Articles for tag: Rural Church

May 1, 2021

Justin Horey

SPOTLIGHT: Alvadore Christian Church (Junction City, OR)

Exactly What This Very Small Church Needed Advancing their technology has never been a top priority at Alvadore Christian Church, a congregation of about 65 people in the small, rural town of Junction City, Oregon. It’s not that senior pastor Marcus Omdahl is old-fashioned. Omdahl is a sharp young leader with a wife and school-age daughter. But until recently, he understood that livestreaming was not something the congregation or the community was likely to embrace. Of course, that all changed with the spread of COVID-19 early in 2020. Immediately, Alvadore Christian, like so many other churches, suspended in-person worship services

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

Connecting the ‘Vast Areas’: 5 Tips for Effectively Using Social Media in Rural Ministry

By Rob O’Lynn America is becoming more urbanized, but roughly 60 million people still live in “vast areas” classified as rural. How can Christian churches effectively connect with people who are relatively few and far between? Social media should be a primary method. Unfortunately, it’s a method country and small-town churches have been slow to embrace. Here are five thoughts on how to harness the Internet and use it to make your church an influential voice for God in your rural region. 1. Structure Your Engagement All social media is relational. I’m not speaking just of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

The Journey Toward a Better Death: Reflections on Looking for Greener Grass

By Patrick L. Mitchell We all play what I call the “better game.” We spend too much time fantasizing about something “better,” though deep down we know it rarely, if ever, truly is better. We pay for the next better, move cities to find the next better, cheat on a spouse to experience the next better . . . and it’s almost always to our detriment, for there is no satisfying this psychological sasquatch. Church hopping is a large-scale manifestation of this desire, and Southerners—of which I am one—are especially skilled in this “game.” The perfect church is out there,

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

THE BIG CHALLENGE FACING SMALL CHURCHES (8): The Future

By Jerran Jackson Rural churches have faced many challenges, and they will face many more. We have highlighted possible solutions in these articles. While your church may be doing well right now, it’s not inconceivable it could be forced to close its doors within the next 20 years. The best mind-set is a willingness to join Jesus in new adventures. The future for your church might include part-time ministers, mergers, and hiring from within. It’s important to openly discuss and pray about what might be necessary and best for the kingdom. It’s also important to try new approaches. If the

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

THE BIG CHALLENGE FACING SMALL CHURCHES (7): Build a Legacy

By Barney Wells “In this part of the country, there’s a Christian church every five miles, and three in between,” quipped the minister, who had served small-town congregations in the Midwest for decades. Though an overstatement, it does point to a challenge for the rural church. Many rural churches were planted in the days before automobiles and good roads, when the population density of the rural countryside was much greater and you could travel only a few miles in 30 minutes. Back then, more schools, stores, and churches were needed. Over the years, schools have consolidated and stores have closed,

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

THE BIG CHALLENGE FACING SMALL CHURCHES (6): Elders Wanted

By Matt Johnson If many people with leadership gifts and experience attend your church, then your pool of potential leaders is deep. If your church is comprised of people who have little leadership experience or skill, you’re facing a completely different situation. You may have great workers with great hearts, but you may not have competent leaders. It is possible this dynamic contributes to the size of the church. How can the small church cope with a dearth of potential leaders? My response is mostly anecdotal. The church I served until recently, Levittown Christian Church, is in a lower-middle-class, blue-collar

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

THE BIG CHALLENGE FACING SMALL CHURCHES (5): Hope from History

By Jerran Jackson Down through the ages, Jesus has used crises and challenges to renew his church. When Christians by the thousands were leaving their churches to pray alone in the desert, Basil of Caesarea redefined devotion to God by gathering Christians in cities and organizing them both for prayer and for service to their neighbors. When the church became corrupt and Christianity became a superstition, Martin Luther reemphasized the guidance of God’s Word. When dry formalism replaced living faith, Philipp Jakob Spener introduced home Bible studies. Jesus can renew the American church today in similar ways. Before there were

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

THE BIG CHALLENGE FACING SMALL CHURCHES (4): 10 Ways to Develop Ministers

By Jerran Jackson Carlos Fields just wanted to play baseball. So he joined some friends who were playing on a church team. The church’s minister was on the team, and during the season they had several conversations. Carlos was a Christ follower by the time the season ended. The minister continued to work with Carlos, and two years later, the young man was in Bible college. Carlos was familiar with only small and rural churches, so he was not put off by serving those kinds of congregations. Carlos ultimately planted 12 small congregations and led hundreds of people to faith

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

THE BIG CHALLENGE FACING SMALL CHURCHES (3): Hiring a Pastor

By Richard Creek An objective for this article is to determine how many 2019 graduates from Bible colleges will be entering the pastoral/pulpit ministry. The Pastor’s Project contacted nine Bible colleges associated with independent Christian churches and churches of Christ in the United States and Canada. (That’s about one-third of our colleges and universities.) The total number of students from these nine schools entering the pastoral ministry was 17, which is considerably lower than in previous decades. Yet the need for pastors has been increasing. Without a pastor, many rural and small churches go on life support and eventually die.

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

THE BIG CHALLENGE FACING SMALL CHURCHES (2): Rural Churches

By Clark Bates We received a friendly welcome when we entered the Christian church in Beaver City, a small town in rural Nebraska. The service that morning was upbeat, the prayers sincere, and the preaching biblical . . . but where were the people? The sanctuary was large enough to accommodate 150, but that morning only 25 people huddled into one section of pews. After the service, my wife and I spoke with Treg and Beth about the challenges facing the congregation. They shared about the decreasing population of the area, explaining that young people move away for college and

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

THE BIG CHALLENGE FACING SMALL CHURCHES (1): Small Churches

Why do many small and rural churches struggle to find and retain leaders and even to survive? More importantly, what are some solutions? Christian Standard asked Jerran Jackson to lead and manage a project to study these issues. He teamed with four other seasoned leaders who have expertise in the small church to develop this topic. _ _ _ By Jerran Jackson and Barney Wells Many rural and small-town churches are struggling. LifeWay Research found that 60 percent of Protestant churches are plateaued or declining in attendance. And 46 percent say their giving decreased or stayed the same from 2017

August 22, 2019

Michael C. Mack

The Challenges and Hope of Small Rural Churches

By Michael C. Mack It’s no secret that many small churches, especially small rural churches, face numerous challenges. How will the church respond? I asked Jerran Jackson—who for 40 years has served Clarksburg (Indiana) Christian Church, a small, rural congregation—to lead a team of writers to provide analysis, stories, and recommendations. As Jerran and I planned the package of articles, “The Challenges Facing Small Churches,” we discussed a list of issues leaders in struggling churches may be facing. You might use the following questions based on those issues as discussion starters with your team; each is addressed in the articles:

August 22, 2019

Jerry Harris

New Leases on Life in Rural Churches

By Jerry Harris I love rural churches and communities; I have devoted virtually my entire ministry life to them. The bulk of Restoration Movement churches have been rural over our more than 200-year history. The church I serve operates in 11 rural and micropolitan communities, but the stories of two of them—Lima and Mount Sterling, Illinois—can provide hope for many others across the country. The Federated Church of Lima, located in a town of 125 about a half hour north of Quincy, Illinois, was the beneficiary of a literal windfall. After a tornado struck the church on May 10, 2003,

August 22, 2019

Christian Standard

Mid-Atlantic States: Moving Back to the Small Town (Part 2)

Church Planters Find Big Opportunities in Small Places By Tim Cole During the past generation, Christian churches and churches of Christ have become respected within the body of Christ at large for our leadership in church planting. This position of national influence mostly results from our outsized success planting new churches in rapidly growing suburban areas surrounding larger metropolitan centers.  More recently, within the past decade, many of our church-planting organizations have begun to focus on planting churches in downtown, urban settings. Waypoint Church Partners enjoys a rich, 80-year history of starting and serving Christian churches and churches of Christ

August 22, 2019

Jim Estep

Leading through Rural Church Challenges

By Jim Estep When I hear the word rural, I have flashbacks to my childhood. Not because I was raised on a farm, but because I watched Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and The Beverly Hillbillies while growing up. I found those shows humorous, but they weren’t documentaries of life in rural America. Elders in rural congregations face many challenges their counterparts in urban and suburban churches do not, but country churches can be very vibrant and successful. Declining Population The rural population has declined over several generations. It’s common for once lively rural communities to now be half their previous

October 1, 2018

Christian Standard

Mission-Driven Success

By TR Robertson   Rocky Fork Fellowship in tiny Hallsville, Missouri—population 1,500—grew from 40 to more than 400 in its first 10 years while meeting in the local middle school cafeteria. On March 4, 2018—11 years after the church’s founding—Rocky Fork gathered for their first Sunday together in a new building just south of town. A combined 841 worshippers attended two services. The following week, three Easter services brought in a total attendance of 977. Not surprisingly, the founders and leaders of the congregation have grown used to fielding questions about the secret to their success. “We try to pinpoint

October 13, 2017

Christian Standard

The Church that Does the Recovery Program

By TR Robertson Walk through the doors of First Christian Church in Belle, Missouri, on a Sunday morning and it seems, at first glance, like a typical rural church. There are farmers and blue-collar workers in semicasual dress, older women settling in to their usual seats, and children burning off energy before Sunday school starts. And then there”s the rest of the congregation. “I”ve been in church my whole life,” says FCC deacon Kevin Brown, “but I”ve never been in a church that had this many tattoos, this many bikes outside, this many leather jackets. We”ve welcomed people who have

September 19, 2017

Michael C. Mack

Common Threads Woven Throughout

This month we focus on the rural church and rural ministry . . . but what exactly is rural, and how are rural areas different from small towns or micropolitan communities? Before you read other stories in this issue, be sure to read “A Salute to Small Towns, Rural Areas, Micropolitan Communities: Our Attempt at a Glossary of Terms.” It takes many threads to weave a beautiful church, and I noticed four prevalent threads in many of the articles this month. And, while this issue is about rural ministry, I think these threads are important regardless of where your church,

March 11, 2016

Christian Standard

My Opus

By David Smith “Just stay around long enough to get a little experience and then move on to “˜greener pastures.”” That statement, among others, was what I heard when I moved to Moreland, Kentucky, in 1993 to start a ministry with Moreland Christian Church. What that actually means is, put in a little time, and then move to a more “reputable” church in our brotherhood with a higher salary. Well, 23 years later, God is still blessing our little church in the cornfield. In fact, after building a multipurpose building in 1999 and a new sanctuary in 2014, we bought

March 7, 2016

Christian Standard

I Look to Stay

By Casey Tygrett In 2007, I encountered a book that changed my life. The book was Hannah Coulter, a novel by Wendell Berry. I had previously read a Berry poem called “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” With a title like that, how could you forget? In fact, one line stays with me even today: “Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.” Even with that poem in mind, I wasn”t prepared for Hannah Coulter. The characters, the life, the unspoken but ever present faith””Berry”s book drew me in, and I couldn”t put it down. Once

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