BELLE FOURCHE, S.D. (BP) — Connections are important at Connection Church. This has been the case since Stephen Carson arrived in 2014 with his wife, Kaye, to become the pastor. “Connection,” as a concept, doesn’t end with the town of a population around 5,800, either. It extends to missions and church planting.

That mentality — of connecting locally, regionally and around the world — has taken shape. In 2024, Connection became the first church in Dakota Baptist Convention history to surpass $100,000 toward the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. This year, the congregation gave more than $50,000 to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.

“There are over 2 billion people in the world who have never heard the gospel,” Carson said. “One of the most strategic ways we can help be a solution to that is to send out missionaries. And in the U.S., we’ve got to plant more churches.”

Belle Fourche is recognized as the geographic center of the country, and from that unique vantage point, Connection Church centers on church planting and missions, with evangelistic enthusiasm as the result.

Those passions come naturally for the Carsons, who completed a two-year term with the International Mission Board (IMB) in Kampala, Uganda, in October 2009. They returned to Longview Point Baptist Church in Hernando, Miss. — where Stephen had been the youth pastor — and he served as missions pastor from 2010-2013.

Plans were to return to the international mission field. Then, fellow former IMB missionary Jason Ford, a staff member at Connection Church in Spearfish, S.D., made a call.

“My wife and I had been praying, telling God that we were willing to go anywhere,” said Carson. “We just wanted it to be clear where the next step would take us.”

After Ford’s call, they flew up to South Dakota.

“God redirected us,” Carson said. “We’ve been here ever since.”

A core group of 15-18 had been making the 20-minute drive from Belle Fourche to Connection Church in Spearfish. After a year, the new congregation officially began as its own church, also called Connection and part of the Send Network.

From Day 1, the church committed a quarter of its annual budget to missions and church planting. Alongside Cooperative Program (CP) giving, it contributes approximately $15,000 of its annual budget to a member serving as an international missionary. Since it began, Connection has given $416,755.84 to the Lottie Moon offering, said Carson, alongside $224,710.92 to Annie Armstrong and $170,322.45 through CP.

Locally, Connection is establishing groups called “outposts” in communities like Nisland and Fruitdale.

“We’re really limited on facilities here, so we’ve turned our focus into sending people,” he said. “There are so many rural areas around us, so we want to find those people who have been called, are competent and have the character to lead these groups. We’re putting a lot of effort into training the men to plant and lead what we are calling ‘outposts’ of our church.”

If Carson, a part-time employee with the Send Network, is out, the pulpit is typically filled by a missionary or church planter supported by Connection Church. Also, the church’s entire receipts on the Sundays ending the drives for the Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong offerings are contributed to those efforts. This effectively trims Connection’s yearly budget to 50 weeks.

“We push those (special) offerings hard,” said Carson, who added that Connection supports 13-15 church plants in some manner. “We set big goals and really encourage our folks to give sacrificially, and they have been so generous.”

He sees Connection as a “multiplying” church, but wouldn’t mind another term.

“If the rural outreaches get rolling the way I think God is going to use them, we can definitely become a movement church,” he said.

EDITOR’S NOTE — Scott Barkley is chief national correspondent for Baptist Press.