CASPER, Wyo. — Susan Foery simply asked, “How can we help?”

That’s how things get done at Boyd Avenue Baptist Church, where Ed Tharp has been pastor five years, after 22 years as youth pastor.

“We’re heavily involved in ministry; we really do care,” Tharp told Baptist Press. “It’s not about programs and buildings. It’s about people.”

Many of the more than 200 people who attend Sunday morning worship at Boyd Avenue Casper are discipled, trained and nurtured Sunday and Wednesday in small-group, age-appropriate studies, enabling them to spread out during the week, seasons and years to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

Last week the four-person Foery family joined with about 30 others to provide a lavish Thanksgiving dinner — the fourth annual — at the church’s MPAC building (multi-purpose activities center) for about 100 Casper College athletes and their coaches who couldn’t go home for the holiday because they play in a tournament that starts Friday.

“It’s important to us to raise our kids as Christians and to be able to give to others, support others,” Susan Foery told Baptist Press. “We want our kids to be part of our church’s outreach activities.”

This one is huge. 

“We have so much help in this,” Outreach Coordinator Melissa Trujillo told Baptist Press. “The Foerys come to decorate the tables. Some come just to do dishes. Some just help serve. Some come to sit and talk with the athletes and coaches. Everyone pitches in to do whatever needs done,” including cleaning up at the end of the night.

The Thanksgiving dinner was one of the first uses of the MPAC building four years ago, Trujillo said. Today the building is in frequent use by the church and the community of about 59,000 people; 80,000 in the 30-square-mile metro area. 

Among many outreaches, Boyd Avenue Church sends out members all over Casper and nearby communities each spring for several localized Easter Egg hunts. This involves thousands of eggs as well as a sensory-sensitive hunt in the MPAC building for youngsters with special needs.

There’s also a September Back to School Bash, an October Fall Festival and a November Operation Christmas Child packing party.

“Casper College [Thanksgiving dinner] is one of our biggest events,” Trujillo said. “It brings in athletes from all over the world. I find at this event that a lot of the students and coaches aren’t involved in a church. 

“We sit with them, talk with them, and our youth help with the dinner, get to take pictures with them,” Trujillo continued. “We get to talk with them and let them know we’re there for them. You can see how thankful they are.”

With a focus on reaching, teaching and serving, Boyd Avenue Casper ministers to its congregation and its community in six ways, the pastor said: Biblically sound and Christ-centered teaching; Prayer that shows reliance on God; Being a loving church that provides ministry to those who come; Training and empowering people to do ministry: Outreach; and locally and globally missions-minded endeavors.

“We start by allocating 5% of our income for the Cooperative Program and another 7% to regional and state missions,” Tharp said. “I believe in what we do as a state and national convention. We have the largest missionary-sending organization in the world because we do it together.”

The church also is involved in a ministry to Haiti; a possible mission trip to Kenya in March in support of a member who today is a missionary there, and a long-standing mission congregation with a food pantry and related ministries in Midwest, an impoverished oilfield community.

Boyd Avenue’s biggest challenge is financial because of its new building as well as maintenance issues on the original structure, built in 1957, the pastor said.

Envisioned in 2014 as a $1.1 million structure, since “God had given us the vision to build something to help us impact our community,” the cost doubled because of COVID and the subsequent rising construction costs soon after construction started in 2019,Tharp said. Plus, over the last year Boyd Avenue leaders determined the roof of the original structure needed to be replaced and the original parking lot needed to be resurfaced.

“We’re doing ministry; we haven’t cut any ministries at all,” Tharp said. “We’re doing everything God has called us to do, but how much more could we do if we didn’t have this mortgage debt?

“Once we started the project we had to continue,” the pastor continued. “I believe with all my heart God wanted us to build it, and that He’s going to be faithful in helping us getting it paid for.”   

Less than a week after the Thanksgiving dinner for college athletes and their coaches, at 5 p.m. Dec. 8 the annual Lottie Moon Ingathering is to take place. This involves a meal followed by members placing their wrapped Christmas gift to Jesus (as passed through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering) on the altar, singing carols and lighting a candle.

“I’m called to invest myself in the lives of people,” Tharp said. “He’ll figure out what that looks like. Every decision I make, I ask, ‘How does this best reach and minister to people?’ It’s not about programs and buildings; it’s about people.”

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Karen L. Willoughby is a national correspondent for Baptist Press.)