Rural Rant

Ok, I need to rant, but I’ll try to do so in love…

I listened to a message a while back by a famous pastor in Seattle who gave a message called “Building a City Within the City” in which he basically argued that God’s heart was for the city, because that is where culture and education and art and music all happen. Rural people, he implied, are trying to escape culture and remove themselves from what God is doing in the world. I remember getting quite upset at hearing this since some of the most godly people I know and have ministered with live in rural settings.

I thought about blogging about this, but then decided to let it go. I hate to be critical.

Then yesterday, I read at Chris Elrod’s blog that someone at Exponential stated that “Urban church planters care way more than rural church planters about cultural relevance…probably because they need to.” I love Chris and his blog, and he is only reporting what was said, but now I’m all fired up again! I get upset at the same sort of thinking that comes from urbanized politicians who view rural people as backward, Bible-thumping hicks. Some of the smartest, hardworking people I’ve ever met live out in the boondocks.

I pastored for five years in a rural setting and now three years in an urban setting. I can say with complete confidence that while the two cultures are very different, effective rural pastors care just as much about the culture as do effective urban pastors. And in fact, to be effective, I could argue that a rural pastor must care about the culture more than an urban pastor. Here’s why:

In a city, there are so many varieties of people, that any type of church culture will find connections with someone. In a city, even the most culturally ignorant pastor can still gather some people who like whatever “culture” is in that church.

In a rural setting however, the people are more culturally homogeneous, which means that the pastor must understand the culture to gather anybody. If a successful urban pastor tried to set up an urban-culture church in a rural setting, they would fail miserably. At the same time, if a pastor came from a rural church into the city, and brought the rural values with him, he will probably still be able to gather some people.

The bottom line is that to effectively pastor anywhere, whether in the city or in the country, the pastor  must be a student of that particular culture. Just because urban culture is more diverse (even that point could be debated!), this does not mean that urban pastors care more about cultural relevance than do rural pastors. And it definitely doesn’t mean that urban pastors care more about God’s mission and the kingdom of God than do rural pastors.

I can feel myself getting more worked up…I better quit here.