By Matthew Purucker · News Editor
The college’s Center for Rural Ministry (CRM) recently sponsored a study analyzing rural and small-town pastors and churches, which Lifeway Research published on Oct. 23.
In completing the study, Lifeway Research, a Christian church and culture research firm, surveyed over 1,000 rural or small-town Protestant pastors nationwide about their successes, goals, concerns, finances and motivations. The survey also asked pastors to provide data about their churches to help rural ministry researchers.
“So, with this project, we (CRM) recognized that there have been plenty of studies about the church in America in lots of different ways, but none of them have been specific to rural churches in rural places,” CRM Assistant Director Adam Loretto said during an Oct. 23 podcast on the CRM YouTube page on the reason for the study.
The Rural Home Missionary Association and the Rural Church Institute at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, with funding provided by the Lilly Endowment, also sponsored the study.
The study highlighted many areas of success for churches in rural areas, which the Economic Research Service’s Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes 7-10 define as having fewer than 10,000 people. Among those 1,003 pastors, the results revealed most noted members showing care (97%), members consistently present (90%), becoming a trusted part of the town’s life (83%), broken relationships healed (77%), members stepping into leadership (77%), new commitments to Jesus Christ (75%) and attendance growth (66%), per the Lifeway study.
These numbers jumped to 98%, 94%, 88%, 94%, 93% and 77%, respectively, when questioned about the potential for those to occur regularly in the future. Less than 1% did not see these measures of success happen often.
“The future outlook of most rural pastors for their churches is more positive than past statistics might support,” Lifeway Research Executive Director Scott McConnell said in a Lifeway Research article, which published the study’s findings. “Clearly, pastors in rural areas are putting their confidence in God’s capabilities rather than widespread trends.”
The study also discussed effective rural ministry in converting attendees to commit to Christ. It found that the median church had five commitments in the past year, with 32% of pastors saying it brought in five to 10 more commitments.
Furthermore, pastors revealed several struggles they and their churches had in the last year in the study. The most common problem pastors saw was the difficulty of developing and empowering lay leaders, which 60% thought was a concern. No other issue surpassed 50%.
The study later emphasized that 71% of pastors said they serve in full-time roles in the church, which Loretto said allowed for a “great opportunity to focus on the needs of their congregation and community,” in a college news release.
The results finally detailed what inspired them to serve in a more rural area. Most (95%) said their desire to see someone come closer to Jesus motivated them to become a rural pastor. That was also the most common response.
“For pastors that we (CRM) work with, it helps us acknowledge them more. We can help them see how they fit in with the picture of what is happening around the country. For faculty of Grove City College, we hope it influences their teaching or inspires some to use this data to start a research project of their own to support a church,” Loretto said in the college’s news release. “For students, we hope it helps shape their vision for what life in a rural church can look like if they are called there vocationally or as lay leaders. And just for those that care about the church in general, we hope it provides some challenge to engage with their local congregations and pray more specifically for pastors.”
