Rural Church Alliances: 2. Motivation to Create Something New

**What follows is the second condensed excerpt from an extended research paper written to complete my seminary work, posted in hopes that the content is beneficial. 

This past year, I took the advice of my friend Matt Murphy to watch the Netflix series Chef’s Table[1]. He’d been struck by the ministry implications of one specific episode, but our distinct perspectives were highlighted as I gravitated towards an entirely different episode. He has been a church planter and minister in a large metropolitan area, while I serve in a remote rural town; our ministry environments led us each to draw truth from unique perspectives.  I watched the series with interest, but it wasn’t until I came to an episode featuring Norway’s Magnus Nilsson that I was captivated.

Nilsson is the chef for Fäviken, a restaurant located on a country estate in a rural area in the northern part of Norway. Not unlike many parts the United States, Nilsson’s home is far removed from a major population. It is an hour’s drive from the nearest city, the population of which is under 50,000. In spite of his remote location, Fäviken has been consistently ranked as one of the fifty best restaurants in the world.

After pursuing a culinary career in Paris, a city which many would consider the world’s center for fine food, Nilsson grew disillusioned with cooking and moved back to his hometown. After beginning to work at Fäviken on a three month contract to fill their wine cellar, he began to cook again. Initially, he struggled with the lack of quality fresh ingredients, before choosing to change his approach. He began to emphasize local ingredients, preservation methods, and cooking traditions. He stopped trying to be a French restaurant near the Arctic Circle and started simply being the best possible restaurant in that isolated part of Sweden.

After becoming fascinated by the success of Fäviken, I began to watch Nilsson’s appearances on the PBS show, Mind of a Chef. It was through one of these episodes that I was able to pinpoint why I had so resonated with Nilsson’s experiences. Nillson made a comment that eventually, the long winter wasn’t an annoyance, but an opportunity to be creative. Then he spoke some words that I feel carry great significance for the rural church. “If you have everything all the time, there is very little motivation for most of us to create something new… and possibly better.”[2]

In the Sandhills of Nebraska, and in other rural areas, we cannot operate the same way as one would in a metropolitan area, or even like a church could in smaller cities nearby. Like Nilsson’s experience in Norway, we simply don’t have the same resources available to us. We do, however, still have what it takes to be effective and vital local churches. We must identify our shortcomings and find opportunities to overcome those difficulties, and I believe that cooperative efforts and shared leadership may be the key to resolving many of those issues. We must embrace the challenges we face to create something new, and possibly better.

            This blog entry doesn’t attempt to create an exhaustive list of challenges faced by the rural church, but rather to ascertain which issues might potentially be addressed by cooperative efforts and shared leadership, and issues which could serve as serious obstacles to any such collaboration. In making these identifications, we can begin to formulate a coherent strategy for addressing such challenges moving forward.

Challenges in Rural Areas

Rural areas in the United States have experienced a great deal of instability in recent years which contribute to the difficulties faced by their churches. “The number of people working in agriculture-related fields is declining rapidly”[3] and “nonfarm, small-town population is increasing,”[4] lending to “massive demographic changes.”[5] The impact of these demographic changes can be dramatic. “Long-term residents and newcomers have different perspectives! They are on different wavelengths. It can be hard for them to understand each other. Lack of understanding leads to conflict.”[6] As the rural community changes over time, the church often struggles to adapt and remain relevant in their new context. New residents are faced with the real possibility that they are not welcome in many churches and preexisting residents quickly face the reality that they “may have to choose between the past and the future, between clinging to (their) old ways and having a vital church for (their) children and grandchildren.”[7]

These population shifts have broad implications. Many communities are devastated by population losses; the non-metro communities least likely to grow are those whose economy is based on extractive enterprises and “some rural communities have ceased to be the center of services for their county.”[8] This has a significant impact on community life. As the community and its residents change, so does their state of mind. Young people are often urged to go away to school and never return. “Pessimism and discouragement permeate daily life in many small towns.”[9] As populations change, the sense of ownership and community pride often wanes.

…farmers and ranchers and the suppliers and marketers of farm products and their families all had a major stake in the future of the community in which they lived – in its physical environment, its social institutions and organizations, its economic development, its social life, and its moral and ethical climate. It was understood that shopping locally, volunteering for community service, serving in a variety of leadership roles, and supporting the betterment of the whole community were ways one could further enhance the development of a ‘great place to raise your kids’[10]

Challenges in Rural Congregations

            As would be expected, the obstacles facing rural communities quite often bleed over into congregational life. The conflicts among new and old residents translate into conflicts among new and old church members. The pessimism and communal low self-esteem often lead to churches losing hope that they can thrive in their new environment. It can be argued that “the greatest challenge facing many small-town churches is to avoid slipping into a survival, or even maintenance, mentality.”[11] Such a line of thinking can lead to a vicious cycle: they need new people to survive, but they need new ministries or improved facilities to reach those people. Most typical approaches to church growth remain out of reach. “Many do not try because they have been convinced it can’t be done. They have never seen it done. They have never heard of it happening.”[12] Contributing to this attitude is an often-condescending view of the rural church by those in more urban settings. Often, when larger churches offer their help, it is “from the outside,” with a “missionary tone,” and often dismisses the rural approach “out of hand as backward and outdated.”[13] This approach, combined with the rural tendency towards proud independence makes such help unwelcome, unprofitable, and disheartening.

            A lack of resources, real or perceived, also contributes to such attitudes. Many congregations cannot financially support a full-time minister, and few others can fund the salary for additional, specialized ministry staff. Many churches have settled into a maintenance mode, paying the bills but not taking care of their facilities or involving themselves in outreach ministries. Still others lack human resources and operate without individuals skilled in the areas of technology, administration, musicianship, or youth ministry. Lay leaders are often not only untrained, but have no avenue for effective and relevant training. As such, they are left to become self-taught and learn on a trial and error basis.

            While it is not entirely unique to rural churches, a tendency towards being reluctant or even hostile to the idea of change is a challenge that must be overcome in order to implement a strategy for collaboration among rural churches. “Rural churches have challenges unique to the ministry, especially if they are passionate about their family’s church heritage (but are not passionate about the mission of Christ) or have great desire but little faith.”[14] Many hear even the suggestion of change as an insult to whoever had initially created the ministry or physical structure being critiqued. With this mindset, amending the bylaws may amount to throwing out the hard work of their grandfather and labeling his efforts as in some way insufficient. 

When presenting a strategy for cooperative efforts and shared leadership to churches with a heritage in the Restoration Movement, specific consideration must be given to concerns that may arise from “Restoration” principles.  At its root, this movement is “based on the twin concerns of unity and biblical authority” and though “these twin concerns are designed to be compatible; (they) often appear to be antagonistic.”[15] In striving to retain the local autonomy of their congregation, many have sacrificed unity with other churches. In their efforts to recognize the Bible as their only authority, they have rejected opportunities for cooperation. In such situations, the pursuit of independence has led to self-imposed isolation and even the appearance of submission to the leadership of an outside organization or church carries a significant stigma.

Even without claiming a distortion of Restoration ideals as the culprit, we can easily identify a cessation of cooperative efforts and fellowship among the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ in Nebraska. The churches planted and strengthened by the shared leadership of Guy B. Dunning have set aside collaboration almost entirely. As rural individuals have become more mobile and many smaller communities have ceased to be service centers for the surrounding areas, many small churches have also been abandoned for churches in larger communities. The reasons for the current state of these churches are diverse, but the results are fairly uniform; stagnation and decline.

Challenges for Rural Ministers

            The obstacles to realizing collaboration among rural churches are compounded by a variety of concerns common to ministers working in the rural setting. One rural minister, Shannon O’Dell, lists several “unwritten rural rules” which describe the difficulty experienced by rural churches in securing ministry staff.

Successful churches grow in thriving urban or sprawling suburban America. Sparsely populated rural communities are behind the times and not worth our time. Cities are strategic; the country is inconsequential. The best, most visionary pastors are hired by growing visionary congregations. Rural churches can only afford the leftovers from the leadership pool. If you want to be a "successful" pastor, go to the cities. If you want to drive a minivan with 200,000 miles on it, go to the sticks.[16]

            O’Dell is not alone in his concern that many ministers are hesitant or even opposed to entering ministry in a rural area. Another writer posits: “Could it be that there are plenty of pastors to go around, but not enough who are willing to serve in obscure places?”[17] While we commend international missionaries for carrying the gospel to the ends of the earth, a minister committing to a rural church is often seen as one worthy of pity.

The difficulty in securing a capable minister in a rural area is compounded by the reality that most seminarians are “unfamiliar with the rural context” and have a negative view of such ministry, seeing their “tenure as ‘time-serving’ while they await a larger or more prestigious post.”[18] As a result, many ministers entering service to rural areas are entirely ignorant of the culture in which they are ministering, completely unprepared for the challenges they face, and hesitant to commit fully to the task. Many ministers hope for a short tenure in rural ministry, while it has been asserted that “it takes about five years to lay the groundwork for an effective ministry in the small church.”[19] Such ministers rarely give themselves an adequate amount of time to establish themselves for effective ministry.

            With these attitudes towards rural ministry, it is not uncommon for those who accept a pastorate in a rural area to not actually be called to or equipped for the role. Again, O’Dell speaks insightfully to this possibility. “Many rural pastors take that job because Podunkville was the only opening they could find at the time… a lot of pastors were once great Sunday school teachers” and when leadership invites him to full-time ministry, this leader is “forced to live outside his gifting.”[20] Whether it is a lack of call, faith, vision, gifting, training, or some other shortfall, many ministers in small, rural churches are not effectively equipped for the task of reversing the downward trends experienced by the congregation they serve. In the end, they often become a part of the problem. When it comes to cooperative efforts and shared leadership, the pride of one minister can short-circuit the entire process and varying levels of incompetency can slow or stall progress towards change and collaboration.

            These are just a handful of the significant challenges faced by the local church in rural areas, but these ought not be understood merely as barriers and omens. Like Magnus Nilsson at Fäviken, we ought to see these challenges as opportunities to create something new, and possibly better. We must investigate how we approach ministry in the rural setting and seek out unique responses to our unique context. As these posts continue, we’ll seek to do just that.  

---

[1] David Gelb, creator, "Magnus Nilsson," In Chef's Table, (Netflix. 2015).

[2] Magnus Nillson, host. "Winter," In The Mind of a Chef. (PBS. November 1, 2014).

[3] Ron Klassen and John Koessler, No Little Places: The Untapped Potential of the Small-town-church, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1996), 55.

[4] Ibid., 57.

[5] Ibid., 58.

[6]Barney Wells, Martin Giese, and Ron Klassen, Leading through Change: Shepherding the Town and Country Church in a New Era, (St. Charles, IL: ChurchSmart Resources, 2005), 26.

[7] Klassen and Koessler, No Little Places, 61.

[8] Shannon L. Jung, Rural Ministry: The Shape of the Renewal to Come, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 110-111.

[9] Klassen and Koessler, No Little Places, 56.

[10] Jung, Rural Ministry, 102-103.

[11] Wells, Giese, and Klassen, Leading through Change, 42.

[12] Shannon O'Dell, Transforming Church in Rural America: Breaking All the Rurals (Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press, 2010), Kindle Edition: Location 137.

[13] Jung, Rural Ministry, 47-48.

[14] O'Dell, Transforming Church in Rural America, Location 214.

[15] James B. North, Union in Truth: An Interpretive History of the Restoration Movement, (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Pub. 1994), 8.

[16] O'Dell, Transforming Church in Rural America, Location 182.

[17] Klassen and Koessler, No Little Places, 29.

[18] Jung, Rural Ministry, 51.

[19] Klassen and Koessler, No Little Places, 35.

[20] O'Dell, Transforming Church in Rural America, Location 1678.