GREEN BAY, Wis. – The Green Bay Packers didn’t make it to the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t deter Highland Crest Baptist Church.
The church that meets across the street from Lambeau Field has a bigger goal in mind: the 80,000 people who typically attend the pro football team’s home games.
“It’s a great entry-level place for evangelism,” Pastor Chad Hertler told Baptist Press. At least four times a season, church secretary Ginger Sutton prints about 10,000 “Game Day Rosters,” page-size team rosters with Packers trivia on one side and a Gospel message on the other.
“We’re really just trying to equip our church family to be comfortable sharing the Gospel with those around them,” Hertler said. “If we can do that, we’re being effective.”
As the church family becomes equipped, they can make an impact in Wisconsin by planting churches and by reaching out missionally across North America and throughout the world, the pastor said.
Volunteers from the church at Lambeau Field pass out the Gospel tract rosters to anyone who stops long enough to grab one or ask, “What is it?” as they stream into the stadium. One can envision spectators pulling out the roster mid-game to check on the number of an opposing team’s player, or to read the Gospel message during a commercial break or half time.
“People want them,” Hertler said. “We’re just trusting that as thousands of Gospel seeds are being scattered, some will fall on good soil.
“It’s good for us to get out of our comfort zone and go over to Lambeau Field to hand them out during the season,” the pastor continued. “People ask what they are and we’ll say, ‘They’re a game day roster and a great message about Jesus.’”
Last April, Highland Crest served as host site for the city’s business and government leaders to plan for the 2025 National Football League’s Draft proceedings (which moves to a different NFL city each year.)
“We invited the city to use our church building to meet with business leaders to figure out the best possible way to cooperate to pull off a great event,” Hertler said. “It’s a huge event for the NFL and takes a lot to host it.”
An estimated 600,000 guests came to Green Bay last spring to witness firsthand their favorite football team select players in seven rounds of the annual draft. Highland Crest also created “Gospel Draft Guides” for that event, which provided a list of the best college players available on one side and a Gospel presentation on the other. Other features included a prayer tent and activities for kids.
The Draft Guide’s Gospel section opened with, “In Wisconsin, we love our Packers. Yet in time, these names, dates, and records will fade from our memories. It is a reminder that life goes by fast. We will not be on this earth forever. Have you ever contemplated where you will be when your life is over? …”
Ongoing local ministries at Highland Creset include financial support for the local pregnancy center and a home for endangered women, and members’ hands-on support for other local ministries. The church in late November serves as a collection point for more than 10,000 Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes from Southern Wisconsin churches, about 125 last year packed by Highland Crest members.
The church has a “Love Inc.,” (non-profit out of Jenison, Mich.) collection center on the church property throughout the year, where “about every week” people from the surrounding community drop unused Bibles and other Christian materials, which the church takes to a regional center, where it is distributed to small churches, prisons and elsewhere.
Highland Crest, organized in 1956, started many of the Southern Baptist churches in northeastern Wisconsin, Hertler said. He is praying “for God’s favor to return to this rich heritage of planting Gospel-preaching churches where there are none.”
In recent years, Highland Crest has been forming a leadership pipeline where members are intentionally discipled to be leaders.
“Our hope is that we will grow leaders who multiply and that this will lead our church to multiply,” the pastor said. “My heart is to equip and urge each member of our church family to share the Gospel with those around them.”
Highland Crest focuses internationally on an island off the coast of West Africa.
“I had a dream last night and you were in it,” a village chief there told an IMB missionary. “I was told I was to listen to you.”
Hertler said he heard this story from the missionary.
“That story informed us there was an open door to go and be a part of the harvest,” Hertler said. “Shortly after, a dear man from our church traveled with me to this remote island. We observed a receptivity to the gospel. The benefit in working with an IMB missionary is that he’s there, he arranges the trip. All we have to do is go and share the Good News!”
For five years Highland Crest has been sending members up to three times a year to the island to work with that missionary and other national Christians. Discipling has been done by correspondence courses with local believers. Leaders of Highland Crest are hopeful that a church will be formed soon.
The personal connection Highland Crest has with this missionary and others is one of three reasons the church allocates 11 percent of undesignated offerings to missions through the Cooperative Program, the way Southern Baptists work together in Wisconsin, across North America and throughout the world. Another 6 percent is allocated for related missions opportunities.
“We’re not just blindly giving to the Cooperative Program,” Hertler said about the 250 and more who regularly attend Sunday morning worship. “We’re checking to see where it’s used by going to the SBC annual meetings every few years and by one of our members serving on the Minnesota Wisconsin Baptist Convention’s executive board. We appreciate our missionaries because of our firsthand experience with missionaries. They’re out there, making disciples, starting churches.”
Hertler, a Wisconsin native who became a Christian in college, took a road trip in 1997 to see the California redwood trees after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Stout with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in guidance and counseling. While on that trip he found his second reason for believing in the strength and power of the Cooperative Program.
He was nearing the crest of a hill when his little silver Nissan Sentra died. A man in a pickup came by, pushed him over the hill and he coasted into Austin, Nevada. Hertler called his dad for guidance.
“Chad, you may feel all alone, but there are other followers of Jesus in that little town. Look for a Bible-preaching church, attend, share with them your situation, and they will help.”
Austin [Southern] Baptist Church members welcomed Hertler, connected him with a mechanic, and gave him a key so he could stay at the church for the week it took to get his Nissan repaired. The church had been started with the help of the Cooperative Program, showing Hertler another benefit of Cooperative Program support in North America.
“When I came back through Green Bay, as I drove by Highland Crest I saw “SBC” and knew what it meant,” Hertler said. “I was sold immediately. That was 27 years ago.” He’s been on staff since 2009 and senior pastor since 2019.
Hertler gave a third reason for his support of the Cooperative Program:
“The Cooperative Program paid half of my tuition for me to go to seminary, Southwestern, M.Div. in 2003. I have some loyalty to the Cooperative Program because of that.”
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