TROUBLE AND TENACITY DOWN ON THE FARM
Lawrence Burkholder
January 1, 1987
From the pulpit, some pastors gaze not upon a cathedral or even a rustic church in the wildwood, but upon a sanctuary still blotched by ceiling stains from the big ice storm two years ago. Their members may arrive wafting not Chanel No. 5, but Guernsey No. 2. When the guys discuss the weather after church, it's not to check conditions for the first tee but because that last ten acres of alfalfa need one more day of sun. Church growth has more to do with Dr. Spock than Peter Wagner. A choir is something that sang at Jesus' birth; special music is the two Jones girls.
Such congregations have history; they have tradition, roots, blood ties. What they don't have is many members. Odds are they have less than fifty.
I'm talking about the thousands of rural congregations spread across North America, most of them similar to the small Mennonite congregation I served as pastoral elder for six years. Nearly 20 percent of church adherents attend such a fellowship.
Rural realities
Bucolic images of sewing bees and church potlucks still partially conform to rural realities, but a disturbing new factor is adding a painful twist to rural ministry. Farmers are in the midst of financial, spiritual, and emotional stresses unknown since the Great Depression. Agriculture is in desperate straits, as those pastoring rural congregations know all too well.
One farm leader claims twenty-one hundred U.S. farmers are quitting every week, some voluntarily, but many because of bankruptcies. The small congregation I served had, over a five-year period, one farmer drastically downsize his operation, two go bankrupt (one twice), and one voluntarily quit. Although all still attend church somewhere, only one is left in that church, and at least one left the church ...
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