The Christian Chronicle Podcast
The Christian Chronicle Podcast explores the news and stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world.
The Christian Chronicle Podcast
Episode 119: Unleashing the superpowers of rural and small town churches (Mike Cope)
It is a common narrative (assumption?) that Church of Christ congregations in rural and small town America are in decline. Perhaps that is a story that numbers (of congregations and members) might tell.
But are numbers the whole story? Or even the most important one?
Mike Cope believes it is not the whole story. In this episode, he talks about how the way we talk and think about rural and small town congregations needs to change and how those congregations enjoy spiritual gifts that make them rich and strong in things that matter.
Mike also fills us in on how Pepperdine University plans to invest a $7.5 million Lilly Endowment grant to come alongside rural and small town Church of Christ congregations to position them for the growth in the kingdom of God.
Link to The Christian Chronicle's coverage of the Lilly Endowment's grant to Pepperdine University
Learn more about how to visit the Bible lands as a graduate student at the Freed-Hardeman University Graduate School of Theology at fhu.edu/chronicle
Thank you, you and honor God. I'm so thankful that God called me to the ministry of preaching and teaching in Church of Christ congregations that either cannot afford a full-time minister or cannot find one for whatever reason. This ministry has taken me to congregations in many rural areas and small towns in the part of the country where I live. Few things fill me with more joy than being a guest in these congregations. Even if I'm visiting one for the first time, it still feels like coming home. That is the magic of small Church of Christ congregations in the American heartland. But along with the magic, something else hangs in the air fear and sadness. In every small town congregation in which I preached or taught over the last 25 years, I heard stories of decline, loss and teetering on the edge of congregational death. Indeed, some of the congregations that I visited over the years no longer exist. The ones that keep going do so grieving the loss of what once was and worrying about a future that seems to be getting shorter by the year.
BT Irwin:For years now, the Christian Chronicle has covered the trend of congregations shrinking until they disappear. Almost every article and column we publish on the subject implies or asks the questions outright Do Church of Christ congregations in rural areas and small towns have a future. Will that future look like the past? And if not, how might it look different? And how might congregations embrace a different-looking future and yet remain faithful and obedient to the Lord, Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever? The good news is that those congregations now have another partner and resource to come alongside them. Earlier this year, the Lilly Endowment granted Pepperdine University $7.5 million to fund its new Empower and Equip initiative, which is on a mission to strengthen the leadership and ministries of Church of Christ congregations in rural areas and small towns in the United States. Here to tell us more is our old friend, Mike Cope, Director of Ministry Outreach at Pepperdine University. Mike, welcome to the exclusive circle of the Three Times, a Guest Club.
Mike Cope:Thank you so much. Bt Feels like a Saturday Night Live cast of people who've been on multiple times.
BT Irwin:Yeah, you're going to get a jacket one of these days. So we're talking about the decline in membership in numbers of Church of Christ congregations in rural areas and small towns. It's a long running story in the Christian Chronicle and a trend that goes back for decades now. How is seven and a half million dollars going to turn that around?
Mike Cope:Well, money fixes everything, doesn't it? No, of course it won't. No, of course it won't. But the Lilly Endowment looked out and kept getting feedback that predominantly focuses on suburban urban churches. In the had chances, as I was writing the grant, to go listen to leaders from Churches of Christ who are in rural and small town churches. I attended Polishing the Pulpit for the first time in eastern Tennessee, tried to reconnect with several people in my heritage and I've learned a lot, but I'm looking forward to learning a lot more as we go forward. So the money will be helpful. The Lilly Endowment has been generous but of course it is just there to parlay and what we're calling the program empower and equip, to try to help people.
BT Irwin:Well, I'm going to ask you more questions about that in a second, but I've done a lot of grant applications in my time and I know whenever you do a grant application you've got to come with some data and some primary research. So you mentioned you were out in the field exploring yourself. I'm sure you have a lot of other colleagues that were doing the same. What are some things you learned about congregations and rural areas and small towns? And maybe another way to ask that question is what are some assumptions most folks may get wrong about those congregations? What are some stereotypes we may need to drop right here and now?
Mike Cope:Well, the people that are writing a lot about rural and small town churches and there is quite a body of literature out there, rural and small town churches, and there is quite a body of literature out there are saying that very often, when we think of especially rural congregations, we tend to vacillate between sort of a Mayberry view of the bucolic, idyllic rural environment that's typically the ones by those who don't live there A Wendell Berry view you know, every conference has to begin with a Wendell Berry poem to alternate between that and a sense that rural communities have fallen apart, as if unemployment's, you know, irreversible and many of them are nothing but meth labs. So on either side you have this overly positive and overly negative. But in the middle what they're all insisting is that these are still like suburban and urban areas. This is where God resides, these are God's people. The places are where the presence of God is.
Mike Cope:I think there's a stereotype that they're all in decline, but that's not true. Now we know the numbers in churches of Christ that are across the board will apply there, but a lot of that's because of where the flow of employment has been, that many people have left rural communities For many of these churches. If you lose one family with three kids, you know it can't help but significantly impact your attendance. But there's a lot happening in these places. Rural is sometimes marked by numbers, but these writers are insisting that you should think of rural and small town as places marked by knowing and being known. They're marked by narratives that have thickness to them. In suburban and urban areas we tend to measure church by how many babies are in the nursery and how many young families there are, and it may look very different when you get out into rural communities. They may run older but there may be wisdom and long tenures of connecting with communities in redemptive ways.
BT Irwin:I think one of the interesting things about this undertaking that you have there at Pepperdine is I've grown up in the Church of Christ my whole life. We're a very evangelistic people and I grew up in a small town. Our church had about 300 members and we were all about evangelism. So we're talking door knocking, we're talking tracts. We did One Nation Under God, if you remember that, back in the 80s and 90s, right, and then we sent a lot of missionaries and one of the things that really got us going is when a missionary would come in and talk about going to a major population center, a big city or a suburb, either in the United States or another part of the world, because it's just math, right, if you're trying to save souls, send your missionary or your evangelist to where there are a lot, a lot of people. And so this, this project with congregations in small towns and sparsely populated areas, is kind of a change or it departs from what I've known growing up in the Church of Christ, where we we really focus on the big numbers.
Mike Cope:People who have a larger historical perspective, like Leonard Allen. Leonard just insisted. We were bred and born in rural and small-town communities. That that's rich in our blood.
Mike Cope:We tend to be most aware of larger congregations and they, of course, are going to be in the areas with larger populations, but much of the work that's been done in and through and sometimes despite who we are, has been out in these rural and small town communities. So for us it's not a both, and I now lead four Lilly-sponsored initiatives for Pepperdine, and a lot of the work is in suburban urban areas, but this one in particular is to go back out into these churches that often are the anchor institutions in their communities. As there are problems across the board in rural and small town areas, these churches have become even more vital. Vital, and one thing I love about them is they carry still many of them carry still the DNA of evangelism that has always marked churches of Christ that our work is connected to the saving work of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the whole world, and we don't want to move away from that.
BT Irwin:Amen, amen. I preach and teach in a lot of small churches. It's a ministry I feel like God has called me to and I've enjoyed it. Um and uh over the years. Something I say almost every time I visit a new church at the beginning of a sermon is um, you know, the Lord has given you everything you need. Right, don't think that the Lord is only Lord has given you everything you need.
BT Irwin:And one of the superpowers that I think small congregations have that would make large congregations jealous is how people take care of each other. So you know, the announcements at my church with two, three hundred members are on a PowerPoint slide that rotates the beginning of service, but I sit in the back pew after I preach at these small churches and the announcements. Announcements are more like family conversations where people talk about where is so-and-so today and here's a need and I can take care of that and it's a superpower I think small churches have. So talk a little more. You said being in a small town is about knowing and being known little more about how small congregations or congregations in these small communities are uniquely gifted by the Holy Spirit in a way that might make larger congregations a little envious of their superpowers.
Mike Cope:And, by the way, part of this literature that I referred to is about that, the very advantage of smaller churches, or at least churches in these rural and small town communities. And like you, I have these wonderful memories, even though I preached for mostly larger churches. I was bred and born in Southwest Missouri and my first gospel meetings I held were in places like Seneca, missouri, and Mount Vernon, missouri, Nevada, missouri and so on. So I still have a tender place for that. But it's not just eulogizing, it's not just a Wendell Berry poem and, by the way, I love Wendell Berry but it's the reality of, I know, in a larger church, when they're what it's like to be the minister into the last minute somebody comes up and says, hey, can you announce this? And you try to figure out what do we and what don't we announce. But in smaller churches there is this sense of family and that it would be inappropriate not to mention it. You get a sense of the power of these house churches. Paul's dominoing around the Mediterranean, trying to launch these beachheads of the kingdom, and you can feel in his letters that, the power of those. One great memory I have my senior year at Harding. Stan Granberg and I were co-ministers at the All Red Church of Christ, which I think it was about an hour and a half, two hour drive from Harding, but one of us would preach in the morning, the other would lead singing, we'd reverse it at night. But it's again, it's more than just nostalgia, it's remembering the power of the witness of that church in their community. So I'm still struck by that.
Mike Cope:I'm struck by what I've learned about these communities as I've traveled around, talked to people. Somebody said these are communities where if a dollar store moves in, it changes your life for the better. In a suburban we complain about all of the family dollar stores and so on, but they're saying boy, one moves in, it can change your life for the better. And somebody else said well, what marks us is I know a guy. If you're in a large urban church, something goes wrong. You call the experts. But in many of these churches I know a guy, I know somebody, because it's largely about knowing and being known. I have been trying to dig down into this. I've read that part of why crime is lower in rural and small town communities is crime depends on anonymity. It's a little tough to get away with something when everybody knows who it was you know, when you pretty much know the people in your neighborhood.
Mike Cope:So that's something to draw on, since the gospel is all about relationships, loving God, loving your neighbor. I think there is a centered place for this redemptive witness.
BT Irwin:So in my opening to the episode I said a lot of small town congregations that I encounter have been fearful of the future in recent years. But if our call is from the Lord and the Lord empowers and equips us, the future is always bright, no matter what we see happening in the present. So where do you see the biggest opportunities for small town congregations to enter once more into the growth and life of God? How might they build for the kingdom of God now and in the future?
Mike Cope:Yeah, I think what I'm learning as I listen to fellow leaders of churches is that, rather than panic, there needs to be a time of discernment, a time of pulling away.
Mike Cope:I always love Dallas Willard's quote.
Mike Cope:He said if you don't come apart for a while, you will come apart after a while.
Mike Cope:And he points out even the Messiah didn't have a messianic complex. The Messiah pulled away and he spent time discerning, he spent time in prayer, he spent time with a few, but then to be able to develop again a clear theological identity and out of justice for evangelism and to know a community means that we are combining both narrative and data. So we want to know where we live and who the people are around us, and then we want to practice good stewardship. We bring things to the community, and that matches up with what Lily has asked of this program. They've asked for three things. They've asked that we go about helping to develop and encourage leadership, that we try to assist in missional imagination so that churches aren't just discouraged because maybe they aren't as big as they were in the past, and that we help them understand what anchors in the community they are and what it means to have collaboration with community ministries, all in the context, again, of believing that everything's related to the saving worth of Jesus.
BT Irwin:Yes, yes. So let's get down to the nitty gritty. You've got seven and a half million dollars from Lilly Endowment and you started what you call the Empower and Equip initiative for Church of Christ congregations in rural areas and small towns. How will this initiative actually work? Who will be doing the work and what will they be doing?
Mike Cope:will this initiative actually work? Who will be doing the work and what will they be doing? Well, the program that we have written by the way, john Barton is my assistant director in this. I think most of your audience knows John, but the program we wrote has a national focus and a regional focus. So on the national level, we're working with several partners to try to do what we can broadly for Churches of Christ. Through the Seibert Institute at Abilene Christian University, we hope to have a podcast focused on rural and small town churches. We're trying to develop a library that will be useful for churches, especially since many are finding it hard to find somebody to preach If they're finding resources like that difficult. We want to make it free and easily available.
Mike Cope:The Christian Chronicle is one of our partners in this. They're going to have a special focus on, as they have in the past on, small town and rural churches. They'll continue doing that and rural churches They'll continue doing that. Mission Alive, kairos, our church planting, national partners. And then another of our partners is Stan Granberg's Church Research Council, because this work he's doing to try to give us a new census, a new directory for churches of Christ, is so important. We haven't had one in a long time. So that'll overlap with everything else we're doing by knowing where these churches are, who to contact.
Mike Cope:And then, on a regional level, we're partnering with several other of our Christian institutions, I guess especially the ones that I've had connection with in my life, especially the ones that I've had connection with in my life. They're going to be developing their own programs. So it'll be up to Rochester, it'll be up to York, it'll be up to Lubbock Christian and so on to develop a program that can reach their area and we're trusting them as full partners. I just got off a Zoom with most of these partners. It's very excited.
Mike Cope:I'm just trusting that God is going to use us together and then we'll get together, either on Zoom or maybe once a year together in person to share what we're learning. And again, the wisdom goes away all the way down. In this I'm like the one who's got the greatest learning curve and I've got these partners who are learning all they can. But the real richness and wisdom of this is embedded in the actual members and leaders of these rural and small-town churches. We just want to provide some resources and bring them together in ways that they can be helpful to each other. It's not like Pepperdine is going to spend the full $7.5 million we're re-granting to these institutions so that they have the resources to participate.
BT Irwin:Well, you know, foundations always want reports when they give out money. What measures of success did you choose for this initiative and how will you know what you are doing is working?
Mike Cope:That's the tough one, isn't it? We love metrics. What you are doing is working Uh, that's the tough one, isn't it? We love metrics. And metrics are important.
Mike Cope:Uh, we all know that in a project like this, bodies, budgets and buildings is going to tell a piece of the story, but not all of it. What we're really thinking about is faithfulness and fruitfulness. Um, faithfulness, especially about who you are, and fruitfulness about what you are doing. Of course, they're two sides of the same coins so it's hard to separate them. But, as I said, it's going to be difficult in these because one family leaves and it's like a trampoline you know where one family comes in. So it will be notoriously difficult to have some of the traditional metrics.
Mike Cope:But, having said that, we are going to work with these churches and ask about ways that we can evaluate the development of leaders and the development of missional imagination and the development of anchor relationships and communities, relationships and communities. Lilly has some specific things in mind, but we're going to work with our partners to try to make sure that we have fiduciary responsibility to what they've asked us to do contribute to the knowledge that they're gathering from many different grants like this one. All of that to say BT. It's a complicated thing but there are things we can measure, like our regional partners can keep track of how many different churches they've been connected with, how many leaders in those churches, how many ministers they've brought together and helpful cohorts and so on.
BT Irwin:I'll ask a real, specific question you in the material I read about the grant our own report of the Christian Chronicle that we wrote about your receiving the grant it seemed like there was going to be a particular focus on leaders and ministers within those congregations.
Mike Cope:Yes.
BT Irwin:So would it then be that a lot of the activity from you and your regional partners would be directed at building and cultivating leaders and ministers, and how might you be doing that? I?
Mike Cope:fully expect that. An example is that one of our regional partners is York and just a couple of days after you and I recording this, they have their equip conference. So far they've got ministers from 18 states and Canada coming there. You know they're sitting out there with all of these rural and small town churches around them. We're thankful that we've been able to share this money with them and, of course, they had the vision already. When I flew up to meet with York, I was bowled over by the people who were there and the vision God's put on their heart. So this just provides more resources for the kind of dreams they already had. But yeah, that would be an example of a gathering of leaders from 18 churches and from churches in Canada, but there'll be others that I think what they'll do is just find six to 10 churches a year and develop a cohort and that will probably be especially of the ministers and other leaders, both formal and informal leaders, but to try to find ways to dream together, pray together for kingdom purposes.
BT Irwin:So if there are any congregational leaders listening to this right now and they want to get in on this good stuff, what do they do? How do they get in touch?
Mike Cope:I would say watch for the announcements that are being released from these various partners. The money, as Lily's designed, it, doesn't go directly to congregations, it's going to go to this network and then through them. For example, let's suppose you're in Arkansas and you find out that Harding, as a part of participating in this, may be doing some cohorts. Now I don't know, I haven't seen their final proposal, but let's suppose that through the five years of the project they want to develop some cohorts of churches around. Then they might contact Harding to see if they could participate in that. But again, we're still working out all of the sub-grantings. So I hate to announce all of the regional partners. Again, I think it'll be most of the institutions I've had a connection with.
Mike Cope:And, of course, the Christian Chronicle, because we're part of this too, and I know we'll be reporting on it as well, absolutely, and that's important to me both because for something on the front end and for something ongoing, ongoing is they'll be telling these critical stories. But it felt like a God story in the beginning to me that, just as I had heard from Lily and they were opening the door for me to write this program, the Chronicle had an important article that really struck a nerve for me about rural and small town churches. So, yeah, the Chronicle's a partner all the way through.
BT Irwin:I'm happy to be one. Mike Cope is Director of Ministry Outreach for Pepperdine University in Malibu, california. He's riding point on the new Lilly Endowment funded Empower and Equip initiative for Church of Christ congregations in rural areas and small towns. Among Church of Christ preachers, he's pulled ahead of Gerard Davis, david Shannon and Rubel Shelley for the most appearances on the Christian Chronicle podcast. Mike, thank you for coming back again.
Mike Cope:It was great to be with you, BT. Thank you so much.
BT Irwin:Listener. You'll find links in the show notes for all of the Christian Chronicle coverage we referenced in this episode. You'll also find links to resources that Mike shared. Check those out now.
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