Ryan Burge

No training.

Good.

I started as a youth pastor for three years as a part-time job.

And then I became a pastor because, listen, in rural America, there's a supply and demand problem when it comes to pastors.

And I was willing to raise my hand and say, I'll go do it.

So I joined First Baptist in 2006.

They had about 50 people on an average Sunday.

And this is a congregation.

This is a 14,000 square foot building on seven and a half acres of ground.

When they built the building in the 1960s, there were 300 people on an average Sunday.

It was one of the pillars of the community, like all the teachers and the lawyers and the doctors were part of this church.

And it was a shell of itself when I got there, 50 people.

This is Northern Baptist.

That's right.

we are the mainline flavor of Baptist faith.

And so some churches were LGBTQ affirming, some churches had female pastors, but it was up to the local church to decide that.

So every church is a little bit different on their theology.

In Southern Baptist, you can't have female pastors, you can't do gay weddings.

So my church kind of slid into obscurity over time.

When you walk in and you see a whole bunch of gray hair and no kids, that's bad.