Welcome to My Log Cabin in Idaho Falls Id Nathan Mudd and Family
Jeremy Sarver was a mama's male child, so when he was 14 and his female parent left his father—and didn't accept him with her—he was devastated.
"My dad was concerned near me and began to have me to counselors," he said. "I did not in whatever style enjoy that."
He was hard on the counselors, and his dad "became desperate."
"We didn't go to church, but he remembered when I played baseball game a few years agone, at that place was an assistant jitney who was also a pastor," Sarver said. "He got a concord of this pastor, who began to meet with me, and unfolded the gospel. That was the Lord's timing, and things clicked."
Sarver received Christ and "immediately attached" himself to the church and the pastor, Allen Sparks, who became a surrogate father to him.
Their church—Liberty Chapel—was 15 minutes exterior of Crawfordsville, Indiana, an hour northwest of Indianapolis. Founded in a log cabin in 1835, the little congregation worked for decades to go on the doors open up—merging with a nearby struggling Methodist church in 1947, becoming a nondenominational customs church building in 1967, and finally asking Village Missions for help in 1983.
Village Missions said aye, because Freedom Church is exactly the type of place information technology was created to support. The organisation was founded in 1948 to assistance minor rural churches that don't have enough people—and therefore non enough money in the offering plate—to keep a pastor. And without a pastor, people like Sarver remain unreached.
Every bit rural areas empty out, that need is growing. "Annual population losses [in nonmetro areas] averaged 43,000 per year between 2011 and 2015," co-ordinate to the Department of Agriculture. Just 46 one thousand thousand Americans—out of more than 320 million—withal live in those counties, "14 percentage of U.Southward. residents spread beyond 72 percentage of the nation's state expanse."
The per centum of rural congregations shrunk from 43 percent in 1998 to 32 percent in 2012, according to the National Congregations Study. At the same time, rural attendees dropped from 23 per centum to xv percent.
As seats empty, those left are looking for help to keep the doors open up. Some denominations are turning dorsum to circuit riders, while others are experimenting with multisite options.
Still others are turning to Village Missions, which provides the pastor, pays his salary, and supports his work.
"Each year we put out $i.2 million in salary support lonely" for 200 missionary couples in the United States and another 35 in Canada, executive director Brian Wechsler said. And he's looking for more: "In that location is a big demand for more missionaries. Nosotros accept 20 open places—our claiming has been recruiting."
Village Missions
Village Missions was founded in 1948 by an Irish Presbyterian pastor from Portland, Oregon. Walter Duff Jr. had watched America's industrialization pull people into the cities—by the plow of the century, 30 percent of the population lived in cities; by 1920, it was more than than 50 pct. (In 2010, it topped 80 percent.)
Dismayed by the lack of pastors for the shrinking rural church, and encouraged by his father and his older sisters, he took on leadership of the brand-new Village Missions, presently fielding "scores of letters asking for help securing a pastor." 5 years in, Duff Jr. had to quit pastoring to head Village Missions full-fourth dimension. By the time he retired, he'd sent out more than 600 missionary pastors.
Village Missions prefers the terms "missionary" to "pastor" for several reasons—the language includes the wives, who are also sent; emphasizes the focus of outreach and evangelism; and helps the couple remember the culture they're in is increasingly ignorant about or combative to Christianity, Wechsler writes.
One of Duff'south missionaries was Sparks, who eventually built a thriving church. Merely it didn't come easy. Breaking into a pocket-size rural customs takes a tremendous amount of courage and perseverance.
Breaking In
Information technology's not that there isn't community; it's that there is already so much customs.
"For the starting time vii to eight years at Liberty Chapel, Allen and I would get home on Sundays and accept turns crying," Sparks'southward married woman, Diane, told a local reporter. "Nix we tried seemed to be working, at to the lowest degree from our perspective."
Until it did. Attendance rose from xviii to nearly 100. Youth-focused Bible studies and mission trips began to choice upwardly. The church became self-supporting, and bought a parsonage. In the tardily 1990s, Liberty Chapel added an extension to the sanctuary, a fellowship hall, a kitchen, and classrooms.
The success was welcome, but non all Village Missions churches do, or are expected to, pay their ain manner. The largest, which started equally a "small-scale, struggling work," at present has about 900 attendees, but it'due south an anomaly. Median Sunday morning omnipresence is 45.
"Our two primary criteria are whether the church building is the only gospel witness in the expanse, and whether they are willing to develop a community-broad outreach," Wechsler said.
Recognizing that economics may change in a rural surface area, "nosotros're in it for the long haul," he said. "We aren't the typical church institute, where you have to be a certain size or be self-funded by a certain time."
That doesn't mean a Village Missionary is free. The congregation has to supply housing and pay utilities. They also agree to pay 10 percentage of their general fund offering to Village Missions, which in turn covers a base of operations salary of $one,800 a calendar month and health insurance.
Equally the church building grows, it is expected to have on more of the financial responsibility, first picking upwards health insurance, then bacon. And near do. In 2016, 62 percent of Hamlet Missions churches were cocky-sufficient.
For those that can't, Village Missions raises coin from churches and individuals with a center for rural missions. Their retired missionaries (who can live in Village Missions-purchased retirement homes) likewise give.
But even with housing, insurance, utilities, and a base salary, the lack of coin makes recruitment hard.
Student Loans
The average annual tuition rate at a 4-yr private higher skyrocketed from 1970 ($1,500) to 1980 ($ix,500) to 2010 ($22,000), rising far faster than both aggrandizement and family income.
The graduates of the grade of 2016 paid an average of $37,172 each for their higher education, which translates to most $285 a month stretched over xx years. Even at Moody Bible Institute, which covers tuition through a combination of federal grants and private donations, the cost for room and board, insurance, and fees adds upwards to around $6,500 a semester.
In order to pay back those loans, you lot need an offering plate that gets handed around to lots of people, Wechsler said.
About xx years ago, Village Missions developed their ain complimentary preparation courses, and in 2014 they put the 2-year program—now called Contenders Discipleship Initiative—online. The goal is to develop pastors from within their ain congregations, but without the student debt.
"That'due south a huge transformation—to enable a lot of churches to use the textile, non merely to enhance upwards Hamlet Missionaries but also for intensive spiritual training for [laypeople]," Wechsler said. He figures near 500 students are taking classes.
If Village Missions can negate the money problem, information technology should attract a lot of millennials.
"Younger people are interested in community, and relationship building, and the opportunity to live out their Christian faith on a very existent level," Wechsler said. "That is highly-seasoned. And we don't micromanage them by any means—they can be entrepreneurial and develop their ain ministry while we support them." (One young Village Missionary even wrote a song extolling the organization's mission.)
"I dear the small-town atmosphere of community, and I think that's harder to achieve in a very populated area," Mindi said. "In a small church yous go to know people, and y'all get to do life alongside them in a way that's not bachelor in huge churches. You likewise get the opportunity to serve—in that location is a nifty need for everybody to be agile for the church to function well."
Everyone'south Watching—And That's Okay
When a DARE officer at Wechsler'southward son'southward school warned the students against drinking and driving, Wechsler'south son raised his paw.
"My dad drinks and drives," he told the officer.
The town was l miles from a Walmart and had 400 residents; the chief street was a gravel road. So "of course the guy knew me," Wechsler said. He was "taken aback" until Wechsler'due south son ratted him out for holding a Coke while steering.
"Nothing is undercover," Wechsler said. Just "not many complain about that. . . . It'south a nifty opportunity to manifest whether your walk with Christ is real or not. You can have a lot of ministry in a rural area just walking down the street with your married woman."
Sparks did just that.
"I saw him love people and be with people," Sarver said. "Being a pastor wasn't a profession. It was about riding in combines and helping people tear off roofs and put on shingles. I watched him be with people and I thought, Human being, that'south actually attracting me."
Sarver went to Moody Bible Institute, a schoolhouse in the heart of Chicago that did a "wonderful job preparing for rural ministries." He married Sparks's girl Mindi, and they settled down in their own Village Missions church in Volga, Iowa, an isolated farm customs of about 200.
How to Revive a Dying Country Church
In that location are iv churches in Volga—a Catholic church building, a Lutheran church building, a Methodist church building, and Calvary Bible Community Church. When Sarver arrived, Calvary had almost 12 members. None of the other churches had a full-time pastor.
"Village Missions is almost entirely a revitalization ministry," said Wechsler, who grew up in Long Island, New York, before attending a Village Missions church in Idaho. They don't need to establish new churches, considering in that location'due south almost always an existing building with the remnants of a congregation.
"Usually the criteria is that we go to places where there is only one gospel witness," he said. "If that church closed, in that location'd exist no other gospel witness."
Village Missions asks the prospective church to sever ties with its denomination, which isn't as difficult equally it sounds. "Quite often the denominations are abandoning the rural churches, and so they've already told the church building—which may exist down to 10 people or so—that they aren't able to send them any more pastors," Wechsler said.
Hamlet Missions doesn't want to control the church, just to modify the focus, and sometimes fifty-fifty the name, to include "customs."
"A lot of times these churches are inner-focused," Wechsler said. "We're trying to become them to see the entire expanse as a mission field."
Village Missions isn't kidding. Its missionaries are asked to spend about 20 hours a week with people. That could wait like a Bible written report, simply more often information technology looks like coaching a kids' soccer team, volunteering with the fire department, or running a few miles with a neighbor.
Those meaningful relationships aren't just with churchgoers. In rural areas, "pastors take more opportunity to meet and interact with people on neutral footing," Wechsler said. From the football game field to the coffee store, pastors can dig into relationships with unchurched people in a natural fashion.
It isn't long before the entire community becomes the church, whether they ever enter the doors or not.
"People volition say, 'He's my pastor,' even if they've never been to church earlier," Wechsler said. And when times of crisis come up, the Village Missionary is the one they call. "Increasingly, you have real dysfunctional social collapse, and lot of the brunt falls on the church building in rural areas."
"People assume rural life is kind of exempt from the difficulties of urban living, merely information technology's all the same stuff—only on a unlike scale," Mindi said.
In fact, studies take found that rural youth are more than at take a chance for drug addiction or alcohol abuse than their urban counterparts are.
"I could put upward office hours all twenty-four hours long in rural America, and nobody'southward coming," Sarver said. "But if I sit in the combine with them, or go to the java shop, or watch a volleyball game with them—they don't want me to utilise the discussion 'counseling,' but we talk through things."
Making it Stick
The amount of time and energy it takes to counsel an entire community—many of them unchurched—is eased by the tight-knit nature of rural life and the small size of the congregation.
Even if the church doubles in number, the lack of people in a rural area ways in that location's a limit to how much it tin can abound. Wechsler pastored for six years in an Iowa town of 57. By the end, he was drawing about 130—more than one-half from the surrounding area—but that's on the high terminate of Village Mission churches.
When Sarver's Iowan church more than doubled in size, information technology went from 12 to thirty. When Village Missions asked him to move to Ohio to pastor a church building of xc, he was turned off by the size. "I'1000 non a megachurch pastor," he said, laughing. "I'thou not comfortable with that."
He did make the move, but changing churches is not something Wechsler likes.
"It takes five to seven years at whatever church building for people to develop trust," he said. That's specially true in rural churches, which pastors routinely use as stepping stones to "moving upward the ministry building ladder."
"If you lot can stay, and convince them that y'all love them, that makes a big departure in your ministry," Wechsler said. "Some of our guys volition plant a fruit tree in their thou, and that thrills people. They say, 'Oh, male child, you must be planning on staying.'"
All-time-instance scenario, Hamlet Missionaries would serve simply a few congregations their entire career, Wechsler said. Correct now, the boilerplate Village Missionary stays put for eight to nine years, and "that includes new people who haven't been able to be anywhere for viii years."
Sparks spent more than than thirty years at Freedom Chapel. Sarver hopes he retires from his electric current congregation in Ohio.
He and Mindi have been there three years now, and haven't really broken into the community.They're patient, though, remembering those early days in Iowa.
Locals would gather daily at a booth in the boondocks'south merely gas station for coffee and catching up.
"I'd get at that place once or twice a week and I would sit down there," eating a Snickers and drinking coffee, Sarver said. The offset day, "I could see on their faces they had no involvement in including me. It took three years—I would greet them, sit past them, endeavour to squeeze into the conversation."
That cold reaction isn't mean, Mindi said. It's protective. "That's totally legitimate because pastors tend to start in a small church and then experience like it's non important plenty to stay. So that hesitance of people to trust is legitimate and warranted."
Mindi'south a small-town daughter herself, then she knew what to practice. She made herself visible and accessible by walking everywhere she needed to become. So she joined the library commission.
The couple broiled cookies for neighbors, then tried to bring upwardly sports or music to see if they could connect. Sarver walked the cemeteries, learning family names and tragedies. He served on the park board and cleaned the campground bathrooms. When he noticed one homo drank Mountain Dew during the daily gatherings at the gas station, he brought one over when the man was out mowing his yard. ("He likes to say, 'Jeremy bamboozled me into coming to church with a Mount Dew,'" Sarver said.)
The Sarvers lived by a park ("That was God-ordained"), so Jeremy shot hoops with the kids, and met three 12-year-sometime boys. "They pretty much lived with us," he said. "When Village Missions called and asked u.s.a. to motility, my starting time response was tears, because what happens to the boys?"
He needn't have worried.
The boys are 22 now, and similar Sarver before them, they're helping to atomic number 82 the local church.
Optimism
Village Missionaries saw 459 conservancy decisions, 179 adult baptisms, and 127 kid baptisms in 2016.
"In some of the well-nigh hopeless places, it's astonishing what can happen," said Wechsler, who has seen people come to Christ and churches come to life. In the Village Mission church building he attended earlier condign a missionary himself, the church led 11 different Bible studies—in a town of 200.
He doesn't see rural ministry as less-than. (Neither does Tim Keller.) "A person tin can only interact meaningfully with so many people," he said. In some ways, a rural pastor has more than meaningful interactions—with both churched and unchurched people—than those in a bigger church or more populated area, he said.
Equally the population continues to compress and society continues to alter, "ministry in full general will become more challenging," Wechsler said. "Only as the darkness gets greater, the light shines brighter. I'grand optimistic that people volition see the defalcation of life without Christ and want to turn to him. We're to be faithful witnesses, but it's God who changes the heart, so nosotros tin remainder assured in that."
Source: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/reviving-the-dying-small-town-church/