Mid-America Alum Impacting the Northwest

Shawn Snyder is the Lead Pastor of Living Hope Church in Medford, Oregon, and works as a Regional Equipper for Send Network. He earned his MDIV from Mid-America in 2009. Photo shows Shawn and his wife Tina and their family. 

We replanted Living Hope Church in 2015. Living Hope Church was the first replant in the Northwest funded by NAMB (North American Mission Board) and NWBC (Northwest Baptist Convention). It has been an incredible journey to see God bring this once-dying church back to life. Our mission has been to walk with people in life and share the hope we have in Christ. We want others to know Jesus, be known in the faith community, own their faith, and bring someone else with them to do the same.

We have been blessed by the many friends we met while at Mid-America who are now church leaders and ministry partners. We have had them pray, encourage, support us financially, and send teams to help serve and share the Gospel. Many of them have become lifelong friends.

We are super excited about two ministry opportunities God is doing through our church this year (2022). First, we have an outreach effort we are calling “Christmas In July.” We will have teams to help us serve our community and share the Gospel. We are planning a soccer camp, VBS, assisting local non-profits and looking for families to bless. Currently, we have over 60 people coming from partner churches.

The other opportunity is a long-term strategy of developing leaders from within and without. Back in 2019, God led us to start a paid residency with the hope of discovering, developing, and deploying leaders. This was a huge faith step because, at the time, we did not have housing nor residents. God blessed us with accommodations and partners, and this October, we will have six residents being developed and equipped for ministry. Both of these efforts are through our inspiration to reach the Northwest, and we believe that if we grow missional leaders who have a heart to share the Gospel and multiply themselves, we can see a spiritual awakening in the Northwest and beyond.