Close to 80 percent of my seminary class came out of a metropolitan church, campus church, or urban parish that gets denominational support. It’s in these places that people catch the vision for ministry.
Whenever I watch Christian TV, I see the churches of Charles Stanley, Ben Haden, Robert Schuller, and others. In these types of churches—plus church camps, retreat centers, and Bible studies in university towns—many clergy conceived the vision of what ministry can be like (versus the old, Gothic-style Methodist/Lutheran/UCC church of their parents). Upon graduation, however, we seminarians found that 80 percent of the vacancies are in that parish of our parents.
As I see the seminary advertisements in Leadership, I wonder if they’re telling prospective seminarians that only a small percentage of calls are in big churches. Many are in small, struggling churches like mine.
WORKING WITH WHAT YOU HAVE
In rural America, I live with contradictions of sorts. Many people claim to be salt-of-the-earth-old-time-backbone-of-America-rural-people—until they get a chance to buy a house or relocate to a suburban or metro area. Often, they leave, and a poorer group moves into our town, ones who resemble (and often are) Appalachian-impoverished types. Older housing and lower incomes are typical indicators of this trend.
In my setting, I can read any church growth guru (e.g., Barna, Callahan, Schaller), but the fact remains that church is a people business and you must work with what you have.
Last year, for example, I took in three families through adult inquirers’ class, but I am simultaneously losing two families. The two I am losing came as youth. We raised them, and they stayed here after college while unemployed. Now, they both landed more stable jobs in the next town, so they’re transferring to a bigger Lutheran church.
The three families I’m taking in, though, find it difficult to afford the Lutheran parochial school, so they send their kids to public school. They want a church where they can dress down, as their struggling income affords; and they like my “user-friendly,” creative, down-to-earth ministry (which I gleaned from church-growth materials).
But because of turnover like this, our small church struggles financially. There is a freeze on my salary. (I’m well-liked, but money is limited in a poorer town.) I run the church with low-tech equipment such as a Bic ballpoint pen and legal pads. This small country church in a town of trailer homes, old apartments, shacks, and cars on blocks is a far cry from the Lutheran parish near the university and its intellectually stimulating students. It’s a far cry from the church I came out of!
SPIRITUAL QUESTIONS
The spiritual questions, as I see them, are “What is your sense of call? Can you be faithful yet not successful?”
Every year in junior high catechism, I tell the story of a Lutheran missionary who went to China around the time of the Boxer Rebellion. She attempted to learn Chinese, teach, and spread the gospel. She learned the wrong dialect of Chinese, she was constantly sick, and nobody took her seriously. She died thinking she was a failure.
It wasn’t until the 1970s and the lifting of the Bamboo Curtain that we learned how many Christians were in China, in part because of missionaries like her.
I take this story seriously, for I see my mission as planting seeds in the hearts of kids who come for Sunday school or one week of Vacation Bible School. I play kickball with my class; I’m a male role model for some kids in single-parent homes.
I’m a Type B and somewhat introverted. Type A’s go crazy out where I am. Often, they have their bags packed one year ahead of schedule. Yet I cry at the thought that one day I’ll have to leave Malinta!
Not every pastor will receive a call to a growing, thriving, highly visible church. But Christ’s kingdom is still being served, by all types of clergy in all types of places.
By David Coffin, Trinity Lutheran ChurchMalinta, Ohio
1996 Christianity Today/LEADERSHIP Journal
