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Note: This essay first appeared in the
February 2009 Baptist Studies Bulletin.
Baptists, a largely rural people until the twentieth century,
are now confronting a rural crisis in the twenty-first century. Like
other evangelical and mainline denominations, today's rural Baptist
congregations attract few seminary-trained ministers. This trend within American Christendom
has become so obvious that TIME Magazine recently ran a feature story
entitled,
Rural Exodus From American Churches. According to the
article, in the Midwest only one in five rural congregations is pastored by a full-time,
seminary-trained minister.
Why are today's seminary
grads uninterested in country churches? The reasons appear to be many. To
begin with, most of today's young seminary graduates grew up in
metropolitan areas, accustomed to Starbucks and city life. Today's graduates, frequently incurring significant
debt during their educational sojourn, are more likely to be attracted by the
glimmer of large urban and suburban congregations than the rural,
white wooden clapboard churches that offer meager salaries. In
addition, few young people remain in the pews of country churches even as job
descriptions for rural pastors seemingly hold little enticement for
young ministers seeking the opportunity to be creative and innovative
in ministry.
In Baptist life
today, rural churches with memberships of less than one hundred
persons still account
for more than half of all congregations in some regions of the country.
Southern Baptists recognize the challenge inherent in the countryside, and one
solution is for
seminary-trained ministers to pastor multiple congregations. The
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, while comprised of fewer rural congregations,
ministers in the poorest of rural areas through Together for Hope, an effort
to transform communities and individuals by breaking the "cycle
of economic disparity."
Nonetheless, few moderate Baptist seminary
graduates pastor country churches.
Are churches
destined to largely vanish from rural America, a victim of ceaseless migration
to big cities and sprawling suburbs? Can twenty-first century Christianity
learn anything from the small towns, hamlets, and farming communities that dot the
countryside?
Although neglected
at the moment, small-church America may harbor the seeds of spiritual,
cultural, and even global renewal. Internally divided along the
fault lines of urban poverty and an upwardly-mobile
Blackberry
generation, contemporary city dynamics foster little
economic relief for the poor, do little to check self-focused
consumerism, and in their inherent busyness tend to inhibit authentic
community and stunt self-reflection.
No less than one of
America's most respected and gifted ministers,
Barbara
Brown-Taylor, left the city for the countryside and
discovered a spiritual renewal that bridges the sacred and the
secular. She discovered authenticity in simplicity, creativity in the
presence of creation, and community in the lives of people. In short,
leaving the city allowed Brown-Taylor to embark upon a journey that
led to the discovery that time, rather than possessions or
productivity, is
the foundation of a healthy faith.
In addition, the
amazing legacy of one the most generous and selfless Baptists of all
time, Millard Fuller, is rooted in rural America.
His recent death mourned worldwide, Fuller devoted his life
to building homes for the homeless throughout the world, personally
eschewing financial success and city life for the
simplicity of the countryside of southwest Georgia.
Fuller was a neighbor of Jimmy Carter, a Baptist who at one
time was the most powerful man in the world and who will be remembered
as one of the greatest peacemakers in history, yet whose spiritual
strength and global Christian commitment stems from a
small Baptist church in a tiny farming community.
True, city churches
need pastors and urban problems must be addressed. But is it possible
that the urbanization of American Christianity has at times sacrificed
the best of community upon the altar of upward-mobility and the shrine
of busyness? If so, then perhaps the key to restoring a healthy and
dynamic balance in the life of Baptists and Christendom at large is
more likely to be found in the pew of a small congregation on the
plains of Wisconsin or in the piney woods of southwest Georgia, than
among the theatre seats and
holographic
preachers
of America's big cities.
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