David W. Scott: The Challenges of Being a Rural Church in an Urbanizing World

Last week, I wrote a blog post entitled "The UMC is a rural church in an urbanizing world" in which I argued just that. I ended by asserting that there are missional, financial, cultural, and other implications of this thesis for the mission and ministry of the church. This post will expand on those implications.

But before I do that, I want to make clear that I do not think it is a bad thing to be a rural church.

There are plenty of tropes made by urban dwellers in cultures around the globe about rural areas and rural people. Biases and stereotypes flow both ways between the city and the country, but the church's mission strategy can never be driven by assumptions that "those people" are not entitled to the same things that "we" are. As someone who has lived half my life in towns under 10,000 people and the rest of it in small to medium cities, I can vouch that there are differences between those contexts, but one is not inherently a better or worse place. The church must be clear that all people are worthy of the gospel, no matter where they live.

The UMC is a rural church because it has been successful at sharing the gospel with rural people. That is a success, and we should not be ashamed of it. We should also not be content to stay with the successes of the past if they distract us from what God is calling us to do now. But I believe that rural ministry is part of God's call to Methodists in the past, present, and future.

The challenge then, as it always is, is to think critically about the context so that we can better and more faithfully answer God's missional call. I will highlight three challenges posed to rural ministry from the current context of urbanization.

Stagnant and declining populations

The flip side of growing urban populations around the world is that rural populations are often not growing. Indeed, in some settings, rural areas are facing depopulation or population aging as people, especially younger people, move from rural areas to urban areas. Rural areas with a stagnant to declining population mean that there are only so many people that the church can include as members. This number of potential members is further limited when rural areas are experiencing overall declines in religiosity, such as is common in Western countries as a whole.

Small congregations are not necessarily a problem. Most United Methodist congregations are small. But when the Methodist tradition and current denominational systems emphasize growth in membership, that creates a problem because of the gap between expectations of growth and the limited margin for growth that exists in many rural populations.

Part of the solution to the problem of this gap between expectation and reality is to develop better theologies around faithful persistence that can provide a sense of meaning and accomplishment for churches that are located in populations where dramatic evangelistic growth is just not likely.

Another missional implication is that if the church believes in continuing to bring the gospel to new people, it cannot afford to be just a rural church. It also needs to expand into urban areas. Part of the Methodist DNA can help here. Methodist geographic expansion has historically been driven primarily by migrants. Often that has included migrants from rural areas to cities. Thus, the church needs to think about how it can better support its members who move from rural to urban areas and how it can capitalize on them as potential evangelists and missionaries who can bring Methodism with them to the city.

Rural income limits

Rural areas are not necessarily poor, though rural poverty exists just as surely as urban poverty does, even if it looks different. Yet the church faces a couple challenges related to the money it can bring in from rural areas for mission and ministry.

In some rural areas, the church does face challenges in raising money because of poverty and other economic conditions. Appalachia is a rural area of the United States with extensive poverty and many United Methodist churches. Rural inhabitants there have less money, on average, to give to the church. In rural areas of developing countries, many rural residents are subsistence farmers who raise crops for their own consumption but do not earn a cash income. That may mean they have no money whatsoever to give to the church, though they may have other assets and resources to give.

In all rural areas, smaller populations mean smaller groups of donors and therefore smaller total donations than would be possible in a city-wide giving campaign. This is true regardless of whether the rural area is wealthy or poor.

God is more concerned with our generosity than the total given (as in the story of the widow's mite). Yet, when there are price tags associated with certain church-related activities (paying for a roof, supporting a missionary's salary, contributing to a pastor's retirement fund, running a tutoring program, etc.), there is the potential for mismatch between the amount that a rural area can generate and the amount necessary for these activities.

This challenge highlights the importance of connectionalism and cooperation in the church's mission and ministry in rural areas. If one church cannot run a tutoring program by itself because of limited finances or limited volunteers, can it partner with other churches to run the program? This partnership may be ecumenical with churches in the same area or partnership with other United Methodist churches that are not too far distant.

A broader answer to this challenge is that the church needs to think more deeply about how it supports agriculture as the basis of rural economies. This can range from seeing agriculture as the direct source of giving (as in programs like Growing Hope Globally) to recognizing that the better the agricultural economy is in rural areas, the better the community will do and therefore the more resources will be available for mission and ministry in the church (as in the Yambasu Agricultural Initiative).

Inefficiencies of scale

Underlying both of the above issues is a basic challenge of all facets of life in rural areas: inefficiences of scale. In many instances, it is cheaper and easier to provide good and services to larger, more concentrated populations in urban areas than it is to provide those services to small, more spread out populations in rural areas. In the secular world, this economic reality shows up in everything from the closure of rural hospitals and consolidation of rural school districts in the United States to more difficulty in buying things, especially specialized items, in rural areas everywhere to the lack of cell phone and broadband internet access in many rural areas around the world.

In the church world, the rise of megachurches are a clear expression of this same market logic. It is more efficient to provide religious services to 10,000 people who travel to one location than it is to provide religious services to 10,000 people spread out among 200 small, rural churches. More buildings, pastors, and travel are required for rural ministry.

Again, having 200 churches with an average of 50 attendees each is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. The problem for rural ministry arises when a drive toward efficiency in the church comes into conflict with the realities of rural ministry.

Part of the answer to that problem is to question the premise. Is more efficiently provided church ministry better church ministry? Not necessarily so. If the church really values rural ministry and takes seriously the missional call to engage people in rural areas, then it would just accept higher costs. Indeed, mission is rarely the most cost-effective thing to do, but God consistently calls us to missional generosity with our resources. In some instances, it may make sense for the church to think about what missional investment by urban churches in rural churches might look like, recognizing that rural churches are not just recipients of mission but potential sources of mission giving and mission personnel, as the above sections highlight.

Another response to this challenge is to think carefully about what sort of infrastructure is really necessary to carry out mission and ministry in rural areas. If there is a relatively stable congregation of 12 people, does that congregation need a building, or does it make more sense to meet as a house church? Where is it more effective to have a pastor serve a multi-point charge full time, and where does it make sense to have a bivocational pastor serve a single point charge part time?

Again, the Methodist tradition of connectionalism is highly relevant here. Methodists have never believed that each congregation should be completely autonomous and sufficient in itself. We have always believed that the church depends on gifts and assets being shared across and pooled among congregations. As I mentioned in my last post, practices like circuit riding, quarterly meetings, and revivals were a means to overcome the efficiency challenges of rural ministry, and modern-day versions of these old Methodist practices remain relevant for rural ministry today.

Conclusion

Urban (and suburban) ministry has its own challenges that I have not tried to address in this post. Certainly, as the world urbanizes, we must also think more carefully about that ministry context as well. But even as urban areas and churches there grow, the UMC will continue to have a significant rural constituency in many settings around the world. It does not benefit the church as a whole to ignore or take for granted the rural portion of itself.

Ultimately, the goal for the rural and urban ministries of the church should be the same that it is for the church as it extends itself missionally across cultures, nations, and other boundaries. The goal must be for the church in each location to reflectively engage with its local context while the church in all locations joins together in mutual sharing and partnership for the sake of advancing God's kin(g)dom. May it be so, in the city, in the country, and everywhere in between.

The UMC is a Rural Church in an Urbanizing World

The UMC is a rural church in an urbanizing world.

This is perhaps a bit of hyperbole, but it underlines important facets of the history and present of The United Methodist Church in many locations around the world, facets that have significant implications for the mission and ministry of the UMC in the present age.

In this post, I will share some historical and anecdotal evidence to support the two components of the argument: first, that the UMC is in many ways a rural church, and second, that the world is urbanizing. In a future post, I will look at the missional, financial, cultural, and other implications of this thesis.

The UMC Is a Rural Church

I know of no database that has yet been compiled that conveniently provides the percentage of UMC congregations or congregants in rural vs. urban areas. This is true both in the United States and even more so around the world. Thus, my argument will be more historical and anecdotal than statistical.

In the United States, the classic elements of Methodist history - circuit riders, class meetings, camp meetings - were all associated with Methodism's spread along the rural frontier of the new United States. Circuit riders were a successful innovation to bring religion to small, widely dispersed rural settlements. Class meetings kept the faithful going between visits from the circuit riders. And camp meetings provided a place for rural people to gather together for religious (and secular) experiences not available in scattered communities of a few dozen people. These elements combined to allow Methodism to spread well across the new republic, mostly in rural areas. While Methodism would eventually get into urban missions (at the end of the 19th century), and while there were some areas (such as New York City) that had early urban Methodist congregations, the focus for most of US Methodism's early history was on the rural hinterlands, not the cities.

The success of this rural strategy is still apparent in the distribution of UMC congregations in the United States today. Prior to disaffiliation, the UMC had more churches than the US had post offices. This was not largely the result of plentiful churches in urban and suburban areas but rather the continuation of the many rural congregations started by early Methodists, especially east of the Great Plains (where almost all the population lived prior to the Civil War and where the majority of the US population lives still today).

Indeed, if you compare a map of congregations per county in 2020 of United Methodists and Catholics, you can easily tell the more rural composition of United Methodists (on top below) and Catholics (on bottom). The Catholic map allows you to clearly identify Dayton, for instance, because of the urban nature of US Catholicism. The United Methodist map includes many congregations per county in entirely rural parts of Appalachia.

If a rural focus, rural distribution, and rural character has marked US United Methodism, this is true in many other countries around the world.

The current largest episcopal area in the entire UMC is the North Katanga Episcopal Area. The portion of that episcopal area in the DR Congo is almost entirely rural in its composition. There are, to my knowledge, no cities of over 200,000 in an area that contains almost a million United Methodists. These United Methodists, like many in the United States, live in small towns and villages.

In Zimbabwe, although there are now United Methodists throughout the country, an early comity agreement with the British Methodists meant that the British Methodists focused on the cities during the early evangelization of the country, while the predecessors of the UMC focused on the rural area. It was only after United Methodists migrated from rural areas to cities that the denomination opened churches in urban areas.

In Mozambique, there was no United Methodist congregation in the capital and largest city of the country until decades after the church was established, a testimony to the early rural focus of the church on one district of eastern Mozambique.

In Nigeria, the UMC has a strong presence in Jalingo, a state capital about the size of Des Moines, Iowa. But, like Des Moines, Jalingo is merely an anchor for Methodism that is spread throughout the rural areas of the territory as well.

Manila is a huge metropolitan area, and the UMC has always had a presence there, and one of the three Filipino episcopal areas is focused on Manila. But the Baguio Episcopal Area to the north includes mostly rural areas and small cities. Baguio itself, the urban center of the area, only has a population of about 345,000.

The UMC in Norway has congregations in the nine largest cities in Norway. But it also has congregations in three small villages north of the Arctic Circle. If the UMC there is perhaps concentrated near Oslo, it has by no means shunned rural areas.

This is not a comprehensive survey, and there are, of course, counter examples. I have already acknowledged United Methodism in metro Manila. And The United Methodist Church in Liberia, for instance, has a urban flavor to it because of its historic base among Americo-Liberian settlers, who were originally based in Monrovia and other newly formed urban areas.

Still, looked at broadly, I think it is fair to say that The United Methodist Church at very least has strong rural roots in many places throughout the globe and that these roots remain evident in the geographic distribution of the church to this day.

The World Is Urbanizing

Many of the historic, rural roots of the UMC described above were set during the 19th century. It is fair to point out that most of the world lived in rural areas in the 19th century. A rural focus for the UMC was notable but not out of line with the experiences of the majority of humanity.

But there has been a dramatic transformation of where and how humans have lived in the past century, as ever larger numbers and percentages of people congregate in urban areas, a process social scientists refer to as urbanization.

The United States became a majority urban country about a century ago, in the early 1920s. At the present, almost 80% of the US population lives in urban or suburban areas. Only 21% remain in rural areas of the country. The trend in other developed countries was similar, a steady march to the cities beginning in the late 19th century and continuing on such that the vast majority of the population lives in urban areas at present.

Yet urbanization has not only been a process in developed countries. Over the past half century, there has been a massive population shift in developing countries as well, as people flock to cities. The majority of the world's population now lives in urban areas. The World Bank predicts that by 2050, 70% of the world's population will live in cities.

This move from rural to urban areas (and the creation of many new urban areas) represents a fundamental change in human societies that has implications for all areas of human life. But religion is certainly one of the areas impacted by the shift to cities. And The United Methodist Church, as a church with rural roots that is facing a rapidly urbanizing world, would do well to be cognizant of the missional, financial, cultural, and other implications of this process of urbanization and what they mean for the mission and ministry of the church. I will explore that further in a subsequent piece.

An Affirmation for the Rural Church in Mission

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

I was teaching a Course of Study class on mission recently, and several of my students asked how they could lead mission in their small, rural, elderly, and tired churches. I appreciated the sincerity and the trace of anguish in their question. There are a lot of small, rural, elderly, and tired churches in the United States, and they don’t fit with the models we usually hold up for church success.

Their question also resonated with me personally. I’ve spent half of my life living in towns of less than 10,000 people, and the majority of the churches I’ve been associated with have worshipped under 100 people on a Sunday, some of them as low as 12-20 people. I know the sense of repressed grief in good, faithful church people as they look around at Sunday school classrooms that haven’t been used in a decade and as they try to figure out whether they can scrape together just enough volunteers to hold their annual charity fundraiser at least one more time. I know that it’s not just the church; that small towns in general feel left behind by the modern world. I’ve walked throughout downtowns that are just a hair salon, a restaurant, and a lot of empty buildings. I know that the best and brightest frequently leave small towns because there are no good jobs locally. And I’ve sat in pews where 80% of the congregants are over 65 because of this combination of younger generations leaving for work or just not coming to church at all anymore.

Yet, despite all these winds blowing against small, rural, elderly churches, I do believe that God still calls them to participate in God’s mission. I believe there is good they can do in the world. God does not call us to be successful in the world’s eyes; God calls us to be faithful, and there is plenty of room yet for faithfulness, even in small, rural, elderly churches.

So, I want to share here the affirmations of the role of small, rural, elderly churches in God’s mission that I shared with my class. There have been other recent articles and commentaries about small, rural churches, and I hope this post adds to those to offer a sense of encouragement.

My comments draw on the six principles of asset-based ministry set out by Michael Mather in Having Nothing, Possessing Everything. Although Mather’s work was in poor, urban areas, I am convinced that his insights apply more widely.

I want to begin by saying that God doesn’t require tired, elderly congregants to have all the resources or energy of a congregation filled with 30- or 40-somethings. God can work with whatever your congregants are able to provide, and God will supply the rest of what’s needed through other people. Mather’s process of learning to see abundance in his communities wasn’t about getting more out of his congregants. It was about noticing the abundance that was outside of but all around his congregations. Part of engaging in God’s mission as a small, rural, elderly church is about discovering the abundance around the church, not figuring out how to get more out of already tired congregants.

Mather’s first principle is “Our neighbors are God’s people. Act like it.” Acting like our neighbors are God’s people is both sometimes easier and sometimes harder in small communities where people know each other. People have an easier time seeing people as individuals and not stereotypes, but at the same time, people can get locked into seeing each other in one way, and it may be hard to escape previous bad impressions. Part of engaging in mission, then, is being willing to see those around the congregation in new ways, even if congregants have known them their whole lives.

As part of this principle, I think it’s important to reframe mission from “the well-to-do helping the needy” to “neighbors helping neighbors,” a practice with long roots in many rural areas. While God does call us to serve others, we should not see other people as just “needy.” We need to see other people as full people, full children of God, with assets and abilities as well as needs. That’s essential to treating people with dignity.

Mather’s second principle is “Everything begins with and builds on the gifts of our neighbors.” Even if there are fewer of them, rural churches still have neighbors, and those neighbors still have gifts that can be used to serve others. Part of living out this principle is collaborating ecumenically or with other community organizations rather than a small, elderly church trying to run all mission endeavors themselves.

It is also about drawing on the sorts of personal, informal networks that often characterize rural areas. If your congregation includes people that have connections to others in the community, draw on those connections! That could be a helping professional like a teacher, police officer, or social worker, but it could just as well be a member of the classic car enthusiast club or quilting group, or it could be the person who works at the local gas station and knows everyone in town because they come in to buy gas.

Mather’s third principle is “Parents and guardians are the first and best teachers. Respect this.” I think this principle is equally valid in cities, suburbs, small towns, and the countryside.

Mather’s fourth principle is “We invest first and foremost in the good the people of the neighborhood seek.” I think rural communities have their own sense of what they want for their communities (or individuals within those communities may have several different senses of this), and I still think it’s worth listening to what those are rather than deciding that we know what the community needs. Also, we’re very used to thinking about need in economic terms. We assume those “in need” are those with less economic resources. And rural poverty can be particularly grinding and invisible. But all of us are in need in some way. Maybe the work God is calling your church to is not about money. Maybe it’s about loneliness, or maybe it’s about support for those going through cancer and their families, or maybe it’s grief support, or maybe it’s help finding childcare. Needs are everywhere, just as gifts are.

Mather’s fifth principle is “Money must flow to the neighborhood.” In an age where it’s almost always cheaper to drive 30 miles to get something at Walmart or to order it online, I think making sure that money flows back to local communities is essential in rural areas. Support your local small businesses whenever possible in whatever you do in mission, even if it costs a bit more.

And finally, Mather’s sixth principle is “Practice neighbor love.” I think love is just as important in rural areas as anywhere else. And I don’t think love requires a formal program that runs in perpetuity. Churches often get hung up on trying to establish on-going programs that they run themselves, which can be especially challenging for a small, rural, elderly congregation. But loving people, in whatever way presents itself at that moment? That’s something that all people everywhere can do. And when we change or those we’re loving change, then the ways in which we love them can change too.

Following these principles doesn’t guarantee that your small, rural, aging congregation will suddenly be filled with new, young families. But that’s not the point. Your church may still close in ten years. But if you knew that was going to be true, if you knew that your church would close no matter what, what would you want to do with those last ten years? What sort of legacy would you like to leave?

The good news is this: Small, rural, elderly churches can be faithful in responding to God’s call, and when they do, they produce fruit and establish a faithful legacy, no matter what happens in the future. God is at work, including in rural areas. May our churches see God’s mission proceeding and join in.