population are having. It’s just an assumption that if you are pregnant and don’t want to be, you just go have an abortion. That’s not even a debate for many people, which is a sad thing. It’s just a forlorn conclusion that if you don’t want to be pregnant, then there’s a solution. You just go to the abortion clinic, and it’s done. Of course, inside the church, obviously we think very differently about that. But it’s a struggle even inside the church because you have many, many people who have not come to faith until adult life, and oftentimes deeper into their adult life. They’re 30, 40, 50, even 60 years of age by the time they become a Christian.

Terry Dorsett:

So we would have many, many, many ladies in our church who had already had an abortion or perhaps even two abortions before they became Christians. And so when we talk about it, we have to be very compassionate. We have to be very loving and talk more about redemption and the grace of God than maybe a person in the South might do because we’re talking to a different audience. But at the same time, the Word of God is still true, and we cannot water down what the Word of God says. But on the flip side, because we have a very educated audience, they do understand medical science. And as medical science has advanced, it is hard for very well educated people to deny that life is happening inside the womb. Perhaps an uneducated person might argue that, but it is very hard for people who have excellent health insurance.

Terry Dorsett:

They’re affluent, they can afford to go to the doctor, and they’re seeing this baby move in their stomach. They know that this is not just a mass of tissue. Some of the propaganda that maybe low information people might believe, highly educated people know better than that. And so they’re struggling to think through how to match what they’re seeing with their eyes with what they have always been told, that this is not a life. And that’s where oftentimes we have the conversation when they come and they say, “Well, I’ve been thinking about having an abortion, but then I went to the doctor,” and they used the ultrasound machine, and it clearly is alive, it’s not a clump of cells, and that’s a beautiful thing. So then when you think about the people who perhaps don’t have insurance, which again, more and more people in New England would have insurance than perhaps other parts of the country, but there’s always that segment of the population that does not. Or you might have the daughter of someone who is very affluent, but she doesn’t want to tell her parents. So she’s looking for a clinic that she doesn’t have to use her insurance card because she doesn’t want her parents to know. And so that’s the one who ends up at the crisis pregnancy center. And once she sees that child moving inside her womb, it’s a whole different experience because she’s an educated young lady, and she knows what that is. She knows that’s a life. And I think that makes a big difference.

Elizabeth Bristow:

You know, it truly does. We at the ERLC have a ministry called the Psalm 139 Project that raises funds at no cost to the clinic for pregnancy care centers all across the country. And we’ve even placed a machine internationally. A part of that mission is to provide, as we call, a window into the womb. And so when you are able to see on that ultrasound machine that life, it truly changes your whole perspective and belief about when that life begins, like you just discussed. And so let’s talk about this partnership that just recently formed between Tennessee Baptists, New England Baptists, and Alabama Baptist to fund an ultrasound machine for a center in Vermont. And we just had a recent dedication for this machine. So tell us, what does that mean to you and to your team and to New England Baptists?

Terry Dorsett:

Right. Well, of course, Mitch, who is a pastor in Vermont, and he’s our trustee on the ERLC board, he told us about this opportunity there in Burlington to try to help with the ultrasound machine. And so we talked about what we could do to try to raise money. And most of our churches are relatively small, and even though we have some affluent people in our churches, when your church has 30 people and you’re trying to pay for a building and a pastor, it’s hard to stretch your dollars. And so we had raised a small amount of money, but it was not nearly what was needed to be done. And so we’re thankful that there were some people that came alongside us, and particularly Rick Lance and the people at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. They have been amazing partners for a very long time.

Terry Dorsett:

They have helped us do all kinds of things. They’ve helped us do some men’s retreats. They’ve helped us a lot with disaster relief. And they’ve sent incredible numbers of volunteer teams. So Alabama hands are all over New England, and Alabama fingerprints are all over New England. And so it’s exciting that they’re also part of this effort to help save babies. That’s not surprising for us that Alabama Baptists would want to do that. And it’s step up to the plate because I think everywhere you look in New England, somebody from Alabama’s waving back at you, which I think is kind of funny because when you think of Alabama and New England, you can’t get further apart geographically, culturally, and in so many ways. And yet we’re also very tied together because we’ve got a common Savior around a common mission. And it’s very wonderful to see that. 

Terry Dorsett:

And very similar with the Tennessee situation. So my associate executive director is from Tennessee. That’s his hailing grounds, and he’s been up here about 20 years, but he makes it back home two or three times a year. And so he keeps those connections, those relationships close. All partnerships are really built not on formal agreements and pieces of paper. All partnerships are built on relationships. And so Josh has kept our relationships with Tennessee very healthy and strong because of the friendships that he has there. And that’s really what works is people. People are what make partnerships work. And so we’re thankful for the people of Alabama and the people of Tennessee. And that’s what’s made it work because they care about the people of New England.

Elizabeth Bristow:

Isn’t that what makes Baptist cooperation such a beautiful thing too? I love these stories where we witness these different state conventions, and I know Send Relief had a hand in this too, and we’re just so grateful for not just the financial means that they were able to provide, but just the on-the-ground support, even at the dedication. We’re just so grateful for Southern Baptists in the way that they come together to see a need and help meet it. Would you want to share a particular story or experience that stands out to you where you have seen local churches in your area come together to care for mothers and advocate for pre-born lives? 

Terry Dorsett:

We have, of course, so, so many stories. We have a lot of stories all over the place. I’ll share one story. I won’t tell you the town. But we had a town here in New England in which there was a crisis center that was really trying to help some mothers that were really in a crisis, and they were continually vandalized. They were vandalized over and over and over again. And it was a hard thing. They were broken into and their equipment was stolen, terrible things were spray painted on their building here. They were trying to help women in trouble. And people who were supposedly pro-women were doing everything they could do to keep them from being effective. But one of our churches, an urban downtown church with very limited resources, raised the money to put in a security system. 

Terry Dorsett:

And the men in that church installed that system and then even stayed there at the building for the first couple of nights when they put it in to keep the vandals away so that that crisis pregnancy center could reopen and care for mothers. And I thought, you know, it’s the opposite of the narrative that we hear on TV. Supposedly, the pro-lifers are the ones that hate women and don’t care about children. They’re supposed to be the heartless ones according to the narrative that the news media gives us. But when you get on the ground and look at what’s really happening, they’re the only ones who actually care. And it’s the other side that’s so focused on their political agenda that they don’t care about the actual people they were hurting. And so when I look at stories like that, I think, wow. And there that little center is, still there, still helping women of color, still helping women in very difficult circumstances. And that church, with so few resources of their own, is still one of their number one supporters. And if they need diapers, if they need formula, if there’s a woman who needs some situation, if there’s a crisis, that church is going to be the first to respond. It’s what Jesus would do. And we have churches like that all over New England. I love that church.

Elizabeth Bristow:

Thank you for sharing that with us. That’s a very touching story. Thank you for sharing. As you think about advocating for the issue of life in our culture today, what are some of the unique opportunities and challenges that stand out to you the most?

Terry Dorsett:

Well, one of the greatest challenges here in New England is that, because of our political climate, it is challenging for us in New England. I know you guys do a great job of advocating for specific pieces of legislation and for specific policies, and we thank God for you. Thank God for doing that. It’s challenging for us to do that because we are so outnumbered. I’ve been here 34 years in New England. I have voted in every election in 34 years. If they have a runoff election for dog catcher, I’m voting for it, alight? And I don’t think a person that I have voted for in 34 years has won. Maybe, maybe once or twice, but not very often. It’s just the way it is. So we have to be very careful in how we advance the things that we believe in because the things that could seem so normal and so right and so common sense oriented somehow get twisted around and turned into we’re the hate people, even though we’re actually expressing love.

Terry Dorsett:

And so we have to be very, very careful in how we do that. And it’s so hard because we don’t want to be silent on key issues. We don’t want to have our voices muted on key issues. And yet, there are times in which we have to pick the battles in which we fight. And so sometimes we focus on Scripture issues and we focus on principles. We focus on sort of the bigger ideas of Scripture and principles, and not necessarily specific pieces of legislation because we would lose the legislation argument, but we can win the war on Scripture because God’s Word will always come out on top. We know that God’s Word goes forth and does not return void. That’s a promise from Scripture. So sometimes we have to focus on that. And that’s hard. There are, of course, in every movement, including the pro-life movement, there are those that if you don’t go 100% all in and sign every statement and push every pro-life button, then you’re not pro-life.

Terry Dorsett:

And so that’s hard too because sometimes we feel like we’re being shot by our own, who should be our friends, sometimes they’re our foes. Because if we don’t show up at every protest and stand outside of every abortion clinic every Saturday, then we’re not really pro-life, which, of course, is not true either. So it’s really hard. In some ways, there’s no way to win. But we have to keep reminding ourselves that the win we’re trying to get is not a legislative win. The win we’re trying to get is a battle for the souls of people, men and women, boys and girls in New England. If we get the gospel proclaimed, and the Holy Spirit enters into a person–because when a person becomes a Christian, the Holy Spirit comes in–now we have an ally inside that person, the Holy Spirit.

Terry Dorsett:

And that is much stronger than any law, any piece of legislation. And we know that once the Holy Spirit comes, then we move so much further in that person’s life than anything else we could ever do. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. But it’s a long, slow process, but it’s working. And we have more people who know Jesus today than we did 34 years ago when I moved to New England. And Lord willing, 30 years from now, when I finally end my time here and go to heaven, we’ll have more believers than we do today. And so that’s our task. Take New England one soul at a time, and hopefully that also someday will change the politics in New England, but if not, at least we’ll change the souls of New England.

Elizabeth Bristow:

That’s right. Amen to that. How can our listeners today pray for the work that God is doing there in New England?

Terry Dorsett:

Well, I think you could mostly just pray that we won’t grow weary in well doing. We are seeing good things happen, lives are being changed, our churches are growing. I was in Vermont for a long time. Of course, now I’m in Massachusetts, but I was in Vermont, and we have six states in New England. So in Vermont, the average church used to be 30 people. It is hard to keep the doors open with 30 people. Now, the average church is 60 people. So we’re excited to have 60 people instead of 30 is amazing, but it’s still hard to go with 60 people. So on the one side, we’re seeing growth, and so we’re thrilled. On the flip side, it’s taken 30 years to get from 30 people to 60 people on average. 

Terry Dorsett:

We are seeing incredible growth in our ethnic ministry. Fifty-seven percent of our churches worship in a language other than English, and it’s incredible. So it’s beautiful and it’s wonderful. And we get together and we have 25 different languages. And our potluck dinners are amazing, but it’s also challenging to communicate to our state convention in 25 different languages. I can’t just send out an email like someone else can. We have to figure out how we’re going to translate it. Everything we do is complicated because of all of that. And so good things are happening, God is working, and we rejoice in all of that. But every step is filled with challenges and filled with all of these realities. And so we’re rejoicing in it. But it is not easy, and it is not simple. So the prayer is simply, Lord, don’t let us become weary in well-doing because good stuff is happening, but it’s also exhausting, and it’s tiring. 

Terry Dorsett:

That’s challenging. Some people who do know my story, my wife was a wonderful lady, and she was my partner here in ministry for 35 years. We planted churches together and discipled people. But two years ago, she passed away from pancreatic cancer. That is a new stage for me to do this ministry alone. It’s much more difficult than when I had her with me. So if people want to pray, they can pray that the Lord will be my steady stay and beside me as I do this ministry alone. Thank God I have a good team at BCNE, but it’s not like having my wife by my side. 

Narration:

Cooperation is at the heart of Southern Baptist ministry, and the recent ultrasound dedication in Vermont is a clear example of why it matters. As New England Baptists continue to labor in a hard to reach part of the country, partnerships, prayer, and patient trust in the Lord make this work possible. We invite you to join us in praying for our fellow Baptists in Vermont. 

Thanks for listening to this episode of the ERLC Podcast. Join us in January as we talk about March for Life, why it matters, and why we march. We hope you have a Merry Christmas!