Is Central Minnesota Really The Center of the Bible Belt?

For those who don’t know, I’m new to Minnesota. My wife and I moved here in September from North Carolina, which is in the heart of “The Bible Belt”. 

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Part of the being from The Bible Belt is being familiar with Church. Most natives of that part of the country have a family history linking them to one church or another if they or their families were in one place for any length of time. 

My dad was a Baptist Minister, so church was engrained in my up bringing. We lived in a small town where most everyone knew everyone else, or at least knew of them. I quickly learned growing up that a lot of people not only knew my dad, but they respected him deeply. 

One of the reasons people respected him so is because you always knew you were talking to a preacher. Not because he wore expensive suits and drove a fancy car and brought attention to himself, actually it was quite the opposite.  

You see my dad preached at small churches that didn’t pay a “full time salary”, so he still needed to have a “full time job” to provide for his family, and for my dad her drove 18 wheelers.  

So, when you saw my dad, he was normally in his light blue work shirt and dark blue work pants and boots. He didn’t have that “preacher” look if you know what I mean. People knew my dad was a preacher from the way he conducted himself. 

He cared about people, that was obvious. He was proud of his faith and wanted to share it with people who wanted to hear it. Dad wouldn’t force it on you, but he wouldn’t tolerate any foul-mouthed conversation or mistreatment of other people.  

“If you want to talk like that, then I go somewhere so I don’t have to hear it” he would say.  He wasn’t mean about it, just plain.  

Another thing my dad was known for was inviting people to church. He wanted you to know you were welcome anytime.  

My dad would be proud to know that since we’ve been here, my wife and I have had multiple people invite us to their church. I don’t mean a few weeks after we get to know them, I mean, in the first one or two conversations we have with them. 

In the building where I work, I have had several people give us an invitation which has been nice, but people we’ve met in stores (and we’ve had a lot of one time meetings with people because when we speak out loud, people usually want to know where we’re from which has started some great conversations) or even in our apartment complex.  

The great thing about technology is that we’ve been able to watch some churches online to see if we feel that’s a church we would like to visit. So far, we’ve visited one in person but have watched a few others online and may visit one or two of those as well.  

Moving 1,200 miles away from home is scary, but one of the things that has been so reassuring is that some many people have thought enough of their church to invite us to at least try it out.  

Dad would be happy and I’m beginning to think the Bible Belt isn’t restricted to just the South.