Program to Address Rural Church Challenges

May 1, 2006

Duke Divinity School and The Duke Endowment are developing a program to foster strong rural churches and communities in North Carolina, addressing challenges those communities face and cultivating excellent leadership among clergy and laity.

“Thriving Rural Communities” will create six model United Methodist Church programs aimed at attracting strong clergy to the rural church, training those and other leaders for the particular challenges of serving in those settings, motivating clergy in rural churches to be excellent leaders, and helping other churches to replicate successes.

The model rural churches will work with the field education program at Duke Divinity School to offer special placements for six divinity school students, who also will be given scholarships, to participate in and learn best practices from those programs. These “rural fellows” will be asked to commit to serving in rural congregations for at least five to eight years after graduation. They also will attend regular colloquia to enhance their understanding of rural issues, challenges and opportunities.

Thriving Rural Communities is expected to last at least six years, said Duke Divinity School Dean L. Gregory Jones, noting that social and economic challenges, ranging from mill closings to shrinking populations, have sapped the strength of many rural churches and communities. Creative strategies to bolster those churches are needed if they are to remain vital, he said.

“The danger is that we could assign pastors to rural congregations that have less and less ability to support the pastor, much less the ability to foster strong programs,” Jones said. “We could have beautiful fellowship halls or sanctuaries made possible through the conference or The Duke Endowment, only to see them empty in the future because the communities have declined to a point of no longer being viable.”

• The North Carolina and Western North Carolina Conferences of the United Methodist Church will continue work begun in 2004 with Duke Divinity School to strengthen the conferences’ understanding of rural churches, the need for excellence in ministry in rural settings, and how the conferences can support crucial leadership development. Issues to be addressed include the length of appointments for clergy in rural churches, incentives for pastors to serve in rural settings, and overcoming the sense of isolation in those churches.


• The Caring Communities program at Duke Divinity School will manage several leadership development projects along with various churches and other ministries. The projects will include a community garden in the Cedar Grove area of Orange County as well as various social ministry and community outreach efforts.


• Ongoing education for rural United Methodist clergy will be made available through the divinity school’s Courage to Serve program, which involves the creation of an intellectual, emotional and spiritual space in which leadership and life questions are explored.


• A post-graduate mentor program will be developed to address the issues of the first five years away from seminary and in ministry, years crucial for whether clergy continue in ministry.