Stories in the newspaper of Casselton, North Dakota ― population 2300 ― seldom reshape Carmen Laeger’s life.
However, what she read in the Cass County Reporter last summer changed her family’s experience for eternity. A new church was coming to the small town 25 miles west of Fargo.
She met the pastor last year in June when Cody and Christia Weckerly hosted a meet-and-greet at the Veterans Memorial Hall.
“I was trying to find a sound church to go to,” she said. “You can tell when there’s sound doctrine. You can tell when they’re preaching salvation.”
She’s been committed to Harvest Plains Church ever since the meet-and-greet. She joined a small group to connect with people and help the Converge church get started. Since she and her husband have two kids, she volunteered to assist in the children’s ministry.
Laeger grew up as a Baptist who went to church every Sunday morning, every Sunday night and every Wednesday. In college in nearby Fargo, she attended a church but never became a member there.
She said most of the churches she’s known around Casselton don’t have strong Biblical teaching in their messages. And she often felt like they had unbiblical beliefs.
Committed to God’s word
Laeger and her husband didn’t want to drive to Fargo for church. But they wanted their children raised in a Christian home. That’s why Harvest Plains has been so important for them and the town.
“I know how important it is to have our kids plugged into a biblical church,” she said. “[Pastor Weckerly’s] preaching is so much more in-depth than anything I’ve ever heard. I’ve never listened to preaching going through an entire book.”
Related: Come and dine: A call to eat God’s word
Adam Nesvold, who grew up in Fargo, said Harvest Plains blesses the community through preaching the word and preaching the gospel. He said many people travel from surrounding towns, including one couple who drives more than an hour.
“We open the Bible and we let the word of God speak for itself. Harvest Plains Church is not afraid of what the word of God says on any subject,” he said. “When you let God speak for himself, then people will come to Jesus Christ as they always have.”
Harvest Plains is the first church plant Nesvold has joined. He attended Ignite, a Converge congregation in Minnesota just east of Fargo. Steve Krier is the pastor of that church and the director of church planting for Converge Heartland.
Krier was supportive of the Weckerlys’ new ministry, even encouraging people from Ignite to help start the new church 25 miles away.
“I’ve always wanted to be part of a church plant,” Nesvold said. “When Ignite announced they would be involved, I said I would love to be part of the group that goes to help Pastor Cody.”
How does Converge keep creating churches that multiply?
Krier has a passion for seeing new Converge churches start so more people can meet, know and follow Jesus. He and many others value new churches so much that Converge set a goal to plant 312 churches by 2026.
Krier asked his elders two years ago if they knew anyone who could be a church planter. One of them knew Cody Weckerly. Weckerly was originally planning to start a church through a different organization. But that didn’t work out, so Krier asked Weckerly if he’d still like to plant.
The Weckerlys went through Converge’s assessment process and moved to Casselton in May 2019. They’re so grateful for their experience with the movement.
“I wish everybody had the kind of support I had from the Heartland district,” he said. He learns so much from Converge Heartland president Jim Capaldo and Krier, who serves on Harvest Plains’ leadership team.
In September 2019, they had their first public worship service. People from Casselton who joined the church after its launch even helped purchase the former building of a Lutheran church.
Things were going swimmingly, he said. Attendance was about 70 with children and families and visitors.
Then, they weren’t
Not long after the launch in September, a spirit of division worked into Harvest Plains Church, Weckerly said.
First, some regular worshipers from Casselton suggested Weckerly change how he preached the church’s core convictions. But Weckerly had been upfront from the beginning about the church’s posture toward foundational beliefs.
Then, some started to challenge the church’s decision-making process. Harvest Plains Church was set up to be elder-led when the church had men they could appoint as elders.
Until that time, Weckerly, Krier and another pastor were the church’s leadership team. But some wanted the church to have congregational votes on decisions, despite the church’s existing foundation for church government.
Related: Nine challenges every church planter faces (video)
The conflict grew amid a misunderstanding about why the church didn’t participate in a community event. Worse yet, Weckerly said the culture of a small town meant people avoided the conflict.
Finally, on February 2, 2020, there was a church split full of harsh words. As a result, many of the Casselton residents left. Weckerly said every person who split was in a vital volunteer role such as children’s ministry or hospitality coordinator.
Then, a month later, COVID-19 surged. The six-month-old church, or what was left of it, had to stop worshiping in person. No one across America knew how to navigate the sudden concern and confusion.
Making adjustments and moving forward
The shutdown enabled Harvest Plains to go from feeling “dead in the water,” as Weckerly put it, to making adjustments and moving forward.
“COVID was the greatest thing that could have happened to our church at that time,” he said. “It provided space for us to think about what are we going to do now? What are the next steps without having to fill all these ministry spots?”
He explained how a new church has a leadership vacuum. So, people step up and take on roles and needs in the new church. But he said people are new to the church, and someone’s giftings and abilities aren’t often known.
“We didn’t have to think about children’s ministry because people weren’t showing up to church,” he said. “We didn’t have to think about hospitality because people weren’t showing up to church.”
So they took the time to reflect on who they wanted in those spots.
“I was able to start appointing people who I felt really, really excited about as the right people for the job,” he said.
Related: Leadership lids: competency (Whiteboard Leadership video)
Harvest Plains’ worship leader, Phil Reeves, kept on serving, even though he shared with Weckerly that he thought the church was dead. Weckerly and Reeves remember a Sunday after in-person gatherings resumed when they only saw three families.
“In God’s kindness, as the restrictions started to lift, it was just slow but steady growth,” Weckerly said. “People were coming, and people were able to view us online.”
A culture of friends strengthens the church
From the church’s first meet-and-greets, Laeger has seen just how meaningful friendship and close relationships are to the church.
“I’ve formed relationships with Pastor Cody’s wife, Christia,” Laeger said. “She immediately just started forming relationships with the people in the church. You can see that they immediately wanted to make connections with people in the church.”
Weckerly agrees, and not just because he’s in a small town with tight-knit relationships, for better or worse.
“Ministry is the overflow of friendship,” he said. “God is working in our people, leading them to do the work of ministry where they are caring for each other. They genuinely feel the friendship and love of our community.”
The church stimulated spiritual growth through a men’s Bible study and a women’s Bible study. The groups have finished a theology book by Wayne Grudem. Next up is Missionary Methods by Roland Allen. After that could be theology books by John Frame or Millard Erickson, who often write seminary textbooks.
But such books don’t intimidate the people of Harvest Plains. On the contrary, Weckerly continues to find people hungry for deep study of God’s word.
“Their souls are fed with biblical teaching,” he said.
What’s life and church like in North Dakota, anyway?
Most North Dakotans in small towns tend to be stoic, Weckerly said. He was born and raised in a town of 100 people. People around the state are entrepreneurial, pretty independent and believe in morality and goodness.
Like Santa Claus, he said, they strive to be good for goodness’ sake.
They also love their summers since winter can last eight or nine months. Swimming at the lake and shooting guns can fill a good afternoon.
Related: America’s next great mission field
But life can be hard in a mostly agrarian society where most people farm. Both his family and his wife’s family own farms.
“If you’re a farmer, you just can’t be a wimp,” he said.
Theodore Roosevelt lived off the land in North Dakota for several years. He seemed to agree with Weckerly.
“I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days,” he said of his years in North Dakota. “It was a fine, healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the value of instant decision…I enjoyed the life to the full.”
Harvest Plains wants to offer life in full in Casselton
Weckerly worked for Youth for Christ after graduating with a finance degree. Then he became an associate pastor at a Michigan church before he and his wife acted on their desire to start a church in North Dakota.
From his first days as a new Christian, Weckerly was passionate about telling others about Jesus.
“Nobody needed to tell me what evangelism was,” he said after submitting to Christ as Lord at a Christian basketball camp in Bismarck. “I was like the woman at the well. I just went to other people and said, ‘come see the one who told me everything I ever did.’”
Now, as a pastor, he perseveres in helping others know Christ.
“We know God has spoken; we know that you can know him, and we want to help you do that,” he said. “Our hope is to disciple, disciple, disciple with the hope that God will use people however he wants to use them.”
Despite describing North Dakota as a ‘Bible belt of the north,’ Weckerly said there are a lot of unchurched people. He estimated the number in Casselton as more than 2000 people.
Nesvold agrees more Biblical preaching and Christian community is needed in North Dakota. But, he’s grateful the new Converge church has a foundation of teaching God’s word and the gospel. He said that’s how more and more people like the Laegers can be impacted for eternity.
“We’re not meeting that need,” he said of the unchurched people in Casselton and beyond. “We don’t have enough churches of that type to reach those people.”
[advertisements title=”312 goal” site=”National”]
Harvest Plains Church is one of 312 churches Converge’s 10 districts committed to plant before 2026. Read more inspiring church planting stories and learn more about the goal to plant 312 churches in five years.