I live in a very rural area and while some small-town churches can be warm and friendly others can seem cold and unreceptive.
If the congregation I'm visiting is near to where I live, one
must go through the motions of 'who do you know' and within a few minutes a
connection (if tenuous) can be made. People want to know who your people are,
which can be rather awkward for some – and a reason why some leave to escape
the associations.
Others turn the provincialism up a notch and if you're not
familiar, you get the cold shoulder. I visited one congregation awhile back of
about 80 people or so. I will admit I'm not the most approachable person but
it's rare to not be greeted by someone. I came in, sat down and was ignored.
The service start-time seemed to be running behind and the place was in a state
of tumult – loud voices and people milling about. On the one hand you could
say, it's a tight and vibrant group. Someone else might say, the congregation
hasn't been taught about worship and why we're meeting on Sunday morning.
There's a time for laughing and carrying on but there are other times when
sobriety and reverence are called for. It's hard to just 'flip a switch' and
move between the two which is a problem and why previous generations encouraged
silence, meditation, prayer, and reflection in the lead-up to the meeting.
In the case of his congregation, it was located in what would
almost qualify as a hamlet – with the exception of the church building and
volunteer fire department. Everyone knows everyone and you could probably
extend that back a couple of generations. I know these types of places and live
in one – though as an outsider. My wife's family is from a nearby town about
eight miles away. It's much larger with about 700 people. But since we're not
in that town, we live as outsiders on the outskirts of our village of about 200
people.
The church I was visiting this particular Sunday was about
thirty miles away and nobody knew me. And that's just it, I was an outsider and
as such people looked at me askance. Why would I be there? Years ago while
making a similar inquiry I had an older man ask me – don't you all have
churches where you live?
Doctrine isn't what brings them together. Instead, it's
simply an expression of the community – which is also why you tend to get all
the community events mixed in and confused with the life of the church.
Everything from school events, sports, fire department, and veteran-related
happenings are inseparable from the identity and life of the church. In some
respects it functionally harks back to the medieval model that defined the
church in terms of a geographic locale.
And this can become a problem because church discipline
becomes almost impossible in some cases. I've had more than one small town
pastor tell me the same. You call out one person and you offend the dozen
people of his extended family and then fifty more are also insulted.
The people at this small church didn't bother with me –
because they didn't need me. They have their people and their place. They don't
need to reach out nor feel compelled to do so.
Obviously this can be a huge problem.
Compare this with a metropolitan congregation – like the
Reformed work my wife attended before we were married. She was living in the
Washington DC area and no one was 'from' there. Everyone was a transplant. No
one cared who your people were or what part of town you lived in – in a place
that big, people don't even know street names as much. They know neighbourhoods
but in a rural area, people are pinpointing where you live by referencing
bridges, crossroads, or someone you might live by. Unless you shrug them off
with vague answers (which sometimes is resented) they'll probably figure out
where you live pretty quick – unless you're too far away and they don't know
your town, in which case your very presence mystifies them.
With the folks in suburban Washington, they are not there
because the congregation is an expression of the community. They are there
because they are Christians looking for worship and fellowship. As such, when
you come in they latch on to you. They want to know you. They want to talk to
you and if there's a connection, they want to invite you over. That doesn't
happen much in small towns. Why would you do that? You see these people all the
time – there's no reason to have them over for lunch.
The people in Washington see themselves in an Us vs. Them
context – at least in some capacity. We're the Church, the world is out there.
The people in the small town or village see themselves as
residents of that locality and all the people thereabout are 'good people' –
for the most part. The Us vs. Them dynamic is not Christians and Unbelievers
but the people who live here versus those who don't – with certain inclusion
and amnesty granted for those nearby in the county and so forth.
Some readers will know what I'm talking about, others will
rightly be appalled.
This is not to say that the urban dynamic is better or that
it doesn't have its problems as well. There's nothing wrong with living where
you were raised and around your people but there are times where you have to be
willing to upset folks – the New Testament warns of this and yet in practice it
can be difficult.
The real problem is with the pastors and leaders of the
Church. They need to teach the Church about what it means to be the Church and
that the dynamic is not geographic but spiritual. Those folks that live around
the area may be nice enough but if they're not believers they're not 'ok' as it
were. We don't have to be unkind to them but we must not confuse our identity vis-à-vis
the world. If this kind of antithesis is taught in the context of a village it
is certain to be resented and will be viewed as divisive. In some cases it will
lead people to leave or demand the teacher leaves and this is why the small number
of teachers who have grasped these dynamics are reticent to address them.
There are other dangers. I know of a local church that years
ago dared to discipline a member over theological error and the sowing of this
error within the congregation. The man left and started a new church on the other
side of the river along the highway – taking half the congregation with him.
Many left, not because they were in agreement with the error (the embrace of
extreme Pentecostal practices, such as 'slaying in the spirit'), but because
they thought it so terrible and unloving that the congregation made this stand
against him.
For many years the church that made a disciplinary stand
suffered a bad reputation in the community. They were viewed as the holier than
thou sect and unloving – even un-Christian. They didn't participate in the
community VBS and the ecumenical services and on these points they were right
and their stand admirable.
But over time, they became self-assured in how right they
were and are. And I must say that thirty years later (by my reckoning) they too
have pretty much lost their way and fallen into error. But they won't hear it
because they're so convinced that they are the only ones around being faithful.
That might have been the case thirty years ago when this schism erupted but now
they've fallen into not a few errors of their own. I'm sorry to report that
congregation now numbers about ten and the youngest folks present are (last I
knew) in their sixties. There isn't much future there. For those wondering, the
schismatic group also dwindled to under ten a few years back but now seems to
be making a comeback and (I believe) might have 20-30 present on Sunday which
for an area like this is a decent size.
Urban congregations and urban lifestyles have their problems
and present dangers to the Church, but so do small towns. I think in the city if a pastor preaches an
abrasive message, people can just leave and go someplace else. In a rural
community, the people will drive the pastor out. I've seen many cases where the
people are more committed to the building and its adjacent cemetery (with
interred family members) than they are to anything the church actually
believes. I've even seen that in connection to a chapel in the UK.
But on a macro-scale, none of this is too surprising as the
Evangelical movement as a whole lives by pronoun confusion – which itself
communicates a theology. 'We' and 'us' frequently confuse Church and nation and
so the fact that this is also expressed on a highly localised level isn't too
surprising.