Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Doxology Project

Home
General Christian
Training Pastors and Leaders for the Rural Church

Training Pastors and Leaders for the Rural Church

Last updated on: April 23, 2018 at 7:46 pm by Brad Roth

Training Pastors and Leaders for the Rural Church 2018-04-23T13:01:25-05:00 Brad Roth

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

When we first moved to rural Kansas, we had to get our bearings. Each time my wife and I would go pay a visit to someone in the congregation, we would plug their address into our old dashboard GPS. And we would get this warning: “Your destination is on an unpaved road. Are you sure you want to go there?” (Or something like that). I don’t know if the GPS device was warning us against the dust clinging to our car or what. We would respond, Yes, we want to go there! It’s rural Kansas! What do you expect–New York City?

That GPS warning feels a little like where we’re at in rural America. There are powerful currents drawing people away from rural. The story of rural America is not all a story of decline. There are many rural communities have held their own or are even growing, especially if they happen to be located near thriving cities or gorgeous natural amenities. But there are also many rural communities that have lost people, that struggle to support a mom-and-pop grocery store, where the school was consolidated with the rest of the county. And so when many in our society plug that rural address in, the alarms of their cultural GPS go off. Your destination is on an unpaved road! Are you sure you want to go there?

The same thing happens when we talk about the church.

How do we form pastors and leaders who are not afraid to go down those unpaved roads–who even want to go down them?

I think it will mean doing the work of helping people understand and value rural cultures: the ins-and-outs of rural community, the structure of interrelatedness (I had never heard of “double first cousins” until we moved to Kansas). It will mean helping them understand the role and rhythms of agriculture. But those are technical challenges. Those things aren’t hard to pick up if you’ve got a ready mind and ears to hear.

I’m convinced that above all else, training pastors and leaders for the rural church requires us to do the work of forming hearts. It’s about shaping pastors and leaders who can come with a heart of friendship and a sense of mission for rural people and communities.

“Friendship” has been the key image for me when I think about rural ministry. Jesus teaches that we are to love one another. But love is often a challenge for us to get right. What exactly does it mean to love one another? We don’t always know. But on the night Jesus was betrayed, in the upper room as he was eating with his disciples, he said to them “I no longer call you servants, but friends” (John 15:15). Jesus knew his time was short. The cross loomed before him. There was so much he needed to talk about with them. And Jesus chose to talk about friendship. I think Jesus did that because he wanted to make sure that his disciples–and all the rest of us–got it. Friendship makes love concrete.

The reason I’ve experienced friendship as a key image in rural ministry is because so often, rural communities fall under the sway of our society’s disordered valuations that privilege what is big, fast, and often urban, and disparage what is small, remote and often rural. If all roads lead to Rome, then that’s where many want to go–not out into the sticks, bumping along on some anonymous unpaved road.

Some folks were visiting us the other day, and as we drove past miles of greening wheat, they looked over at me and said, “Wow, we’re in the middle of nowhere.” Borrowing a line I heard from a friend (and maybe with a bit of melodrama), I responded, “It’s somewhere for us.”

Rural communities are somewhere to we who live in them, somewhere to God. But nevertheless, that sense that we’re in the middle of nowhere can sometimes lead to a diminished sense of significance and self-worth among rural communities. We see this in the church every time there’s a pastor transition. The question that crops up is, “will we ever be able to find another pastor willing to come out here, or is this the end for us?”

Friendship with rural is a countersign to our society’s dominant value systems. It reminds us of Christ’s commitment to be among all people everywhere.

In rural communities, I think we live that friendship out with individuals, connecting with people, hearing their stories, caring for them without wanting anything. Friendship keeps us from turning others into our projects, because friendship makes us human beings to one another.

We met some folks a couple of years ago. We knew they had just moved to town, and we went up and knocked on their door. We started to see them around town and our relationship began to develop. They responded to our invitation to come to church, and as their family continued to grow, we dropped by with a meal. They said, “Next time, just come in the back door. It’s not locked. That’s where friends come in.”

I’m also convinced that we also need to form pastors and leaders for friendship with the rural community as a whole. The theological term for this is “solidarity.” We live in solidarity with rural communities, working for the common good. It’s the apostle Paul’s words in Galatians 6:10, “whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” This means seeing the good of the church as bound up with the good of the whole community. It’s recognizing that the rural church cannot thrive unless the rural community thrives.

I talked to a pastor who described how he purchased and began renovating an old downtown storefront in his small town. As he muds in walls and hangs new cabinets to turn the building into apartments, people have expressed their interest and approval. The community has experienced his project as an act of caring for the common good. It’s a project of community friendship.

Pastors and church leaders have a lot on their plates. We won’t all necessarily become community organizers. But we will want to start developing a vision of ministry to and out in the community.

Ultimately, friendship with people and community is rooted in friendship with God. I’ve discovered a little prayer created by the folks at Catholic Rural Life. The prayer addresses God as the “Creator who sustains all Your creatures with food, drink and friendship.” I love that the third element is “friendship”–with one another and with God. Friendship is right up there with food and drink, something absolutely necessary. Friendship sustains our existence.

That’s the friendship that we’re seeking to live out, and to form pastors and leaders in. It’s forming them in love, a love discovered in the gospel proclaimed and the sacraments celebrated, but also in the ancient disciplines of listening and comforting, counseling and instructing, admonishing, forgiving, and praying for others.

Ultimately, I think we want to get to the place where we aren’t loving rural people and communities as an outsider looking in, but as someone who is a part of the communities we value, who comes from within, who has skin in the game. The Word put on flesh and dwelt among us. In our own small way, we start to live the incarnation in our rural neighborhoods.

We get familiar with those unpaved roads the GPS was warning about. We become pastors and leaders who have the dust of unpaved roads under our nails and clinging to our feet. Slowly, without our even noticing, the track of those unpaved roads gets etched on our hearts. We discover that somewhere along the way–by miracle and mercy–we’ve been made from that dust.

I presented an earlier version of this post at the Catholic Rural Life conference in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Uncategorized

rural church

rural pastors

Previous Post

April 7, 2018

Taking the Measure of the Rural Church

Next Post

May 9, 2018 Abiding in Place

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month January 2023 November 2022 May 2022 April 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 December 2020 November 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

If you show me, you will show your faith. Without me, faith is dead. What am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Prayer Love Obedience Works

Books by This Author Books by Brad Roth

See All Titles »