David Van Biema has written a piece for Time covering the lack of pastors in rural America.
This is an important piece, and it should be read with great interest. Rural communities are often left out of the news unless there's a sensational scandal or until election season. Apparently the truest Americans live on the farm (I say that in jest, but there always seems to be this grabbing for attention from both parties to farmers and blue-collar workers). But in any event, people aren't farming anymore, and they are moving to metropolitan areas. Much of Evangelicalism centers in the suburbs now. So our church literature is written for afluent people. Our church growth theories thus have a strongly Anglo bent. We don't understand the gospel because: why need something when you're rich? We don't understand the OT because so much of it (especially the Pentateuch) centers on an agrarian lifestyle. I'm not wholly sure how to take the news of pastors leaving the rural areas, but I hope the trend reverses.
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1 comment:
Yeah I saw that article too. Real interesting. The rural community where my mom is from in Kansas has the same problem. Growing up everytime we would go back to visit there would always be a new pastor at the church. Pastors don't stick around for more than maybe a year it seems.
In rural areas I think denominations like Methodist suit well because salary for the pastor comes from the denomination instead of putting stress on a small congregation. Of course there is always the possibility of burnt out pastors taking advantage of this system and not trying to grow the congregation any since they don't have to worry about funds coming in.
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