The sights and sounds of the rodeo are distinct and unmistakable.

Paul and Cody adapted – their lives, families and ministries – to reach those God had called them to reach.

Archery practice in the basement rather than potlucks in the fellowship hall.

Flipping burgers at the rodeo rather than sipping java at a late-night coffee house.

Cornerstone Community Fellowship in Livingston, Montana, is not an average Southern Baptist church plant, and pastors Paul Seddon and Cody Wood are not average church planters. In their boots, Wranglers and cowboy hats, these two Southeastern graduates have embraced the culture around them – a culture vastly different from which they have come.

Although both were raised in the South – Seddon in Virginia and Wood in Florida – both men answered God’s call to take the gospel to the unreached people of the western United States, specifically those in the small town of Livingston. Serving in a  “pioneer” state, Seddon and Wood have developed ministries and methodologies unique to the culture in which they now live, seeking to find ways to showcase the glory and beauty of the gospel message to a people group who are often suspicious of outsiders and wary of messages that preach anything but self-reliance.

Seddon and his wife, Christine, had spent some time in Livingston before moving there to start Cornerstone.

“We spent two months here doing an internship,” Seddon said. “We were working on a sports camp in the neighborhood we now live in.” He and Christine spoke with the father of one of the young girls they had met during the sports camp.

“We asked him if church was important to him, if he had any spiritual connections,” he said. “In no uncertain terms, he told us, ‘I’ve got it made. I don’t need that stuff.’

“God just broke our hearts for this area,” Seddon said. They wondered, “If we don’t come back and reach out to this community, who will bring the gospel to the people of Livingston?”

The Seddons moved to Livingston the following summer, in 2007, after he graduated with his Master’s of Divinity degree from Southeastern.

Seddon and Wood met while both were seminary students. They were members of Wake Crossroads Baptist Church in Raleigh where they became friends. Wood was familiar with Montana through short-term mission trips.

Montana in general, and Livingston in particular, has been underserved by gospel-preaching churches. Traditionally the area was targeted by a group known as the Church Universal and Triumphant, an amalgamation of Eastern religion, mysticism and Christianity. The group moved into Livingston in the 1980s, after the railroad pulled out and left the town struggling. They often asked people to sell their family land and give up much to join the church, Wood said.

“A lot of people saw that the church was trying to take over and were hurt by that and disenfranchised because of it. It left a sense that religion and churches are there to take something from them,” he said.

There are more than 200 unreached people groups living in Montana, Wood said. In Park County, where Livingston is, the percentage of lostness is somewhere between 95 and 98 percent.

“Take those statistics, and then look at the Sudan. Our area has a higher percentage of lostness and more unreached people groups than the Sudan,” Wood said.

Seddon and Wood began Cornerstone among people who are fiercely independent and suspicious of organized religion. They soon realized that some of the tactics common in the rural South would not translate well to the even more rural West.

The two families began sharing the gospel with the people of Livingston through serving the people of the town.

“When you land someplace 2,000 miles from home, you think, ‘What do we do?’” Seddon said. “When we first started the church, we had home Bible studies, but nobody really came, because nobody really knew us.”

The families began getting involved by hosting a Dave Ramsey financial seminar, a Mothers of Preschoolers program and various outdoor programs, such as an archery event. However, one of the ways the church has most gotten involved with the community and showed their willingness to serve is through the annual Livingston Roundup.

The Roundup – a rodeo that gathers hundreds of contestants every Fourth of July weekend in Livingston – has been a staple of the town for more than 80 years. When Seddon and Wood moved to town, they immediately knew that in order to influence the town, they needed to be part of the rodeo.

Seddon’s wife, Christine, said, “When Paul and Cody came and visited before we moved here, they started meeting with influential people in the community. Some of them were actually on the rodeo commission, so we asked how we could help with rodeo.”

The rodeo commission offered to let the fledgling church get involved by picking up all of the trash from the rodeo, four mornings in a row.

“They couldn’t get people to consistently come back and pick up the trash, because it is a nasty job,” Christine said. “We did that the first year, and they told us they would like us to do it again the next year.”

She said that by the following year, Seddon and Wood had been asked to join the rodeo commission – which is in charge of planning and logistics for the rodeo – and they wanted to know how the church could serve more.

“We knew we wanted to be involved,” Wood said. “The first year we just picked up trash. Nobody would give us the time of day. The next year, we got in the (cattle) chutes and sorted stock and put ourselves in situations like everyone else. We ended up covered in manure, kicked, bloodied and bruised.

“After that, it changed for us. People knew we were hard workers and that we were willing to do what they wanted of us,” Wood said.

Their involvement in the rodeo has continued to grow. Now, every night of the event, Cornerstone Community Fellowship offers a free meal to the cowboys, contestants and volunteers. During the evenings before the rodeo officially begins, someone shares the gospel with the gathered cowboys, cowgirls and rodeo volunteers that are gathered for dinner under the hospitality tent.

In addition to the trash pick-up, hospitality tent and working in the chutes, the church also is in charge of cleaning the bathrooms at the fairgrounds and keeping them stocked and selling programs. They even have sponsored a gate, so whenever a cowboy rides a bull or a bronco out of a certain gate during the rodeo, the name of the church is announced.

Because of their involvement with the rodeo – one of the most significant community events of the year – these church planters have been afforded opportunities to speak into the lives of the men and women of Livingston.

“We use that as a platform to establish relationships, to help them build trust,” Seddon said. “We want to show them we work hard alongside them, and we want them to know we don’t want to change their culture. Through doing that, we’re able to establish those relationships.”

In the few years since the team has been in Montana, they have seen people come to a saving faith in Christ, and they have seen the little church grow. Through the efforts of two Southerners in Montana and the providence of God, they are seeing their community transformed, one life at a time.

The people of Livingston are no different. They live in and enjoy the beauty of God’s creation, but most of them have yet to be introduced to their Maker through His Son, their Savior, Jesus Christ.

Photos by Kelly Jo

“I am writing you, because when we graduated from seminary, you told Paul and I that if there was anything you could ever do to help us to let you know. I would like to invite you to help us…and to invite you and your wife to come out to the rodeo,” Wood wrote to Akin, in July of 2009. “I know you regularly travel all over the world and are part of some huge events. I would really appreciate it if you would consider my invitation to see how ministry is being done in rural Montana, where 95 percent or more of our population is without a Savior.”

So in late June 2010, Danny and Charlotte Akin flew with some friends to the town of Livingston, Montana, population 6,851. Only a few weeks earlier Akin had helped preside over one of the most historic Southern Baptist Convention meetings in decades, an Orlando event that drew nearly 12,000 messengers.

At the Livingston rodeo, no one knew who Danny Akin was. One of the foremost preachers in the world’s largest Protestant denomination did not preach for a week. The president of the largest Protestant seminary on the East Coast, along with his wife, served alongside a couple of church planters picking up mounds of trash, serving food to cowboys in the hospitality tent, scrubbing toilets, replacing bathroom supplies and selling programs.

“We wanted to let them know we’re proud of them and of what they’re doing,” Akin said. “They’re making big sacrifices.”

Akin said it would be easy for the two families to move to Montana and feel disconnected from their friends and seminary family. He said it is also easy, as president of the seminary, to get caught up in his work and disconnected from the real world of ministry where students are working.

“It’s a chance to be out here with people who need the gospel and who need to know the Lord,” Akin said.

Akin said the trip reminded him just how necessary church planting in the West, and in all the underserved areas, is. Statistically speaking, the people of Montana are as unreached as people in many foreign countries.

“Even though we’re in America, you’ve got to think like a missionary. You may all speak English, but you have a completely different cultural background you have to penetrate,” Akin said. “It’s a tough area. It’s a different culture.

“To really reach people in a place like this – it’s very much the same as on the mission field – you have to become one of them. It’s even more obvious having watched Paul and Cody here, serving on the rodeo association and really jumping in as Montanans.”

Akin said he is proud of the work done by Seddon, Wood and their families, and he is humbled by the missionary effort put forth by both men. “It’s obvious they have a heart for servant evangelism, and they are making a big impact in this area.

Areas like Montana, with very little gospel presence, are those that must be focused on by Southern Baptists. “We’re concerned about the unreached and undeserved areas – places like Montana. It’s an underserved area,” Akin said. “It takes somebody with bulldog determination to come to a place like this, to stay with it and to see the work accomplished. Folks like Cody and Paul are a great start.”

Southeastern graduates and church planters Paul Seddon and Cody Wood have grown in an understanding of what this means as they seek to contextualize their ministry to the culture of the West in their town of Livingston, Montana. These two men, 2007 graduates of Southeastern, have planted their lives and the lives of their families in this small, Western town, located approximately 30 miles east of Bozeman.

Unlike many other church planters, Seddon’s and Wood’s ministries focus less on having theological discussions with seekers in coffee shops, and more on sharing the truths of the gospel while hunting, fishing or working alongside the men and women they have come to know.

“It’s a different ballgame here out West. In the East, if you church plant, you are usually part of a plant of an existing church,” Seddon said. “Sometimes, the sending church will send 20-30 people along with you to go plant. We’re more what we call a ‘pioneer plant.’ In this, you’re sent to an area where there really is no base.

“The real difference out here is that there is no Bible knowledge. They haven’t been brought up in the church. It’s not to say they aren’t interested in spiritual things; they are. They just don’t see the church as being relevant,” Seddon said. “You really have to start at the ground floor and build relationships. That takes a long time. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

Wood said, “They really don’t see a need for God, because they’ve done all these things by themselves. It’s not that they’re not spiritual, but they see religion as a crutch and not something they need in their life.”

One of the most effective ways the men have found to get involved in the community is to become bivocational. They said that in their part of the country, the title of “pastor” does not garner much respect, nor does it earn the right to be listened to.

“In this culture, pastors aren’t looked at with a whole lot of respect – they’re seen as lazy,” Seddon said. “If you’re bivocational, it opens up a lot of opportunities and allows you to make new contacts.

Seddon, who works at a restaurant in town, and Wood, who works at the local Boys & Girls Club ranch, said there is much value to working alongside people in the community in their jobs.

“Don’ be afraid of hard work. People will respect you a lot more if you have a job, even if it’s part-time,” Seddon said.

Other challenges exist for church planters in the West, they said. Although Cornerstone Community Fellowship has a storefront in town where they meet for services and programs, both men said it is difficult to get families to come to that location. Instead, they must be creative and literally “think outside the box” about the ways in which they spend time with and minister to the people of Montana. Some of the most fruitful times of ministry for Wood have come while he was doing what he, and most Livingston residents, love to do – anything outdoors.

“If God had called me to New York City, I would have gone, but I probably would have withered up and died,” said Wood, laughing. “I feel like God led me here. It’s just a fit.”

Wood grew up hunting and fishing on his family’s “little ranch operation” in northeast Florida. Coming to Montana enabled him to use his love of hunting and other outdoor sports as a means of building relationships and sharing the gospel.

He said some of his most fruitful times of ministry have come while he was hunting bear, elk or prairie dogs with men who otherwise would not come to his church.

“I’ve done more ministry with a rifle in my hand than a Bible,” Wood said. “I’ve been on these mountains, 10,000 feet up, with a guy who doesn’t know Christ and won’t come to church and here, he’ll talk to me about what’s going on in his life.”

Wood uses opportunities like that to share the gospel. “One guy, as we were elk hunting, started asking me about the Trinity. I got to sit there and explain it to him and share the gospel through that.

“We’re finishing up three years here in Livingston, and we’re just now starting to have people understand and respect what we’re doing,” Wood said. “We’re just now getting to a point where we can share. It’s been a long process, but we’re starting to see the fruit now after three years.”

The sights and sounds of the rodeo are distinct and unmistakable.

Photos by Kelly Jo