When Tyler and Ashley Martin left everything and everyone they knew in Texas and moved to Bar Nunn, Wyoming to plant a church, this is what they dreamed would happen. “People are responding to the gospel,” Tyler says, “Answering God’s call to come to Wyoming is the best decision we ever made.”
BAR NUNN, Wyo. — Baggs, Bairoil, Glendo, Granger, Medicine Bow, Meeteetse — race past them at the posted interstate speed limit of 80 miles per hour, and one after another, every tiny town in Wyoming can easily look like the same blink-and-you’ll-miss-it blur out the passenger-side window.
Unless you’re Tyler Martin.
“You can go pretty much an hour in any direction from where I live and you’ll see absolutely nothing — no gas stations, no subdivisions, no shopping centers — nothing,” Tyler says. “But every hour or so you’ll come to a tiny town that most people have never heard of. And just because you may not have heard of these places or know where they are on a map, that doesn’t mean these small towns aren’t important. Each one of them is a small pocket of 100 or 200 people, and every one of those people has a soul that Christ died for. That means these places matter to God, and because they matter to Him, they matter to us.”
When Tyler says “us,” he’s referring to Outfitter Church in Bar Nunn, where he and his wife Ashley serve as church planting missionaries. Outfitter is step number one in a boldly creative plan to take the gospel to tiny towns all over the state.
“Wyoming is remarkably unchurched and unreached,” Tyler says. “Here, there are 203 cities and towns you can have as a mailing address. And over 60 of those don’t have a church of any kind — not Baptist, not Methodist, not Lutheran — nothing. And we realized when we started Outfitter in Bar Nunn that if we really want to see churches planted in all these other small towns, the planters are going to have to come from congregations right here in Wyoming. These small towns are so hard to get to and so expensive to do ministry in; that’s just the way it is. If we want to get the gospel to these places, it’s going to be up to local churches like ours.”
Tyler went back to the 19th century for a plan on how to do that. “In Wyoming, you can’t just start a small group in the town next to you. There is no town next to you,” he says. “So what we and some other churches here see God priming us to do is raise up men and then send them out to be a part of a circuit preaching rotation. We’re so spread out and have so few resources, it’s the only way we’re going to be able to start churches in these towns that’ve never had a church in them, ever in the history of that town.”
Outfitter, just like the handful of other Wyoming churches Tyler’s working with, has lots of church planting raw material to draw from. Since he and his wife Ashley launched the church a couple of years ago, he’s baptized more than 60 people.
“We have a lot of new believers here, so that means in many cases we’re starting from ground zero, but it’s amazing how the men in our church have really caught on to this idea,” Tyler says.
“We’re building into them the DNA of what a gospel leader is, and our prayer is that one day very soon, each of these men will be preaching once a month in a town one or two hours from here that needs a church. This is affordable. We can keep it going for years to come because people aren’t getting burned out, and Lord willing, God’s going to call multiple church planters out of this group of men.”
Trent Fetherston is one of those men. Fetherston was known around town for all the wrong reasons. He had been a frequent visitor at a local bar. Now, he’s a follower of Christ who is training to be one of Outfitter Church’s circuit riding planters/pastors.
“Hearing Tyler preach the gospel opened my heart,” Trent says. “And if he and Ashley hadn’t answered God’s call to plant a church, I don’t know where I’d be. That’s why I want to do the same thing they did. I want to show people Jesus is real and see this whole state turned upside down with the gospel.”
“When I think about how we can get the gospel to all these small towns in Wyoming, I think about Trent,” Tyler says. “What we always say is, ‘our future church planters are getting drunk at the bar, and we’ve got to lead them to Christ, disciple them and then let the Lord call them to ministry.’ That’s what’s happened with Trent and so many other men here. Now, I know they’re going to be Wyoming’s gospel trailblazers because I see that they have a growing passion and desire to preach and teach God’s Word. When they start riding that circuit, they’re going to be the ones to take the gospel to small towns all over this state.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE — The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering (AAEO) provides half of the North American Mission Board’s annual budget, and 100% of the proceeds go to the field. The offering is used for training, support and care for missionaries.)
