From the pulpit, some pastors gaze not upon a cathedral or even a rustic church in the wildwood, but upon a sanctuary still blotched by ceiling stains from the big ice storm two years ago. Their members may arrive wafting not Chanel No. 5, but Guernsey No. 2. When the guys discuss the weather after church, it’s not to check conditions for the first tee but because that last ten acres of alfalfa need one more day of sun. Church growth has more to do with Dr. Spock than Peter Wagner. A choir is something that sang at Jesus’ birth; special music is the two Jones girls.
Such congregations have history; they have tradition, roots, blood ties. What they don’t have is many members. Odds are they have less than fifty.
I’m talking about the thousands of rural congregations spread across North America, most of them similar to the small Mennonite congregation I served as pastoral elder for six years. Nearly 20 percent of church adherents attend such a fellowship.
Rural realities
Bucolic images of sewing bees and church potlucks still partially conform to rural realities, but a disturbing new factor is adding a painful twist to rural ministry. Farmers are in the midst of financial, spiritual, and emotional stresses unknown since the Great Depression. Agriculture is in desperate straits, as those pastoring rural congregations know all too well.
One farm leader claims twenty-one hundred U.S. farmers are quitting every week, some voluntarily, but many because of bankruptcies. The small congregation I served had, over a five-year period, one farmer drastically downsize his operation, two go bankrupt (one twice), and one voluntarily quit. Although all still attend church somewhere, only one is left in that church, and at least one left the church because of interpersonal tensions generated by the bankruptcy.
In today’s farm crisis, every rural congregation will have families whose inheritance from God and their hard-working ancestors is disintegrating before their eyes. It will not be passed on to their children.
I know a young farmer whose bankruptcy by modern standards was minimal-about $65,000. Even after several years, he says the pain is just starting to recede. Farmers link failure with character fault.
They feel guilt for mismanagement, even if there was none. They feel anger: “If we didn’t love the soil so much, we’d refuse to grow any more cheap food for a society that takes us for granted.” And despair: “If God loves us, why has he forsaken us? Our land is a family inheritance and a gift from God. Why would he take it back?”
What does the gospel have to say to people when bankruptcy is taking away years of blood, sweat, and tears? What does a pastor offer to families who are losing everything due to economic forces beyond their comprehension, let alone their control?
As a farmer myself, I’ve found several keys to pastoring in today’s rural setting.
Thinking rural
I recall an urban pastor hired in one of our sister congregations. It didn’t impress church members that their minister didn’t start his day until 9:30. Even though he worked until midnight, that pattern just didn’t fit. If persons going overseas are prepared for the host culture and inner-city clergy sensitize their social consciences, we can orient pastors into rural churches.
I need to think like my rural parishioners. While this has always been true, the current farm crisis makes it more urgent. I need to weep with farmers who are weeping, and that won’t happen unless I see things through their eyes.
A good starting point is a review of the theology of Creation, which places high value on the land, on economic justice, and on the immanence of the Creator with his handiwork. A farmer may not know of Jacques Ellul’s critique of cities, but he or she will instinctively agree that the Garden of Eden reflects God’s sovereign relationship to the natural order.
Farmers believe they play a unique role as stewards of the environment, and often are penalized financially for doing so. They resent a system that, because farm prices are too low to provide for normal retirement savings, demands their land to capitalize retirement, thus placing debt loads on the next generation. In short, to think like a Christian farmer means understanding the Scriptures as a word from the One with whom they presently co-create.
Being sensitive to feelings of failure
Improbable as it may seem to pressured pastors, farmers regard clergy as secure professionals for whom failure is a flat sermon that can be redeemed next week. Contrast that with the farmer here in Ontario, who, in extricating his $100,000 combine from a muddy field, literally split it into two pieces. The next morning he committed suicide.
It is not just the high rollers, poor managers, and land speculators staring financial problems in the face. Believers are experiencing their own private Gethsemanes, and the pastoral traits needed are vulnerability and empathy. When I met with a bankrupted couple and their two sets of parents to try to sort out what needed to be done next, the scene was not unlike that in a funeral home. A farm death had occurred. I had few wise words to offer, but amid the tears, I found opportunity to empathize and carry some of the burden.
Another financially stressed farm wife said, “I wish the Lord would return to take us out of this.” She wasn’t asking for my eschatological opinion of the odds Christ would return in time to render the bank’s loan call irrelevant. I heard her asking me to understand the depth of anxiety she felt.
Although financial failure and its fallout cannot always be reversed, I want to work to make its spiritual impact redemptive. Farmers who fail (like anyone else) need help to understand that personal worth and net worth stand as two different realities in God’s eyes.
Providing help
A third key to pastoring in such a setting is to create appropriate help structures. A wide range of ministries are possible: cell groups to deal with spiritual, emotional, and psychological needs; referrals to crisis counseling services; and in some cases, financial mutual-aid systems. In a previous generation, most farm disasters could be solved through barn raisings or work sharing, but individualism now virtually condemns troubled farmers to a lonely fate. That’s why pastors often step in to launch needed ministries.
As in all ministry, a proactive stance carries built-in risks. In a bankruptcy counseling session, the farmer’s wife “asked” (read: accused) the would-be helpers why, as her husband’s friends, we had not warned him of his precarious situation. In another case, the person receiving management assistance resented the perceived hierarchy and passively resisted both the helpers and the help.
Yet, as a pastor, I don’t see any alternative, apart from a hands-off attitude, to ministering as best I can in these painful circumstances. Paul made perhaps five trips to Jerusalem to deal with the plight of the poor. What more explicit model could I have of how I am to function?
All pastoring does not need to be done by pastors, however. Our congregation formed a mutual-aid committee. Much burden bearing happened in that committee. While I knew generally what was happening, I did not know all the specifics of the committee’s plans to raise non-interest loans to deal with debts. In this instance, the committee’s task was abetted by a denominational credit union that provided the necessary financial and legal structure for underwriting these loans.
Mediating God’s love and grace
As God’s agent I can bring a word of hope: Even bankruptcy cannot separate us from the love of God. The New Testament’s death-resurrection motif speaks powerfully to the farmer’s situation. Even in Jesus’ death, God was present. When by human evaluation disaster strikes, God is even then fashioning a better way. I have to help people face the hard questions of debt, refinancing, and new starts, but is it coincidental that salvation language comes from the marketplace, giving us the word redemption?
Today there is as much opportunity for creative, cutting-edge ministry in rural as in urban settings. Granted, it’s next to impossible to erect large plants or find senior status if my only staff is me. Instead, there’s just plain hard work, compounded by agriculture’s downturn.
Jesus faced great challenges in his ministry in the rural, subsistence villages of Galilee. And great challenges await those today who minister in similar rural situations. But as we follow his example, we can bring genuine comfort and help.
-Lawrence Burkholder
Rouge Valley Mennonite Church
Markham, Ontario
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