Jack Coultas – Calvary Chapel

Introducing Country Chapel: Lessons in Rural Ministry, a New Podcast from CGN Media

Jack Coultas — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 14:00:45 +0000

The Country Chapel: Lessons in Rural Ministry podcast has been launched!

It is a show dedicated to bringing lessons in rural ministry to the broader CGN network. Within this show, I will be interviewing pastors, church planters, ministry leaders, and various rural network directors. Each of them have answered the call to minister in small and often overlooked places. The aim is to gain wisdom, guidance, and vision and to help encourage and equip those already engaged in rural ministry—and to hopefully make the need for rural ministry more apparent.

The Needs of Rural America

On September 27, 2022, CGN published my article “Rural America Matters Too.” My purpose was to highlight the overlooked needs of rural Americans by the broader church. Certainly there are many churches scattered across rural America. However, much of the attention given by seminaries, Bible colleges, and conferences are to the more urban and suburban contexts, while communities of 10,000 or less that are not near any sort of urban core are often overlooked.

There is a divide within our country, and it is present in our churches as well. As much as we want to say we are all united in the Gospel, culturally we may as well be living on different continents. How you view agriculture, governmental regulations, nutritional science, hunting, fishing, and environmental stewardship shows a lot about who you are. While we all like to claim objectivity in our views, the fact is our immediate culture has a lot to do with how we view the world near and far.

As an example, if you were to ask an urbanite to describe a farm, their answer would likely be drastically different than what someone who lives in farm country would say. In Glenn Daman’s book The Forgotten Church: Why Rural Ministry Matters for Every Church in America, he describes such an interaction, one he had with a local barista in the small town he serves:

“She moved from an urban area into our small community so that she could have a garden and a couple goats. Her goal was to have a self-sustaining farm on a few acres in her pursuit to get back to nature. She further complained that all the farms were now becoming corporate farms operated by large companies that were destroying our food supply by genetically modified organisms in their pursuit of profits. But the reality is that 96.4% of all farms are still family owned.”^[1]

Why do I bring up this example? Because it matters. It might not seem like it should, but it does. This demonstrates one of the many differences that shoves a wedge between urban and rural cultures. If you were to show up as a minister in a farming community, such a mindset would quickly alienate you from the very people you are trying to reach. Your definition of a farm would appear quaint and more along the lines of something from a storybook than reality.

Now, there is nothing wrong with having a garden, a few goats and perhaps some chickens mixed in there. Heck, add a couple of emus and you would be describing the home of my youth, but I would never have called it a farm. My wife grew up on a multi-generational family farm of a few hundred acres where they raised cattle, corn, wheat, and soybeans. That is a farm. Did I mention the crops were GMO? (gasp).

The Hard Realities of Ministering in Rural America

Now, there is room for people to disagree over proper land stewardship, GMO or organic, and free-range vs warehouse raised chickens. Yet for the minister of the Gospel, they need to be aware of the culture they are walking into. What things desperately need to be challenged and what needs to be recognized as just being a part of the people. Those who care about seeing lost souls saved, who plant themselves in rural America, will need to come to grips with the culture of the people they hope to reach.

Rural America is becoming a ghetto in many places. As Osha Gray Davidson puts it:

“The word ‘ghetto’ speaks of the rising poverty rates, the chronic unemployment, and the recent spread of low-wage, dead-end jobs. It speaks of the relentless deterioration of health-care systems, schools, roads, buildings, and of the emergence of homelessness, hunger, and poverty. It speaks, too, of the inevitable outmigration of the best and the brightest youths. Above all, the word ‘ghetto’ speaks of the bitter stew of resentment, anger, and despair that simmers silently in the those left behind. The hard and ugly truth is not only that we have failed to solve the problems of our urban ghettos, but that we have replicated them in miniature a thousand times across the American countryside.”^[2]

Worse even than the social, mental, and economic plight of rural America is the spiritual plight. Like many places, active Christian faith and church attendance is on the decline, while people who claim to be Christians because of cultural conservatism is on the rise. Meaning there are a lot of lost people thinking they are saved who do not even realize they are lost. They may claim a religious affiliation but their heart has yet to be regenerated by the gospel message of Jesus Christ. They need to be unconverted in order to actually then be converted.

Addressing the Needs of Both

The Country Chapel: Lessons in Rural Ministry podcast hopes to address these issues and more. Ministry in the forgotten places can seem lonely, painstakingly slow, and frustrating, but it is a work worth doing. There are people in need of Christ for the salvation of their souls and hope for this life. It is the goal of this podcast to remind us of the goodness of Christ toward those in rural places and encourage those who have entered this work to stay the course—and hopefully inspire some to this unique mission field. This is a work that desperately needs doing. “Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary” (Gal. 6:9).

Subscribe to the Country Chapel Podcast at CGN Media!

References:

^[1] Glenn Daman, The Forgotten Church: Why Rural Ministry Matters for Every Church in America (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2018).
^[2] Osha Gray Davidson, Broken Heartland: The Rise of America’s Rural Ghetto (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996).

Rural America Matters Too

Jack Coultas — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 19:04:14 +0000

Rural America Matters Too

I’ll never forget what was said that evening; irritating experiences are funny like that. I was co-pastoring a small church plant in Seattle, Washington. On Sunday nights, a group of key leaders gathered to go over Tim Keller’s masterwork on church planting titled Center Church. One of Keller’s big pushes was the need for churches to stop focusing only on the suburbs and return to the centers of culture and influence in the cities.

As a pastor of a church in a major city, I saw this as important and gleaned much from it. But in my heart, I longed for rural areas. I was born and raised in a logging family in the mountains of Montana. My wife was raised on a farm in the Missouri plains. We were country kids. Brought up in small-town, country churches. That’s where we were saved, baptized, discipled, and experienced Christ for the first time.

While our group dug into Keller’s book, I mentioned the importance of reaching cities, yet how we needed to remember the needs of rural areas as well. That’s when a well-intentioned, but naïvely passionate and crass, young church leader piped up with something along the lines of, “Why should we waste our best resources on places like those when the cities need them most?” You can see why that night has stuck with me.

Valuing America’s Small Places

Let’s be honest, many people look down on rural America. I’m a rural American, raised a rural American, and for the past eight years have pastored a church with hay fields on one side and cow pastures on the other. At times, I get frustrated with rural America. Yet there’s something we all must remember: Jesus loves rural America. Don’t forget Jesus was raised in a backwoods town in a backwoods part of Israel. Nazareth wasn’t glamorous, famous, or renowned for its great people. Recall Nathanael’s reaction upon learning where Christ was from, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (Jn. 1:46). Christ didn’t despise Israel’s small places, and neither should we despise America’s small places.

Ironically enough, Tim Keller, the guru of urban church planting says:

“Some will be surprised to hear me say this, since they know my emphasis on ministry in the city. Yes, I believe firmly that the evangelical church has neglected the city. It still is difficult to get Christians and Christian leaders to make the sacrifices necessary to live their lives out in cities. However, the disdain many people have for urban areas is no worse than the condescending attitudes many have toward small towns and small churches. … Young pastors should not turn up their noses at such places, where they may learn the full spectrum of ministry tasks and skills that they will not in a large church. Nor should they go to small communities looking at them merely as stepping stones in a career.” [1]

Rural areas need Jesus, and small churches are no less important than large churches. Ron Klassen writes, “Did you know that 95% of churches have fewer than five hundred people in attendance. That means only 5% of pastors are serving churches of medium to large size. The vast majority of pastors will never serve a church larger than 150 people.”[2] How accurate those numbers are I don’t know, but when you consider that about 52 percent of American churches are in rural areas, you can see why most of them are small. Rural areas don’t have a lot of people.

Influencing America’s Small Places

My little church in rural Missouri is situated out in the country between two small towns with a combined population of 1046 people. This means my church of 50 to 60 people makes up 5% of the population. What big city pastor can claim that much community influence? That may be something a lot of people don’t think about. Small-town, rural pastors still influence their communities. Their influence is big and much needed.

Pastoring churches in rural areas is nothing to thumb one’s nose at. These small towns and countrysides are precious in God’s sight and no less meaningful to God than “big” places. This is a mission field desperately in need of missionaries. The majority of pastors won’t minister to thousands and likely not hundreds either. Yet church bodies of 30, 40, 50, 60, or 87 have the potential of making a big impact for the kingdom.

I’m thankful my pastor in rural Montana didn’t thumb his nose at my rural community. As I reflect on the 40+ years he toiled away, I can’t begin to imagine how much fruit Jesus harvested through his faithful work. I’m just one of those fruits. A fruit that Jesus has used to go on and produce more fruit.

Being Called to America’s Small Places

If you’re called to the urban centers and cities, great. Go for it! Seriously, don’t hesitate. However, if you’re feeling a call to ministry and desire to do something different — something no less impactful in Christ’s eyes — perhaps you should turn your eyes to the mountains, plains, and valleys spread across the United States. For there’s a field awaiting faithful laborers.

[1] Tim Keller, “The Country Parson,” The Gospel Coalition, December 2, 2009, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-country-parson/.

[2] Ron Klassen, Maximize! Leveraging the Strengths of Your Small Church, (Sisters, Oregon: Deep River Books, 2022).