Rurban Living

It was 2006 and our New England congregation was unprepared for change. For 11 years we had been “the new church in town,” in 300-year-old Colchester, Conn. In the space of only a few years, the surrounding farms, homes and tiny stores were submerged in a tide of suburban homes, age-restricted senior housing condominiums and fast-food chains.

While the natives and older newcomers were overwhelmingly opposed to the new developments, I saw them as God-given opportunities. We were in the right place at the right time: The influx of new families represented an unprecedented, cross-cultural mission field for small churches such as ours in rural America.

As these more cosmopolitan people moved into our town, a few found our church, and the stage was set for both untold opportunity and conflict. They expected a church that would offer the best of all worlds: an up-to-date educational program for their children, contemporary music, a modern facility and rural folksiness. They also expected to be warmly welcomed by traditional-thinking rural people with the mindset of a generation past.

Most folks who visited our church never returned.

Clearly, New England cosmopolitan ways of thinking and living had now become our mission field. Christian Life Chapel needed to understand and appreciate its new “rurban” context.

Rurban realities

Rural America everywhere is changing. “Today, less than two percent of Americans are engaged in farming while ninety-two percent of the people who live in rural areas have a non-farm vocation,” writes Rev. Martin Giese in The Distinctive Context of Rural Ministry.

In fact, a rural town’s proximity to a metropolitan hub determines which of the two groups and its mindset—rural or urban—will be in the majority. (See a few examples in “Rural vs Urban Mindset.”)

Rural Mindset vs. Urban Mindset

RURAL MINDSET

• Families work independently in tight, personal relationships
• Life is unpredictable, controlled by the land and the weather
• “Expect the worst,” and dig in to survive
• Goal setting is presumptuous

URBAN MINDSET

• Individuals work interdependently in loose, institutional relationships
• Life has greater predictability, controlled by people and their skills
• “Anything is possible,” and expect to achieve
• Goals are essential

To offer one example of how it plays out in a rurban church, consider the issue of survival versus growth. Because of ongoing economic hardship and other crises (fluctuating commodity markets, cattle diseases, crop failures), those with a rural mindset may define success as simply making it another year. After all, many of their friends have not managed to make it.

In contrast, in the urban world, every person is viewed as having a direct influence on his or her own environment and destiny. Surviving is never good enough; to them, there is a direct correlation between a church’s size and its vitality. Just as bigger stores offer more choices, so do bigger schools and churches. Urban folks long to live in smaller places but, once there, they want things bigger and better.

Or consider the issue of generalization vs specialization. Like every other male in my extended family on a Lancaster County, Pa., dairy farm. I became a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Being able to do a variety of jobs well held a higher value than becoming a perfectionist at one thing.

Urban folks drive rural folks crazy because they tend to do fewer things well—which means that they do fewer things. Then they hire specialists to do what they cannot do.

Is your church crossing cultures?

Remember, the definition of rural, urban or rurban is not a matter of town, city or nationality. It’s the mindset that defines the church, regardless of its setting.

Many folks inside a rurban congregation do not realize they are wrestling with cultural differences. They think they are defending their faith and way of life from obstinate, wrong-minded people. It is up to the preacher in a small-town, rurban congregation to help moderate this stance. Clearly, these culturally mixed congregations are among the most difficult to pastor.

There is much to gain by becoming bicultural in ministry, in preaching and in prayer. You may have to let go of some long-held ideas or traditions in the process, but these sacrifices come more easily when we remember the reasons for them: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22).