Where Excellence Can Bloom
One spring, our granddaughter enthusiastically joined her grandmother in planting flowers and sowing seeds in anticipation of a summer harvest of beauty. Together, they carefully prepared the soil, gently placed the plants in the fertile ground and selectively and strategically dropped the seeds into the black earth. When her grandmother went into the house to get a bucket of water, Megan exercised her creative exuberance. She reached into the bag containing zinnia seeds. Reminiscent of Jesus’ parable of the extravagant sower (Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8), she joyfully broke out of the confines of the cultivated space and began scattering zinnia seeds indiscriminately.
Time passed, rain fell, the sun grew brighter and shined longer, warming the earth and drawing forth the beauty buried in the soil pregnant with potential life. Soon, zinnias began appearing in the most unlikely places—in the lawn grass, under the shade of the oak tree, under the boxwoods, and even in cracks in the paved driveway. Many of Megan’s seeds didn’t survive, but we had zinnias in surprising places where nobody else had them. Because of the exuberant and extravagant sowing of a three-year-old, flowers bloomed all over the place.
Circuit riders, missionaries, evangelists and pastors traversed the America of the 18th and 19th centuries, sowing seeds of the Christian gospel and planting congregations across the countryside. Churches were built within access of the farmers and merchants and their families who populated the farms, villages and small towns of frontier America.
It was an agrarian world and rural life dominated the culture, including the religious landscape. Agriculture was the principal economy and determined the location of churches and the practices of congregations. Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning was set as the sacred hour for worship, giving farmers enough time to perform their daily chores before walking or riding on horseback or in wagons to the local church.
Although life in 21st century America is no longer agrarian and most people live in sprawling urban areas, the religious landscape still includes thousands of rural, small-membership churches. Many date back 200 years or more. Several patterns of church life formed in that agrarian era persist and often seem anachronistic and a hindrance to the church’s mission in the modern era.
Denominations such as my own United Methodist Church struggle between the demands and challenges of our technological, mobile and urbanized age and the preservation of church life formed in a different era. What are we to do with small, rural congregations? What role should they play, if any? With population declining in rural communities and economic resources and opportunities diminishing in rural areas, many of the churches are closing. Providing pastoral leadership in such communities is a growing challenge; and when pastors are placed in rural contexts, they are ill-equipped to minister in rural culture. Isolation adds to such realities as limited economic resources, diminished opportunities for vocational advancement, and minimal support from judicatories.
On the other hand, rural churches represent an enormous asset and an exceptional opportunity for excellent ministry. Maximizing the asset and enhancing excellence in ministry will require a paradigm shift by congregations, pastors, seminaries and judicatory leaders.
The first step is to move away from viewing small-membership churches as liabilities and drains on denominational resources. Preoccupation with statistical measures of vitality and our culture’s fixation on size as the test of value sabotage the morale of rural churches and their leaders. They blind us to the gifts and opportunities for imagination and creativity inherent in rural ministry. If we open our eyes, honestly assessing the assets of small rural churches, we just might see an economy of abundance rather than an economy of scarcity.
A beginning point for such an asset assessment is theology. The God revealed in the Bible doesn’t seem to be preoccupied with bigness and cultural prominence as sources of renewal and transformation. God seems predisposed to choose the least prominent, the most obscure, those with little power and minimal noticeable resources. After all, the Christian church began with a handful of obscure fisherman, laborers, zealots, nobodies in the ancient world. Never underestimate what God can do through a little boy with a loaf of bread and a couple of fish.
Rural churches must stop viewing themselves primarily as family chapels and instead become mission stations. Too many rural congregations consider themselves as private chapels existing for the comfort of immediate and extended family members. Fellowship trumps mission, and the fellowship is often limited to homogeneous membership. Mission is relegated to a special offering or a temporary project.
A rural sociologist who directs a center for public policy in a Southern state told me that the most severe social problems in the United States exist in rural areas. He added that almost every problem in urban communities is intensified in rural neighborhoods. As an active church participant, my friend postulated that rural churches are among the most untapped resources for addressing such ills as poverty, isolation, illiteracy, malnourishment, premature death and more.
In one conference I served as a bishop, I used the census reports to plot on a map the areas of the state with the most severe social problems and the most people without church affiliation. Then I marked the sites of United Methodist Churches. Located within or near all the communities with severe need and potential church members were United Methodist Churches. We had mission stations right where mission was most desperately needed. The challenge became helping those churches to envision themselves as mission stations and equipping them as such.
Excellent pastors in rural communities see themselves as missionaries. As missioners they enter into solidarity with the people, learn the culture, nurture indigenous leadership, cultivate ecumenical and agency partnerships and establish roots for the long haul. Effective missionaries also receive support from outside their local context. Denominational agencies provide resources, skill development and training, furloughs and sabbaticals, links to other mission stations, personnel reinforcements and emotional affirmation and support.
Not all the zinnias our granddaughter extravagantly sowed in the spring survived. Those that showed up in the more barren, uncultivated places required special attention and exceptional care. But the result was worth the extra effort and each bloom in unpromising places became a sign of abundant life and hope.
The Parable of the Sower is about God’s extravagant grace scattered lavishly, even wastefully, over the whole creation. Small-membership churches scattered across the countryside are signs of God’s presence. They represent possibilities for vital mission and excellent ministry. Actualizing the potential requires extravagant sowing, imaginative attention, and diligent care—all marks of pastoral excellence.
Kenneth L. Carder is the Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School. He was bishop of the Mississippi Area of the United Methodist Church from 2000 to 2004 and the Nashville Area of the UMC from 1992 to 2000.
