It’s noontime at the Lunch-Box Cafe in Pandora, Ohio, where the leaders of St. John’s Mennonite Church are meeting in the back banquet room. The room has a Lake Wobegon feel, its walls lined with walnut-colored plywood paneling warped by humidity and age. An assortment of 19th-century idyllic country scenes hang on the walls. A forgotten stereo sits atop a dusty shelf.
The Lunch-Box Cafe and its customers symbolize what’s best about rural Ohio: honest work, fair prices, and a genuine sense of community.
Just down the road is an uncommon church. It’s in the middle of a cornfield, a mile or two out of town on a rural highway (not a spot church-growth experts would have chosen). There’s no interstate exit close by, no new subdivisions sprouting up down the road. Nor is it close to a major population center.
Yet the average worship attendance of St. John’s stands close to 500, with a nearly equal number of children enrolled in Sunday school and almost 300 in Pioneer Clubs. The church population almost matches the size of the town. In fact, the congregation has grown so large that the trustees voted to build the new gymnasium behind the church to shield its size from the community: “We didn’t want to give anyone the wrong impression.”
Today, I’m eating lunch at the LunchBox Cafe with the elders of St. John’s and their pastor, Ted VanderEnde, and his wife, Dorothy. In between bites of meatloaf, fresh bread, and steaming mashed potatoes, the leaders of St. John’s tell me about the vision that has sprung up in their Ohio cornfield.
A BIG DUTCH HEART
For seventeen years, Ted and his wife, Dorothy, have served St. John’s. When they arrived, St. John’s, like many rural ministries, faced limited resources. Sixty adults and their children showed up for Sunday morning.
Before coming here, the VanderEndes ministered for four years in Selma, Alabama, and for two years as missionaries in Belgium. Ted is a native of the Netherlands, and in this part of western Ohio, his Dutch accent and tall frame made him something of a novelty.
“It’s natural for me to laugh, cry, and make myself vulnerable in the pulpit. God used my strong Dutch accent, halting speech, and personable style of preaching to open the hearts of these people.”
In addition, the VanderEndes built bridges to people when they adopted three emotionally damaged children. “People will seek out the church,” Dorothy says, “when they see the church identify with their pain.”
MISSIONARY TECHNIQUE
When I ask St. John’s leaders to explain the church’s growth, the board chairman, a computer software executive who commutes nearly twenty miles to attend St. John’s, immediately brings up God’s Word.
“There’s a focus on the Word people are looking for,” explains the chairman. “When my son was 16, he had a hunger for more biblical training. He started attending St. John’s, and his mom and I soon followed him.”
The board chairman typifies many in the congregation who commute from Findlay, Ohio, a community of 45,000. But their coming didn’t happen by accident. Early on, Ted traveled to Findlay to start small group Bible studies. His entrepreneurial background in missions came in handy. He would meet with a group of ten to twenty people in Findlay for six weeks and then start another group. Eventually many of those discipled in his studies drifted to St. John’s services.
“Soon I had professional people inviting me to their places of business,” Ted says. “The opportunities for ministry multiplied. I intentionally tried to attract seekers, many of whom were business and professional people, to the church.”
The influx of new families created a fresh atmosphere. “A common disease of the small town, rural church,” says one elder, “is for one or two families to be in complete control. Out of all the elders seated at this table, only one is home-grown.”
“Jack here,” Ted chimes in, “was elected to become chairman of the congregation after only three years of attending the church.”
THE NICHE FACTOR
St. John’s has reached other outsiders through children’s programs.
“There are always more people in an area than you think,” Ted says. “For example, when we would attend our children’s school programs, I was amazed at how many people I had never seen before. So to reach these kids for Christ, we focused on children’s ministries. Kids bring kids with them to church.”
“Our children’s clubs on Wednesday evenings draw parents as well,” says another elder. “When children accept the Lord, it isn’t long before their parents start showing up as well.”
Regarding Pandora’s youth, Ted says, “Small towns tend to produce a high level of sexual activity among teenagers. There’s more hanky-panky going on in a town like this than you think. So we’ve also placed an emphasis on youth programming.”
But not everything they’ve tried has worked.
“We learned the hard way that special weeks of evangelistic meetings just don’t work here,” Ted says. “At most, people are willing to schedule a Saturday evening.”
Their attempt at a program for singles also flopped; St. John’s singles didn’t like being singled out.
But St. John’s policy when starting a program is to test it for a few months. If it bombs, the church reverts to the program the new one replaced.
“Nine times out of ten,” Dorothy says, “the congregation likes the new program much better. But we never introduce the new program as replacing the old one. The old one is still there and can be retrieved if needed.”
FIRST-RATE SINGING
As part of their vision, Ted and Dorothy also focused on improving the quality of St. John’s worship service.
“It’s common in rural churches for a song leader to get up and say, ‘Who has a favorite?'” Ted says. “I suggested that the service have a theme in keeping with the message, such as the sovereignty of God.
“If the singing was poor, I would stop the congregation in the middle of a hymn and say, ‘Wait a minute. This is just not good singing, folks. We can do better than this.’ Some probably do not like that, but together we push to do things well.”
As a result, Ted has had to be a peacemaker.
“Whenever Dorothy and I have sensed a problem,” Ted says, “we would ask, ‘Can we talk to you? We’ve heard that something is wrong.’
“I never believe the witness of one. If someone says, ‘There are a lot of people who feel this way,’ I’ll say, ‘Bring together five people, and I’ll meet with you.’ Usually, they never show up.”
The elders agree. “Ted has faced problems when they were still small,” one says. “He hasn’t waited for them to get large.” Recently the style of worship threatened to become a divisive issue. So the church took a Sunday evening and broke into small groups. “We talked the entire night about music and worship and church growth,” Ted remembers. “By getting it out into the open we avoided a serious division.”
ROOTED IDENTITY
Today, St. John’s leaders worry about the changing pace of rural life and the increasing pressure to make a living.
“Farms have been traditionally supported by two incomes,” observes one elder, “but the husband and wife worked side by side. Today they get up in the morning and go separate ways.” The need for marriage and family counseling is increasing.
Given such difficulties of rural ministry, Ted seems amazed at what’s happened in Pandora. “Recently I drove through several small towns in our area,” Ted says, “and I asked myself, ‘What if I had been faithful for all these years and no one showed up?’
“My answers seemed trite, ‘Well, believe God’s promises,’ or ‘Just stick with it.’ But I think we all need some measure of visible success in order to keep going. Ultimately, though, you survive in such a setting because you focus on who you are in Christ.”
The waitress brings us the check, and St. John’s leaders begin dividing up the tab. Now only a few retired residents of Pandora linger at the counter of the Lunch-Box Cafe. A diesel truck roars out of town, and Pastor Ted heads back to his calling at St. John’s.
Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
