Floyd Haan has pastored Pollock Memorial Presbyterian Church for 45 years, since the church left the United Presbyterian Church for the PCA. His congregation is one of two Protestant churches in Pollock, South Dakota, population 220. Born and raised in South Dakota, he moved to Philadelphia for seminary before returning to pastor in Pollock.
Haan has rightfully earned the respect of his fellow elders in Siouxlands Presbytery. I recently met him when I visited Siouxlands Presbytery as part of a series we affectionately call the PresbyTour. The goal of PresbyTour is to showcase the work of presbyteries and provide readers across the country with a glimpse into regions of the PCA that might be less familiar to them. Earlier this year I visited three western presbyteries. This leg of the PresbyTour took me to Siouxlands and Wisconsin presbyteries.
For pastors in these remote regions, just getting to the presbytery meeting is a half-day of work. It takes Haan five hours to travel by car to attend presbytery in Rapid City, and he hasn’t even left his own state. Several elders and candidates flew in from Minnesota to attend the meeting. Because of the distance involved, the presbytery meetings in Siouxlands begin at 1:00 p.m., and continue until business is concluded. At the April meeting, business concluded around 11:30 p.m.
Because Siouxlands covers such a large geographic area – the presbytery encompasses Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota – ministers usually labor in isolation. The opportunity for in-person interactions with other PCA ministers is limited.
As its name indicates, Wisconsin Presbytery is all the ministers and churches within the state. Unlike Siouxlands, meetings are within a three-hour drive for most elders. They meet on Saturdays and have enough time to return home in preparation for Sunday activities. The presbytery was formed 20 years ago by the churches within the state who were formerly part of the Presbytery of Northern Illinois. As the presbytery celebrates its 20th birthday, Wisconsin is preparing to host the General Assembly in Milwaukee in 2027.
Developing Leaders
In both presbyteries, most of the elders that I met were either from the state where they are serving or from elsewhere in the Midwest. It is rare to meet ministers from other parts of the country. As a result, both presbyteries talk openly about the need to develop leaders from within rather than recruiting them from other regions.
Siouxlands does not have enough candidates for all the available church planting opportunities. It is unclear if there will be trained candidates to serve churches like Pollock Memorial Presbyterian in the future. Ministers from other parts of the country don’t seem interested in moving to the upper Midwest, and when candidates leave the region for seminary, they often don’t return.
To address this issue, Siouxlands recently decided to launch its own seminary in partnership with LAMP Theological Seminary. This partnership will enable potential candidates to secure a seminary education without leaving their jobs or homes.
A few years ago Wisconsin took similar steps to connect candidates within the state to seminary hybrid programs. Today, Wisconsin has a strong pipeline of ministerial candidates with 25 students in seminary programs.
Planting Churches
Although Minnesota and Wisconsin have larger populations than many states in the Southeast, they have far fewer PCA churches. Minnesota has nine churches and Wisconsin has 21, while smaller states in the Southeast often have over 100 PCA congregations. Both Wisconsin and Siouxlands have a strong sense of urgency to multiply congregations through church planting.
Wisconsin undertook an initiative within the last decade to plant 16 churches in 10 years. They have grown from 6 churches in 2012 to 21 churches today. And they’re not done. Many congregations have a church planting apprentice on staff with a target of planting a church in an adjacent town. All of this is funded and coordinated through On Wisconsin.
The missions committee of Siouxlands has a similar vision for church growth in its bounds, having observed and learned from Wisconsin’s efforts. At their recent meeting, they presented a five-year vision and budget to multiply churches across their three states. The goal is to see five new churches planted over the next five years and new Reformed University Fellowship works established at North Dakota State University and South Dakota State University.
The largest city in Siouxlands Presbytery, Minneapolis, has no PCA church within the city limits. The closest church, All Saints Presbyterian in nearby St. Paul, is in the process of gathering a core group to plant a church in Minneapolis. The Twin Cities are also home to the University of Minnesota, the only Siouxlands’ university with an RUF ministry,
Both of these presbyteries realize that the growth of the PCA in the upper Midwest is going to look different than it does in other parts of the country. They are using innovative measures to create their own leadership pipeline and casting long-term visions for how church planting advances the mission of Christ.
Looking Forward
Though the region has very few Reformed or Presbyterian churches, it has played a unique role in the life of two influential presbyterian leaders. As Siouxlands Pastor Art Sartorius pointed out, Siouxlands is the region where both J. Gresham Machen and Francis Schaeffer ended their earthly pilgrimages. Machen passed away in North Dakota and Schaeffer in Minnesota.
Siouxlands started in 1981 with four churches, and Pollock Memorial Presbyterian was one of them. Haan fondly recalls when Paul Settle, Steve Fox, and other elders travelled to South Dakota to examine the churches and elders who wanted to be received into the PCA. A few months later, Haan and others travelled to the 1981 General Assembly at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida where they were officially recognized as a presbytery.
When you listen to the pastors and elders in this presbytery, it is obvious that they love the Lord and their respective states. They’re proud to be from the upper Midwest and want to see their fellow residents encounter our risen Savior. They talk more about their future than they do their past. Though they are smaller in number and have fewer resources than other presbyteries, they possess a large vision of what God can do through them.
The pastors in these presbyteries are faithfully serving in small towns, like Haan, and big cities where God has called them. Let’s pray for God to bless the PCA with another generation of ministers like Haan who will keep their hand to the plow, spreading the seed of the gospel and praying for God to do abundantly more than we can expect.