As a New Yorker at heart, moving and ministering in small town America was a huge culture shock to say the least. The way I viewed and did ministry in New York, had to go out the door as I familiarized myself more and more with the small town of Taylorville, Illinois.
One of the major challenges we faced was removing the notion that church activity equated into a spiritual relationship with Jesus. Click To TweetOne of the major challenges we faced was removing the notion that church activity equated into a spiritual relationship with Jesus. Our small town of 12,000 people is inundated with churches. That allowed many students to come and go through our church and many other churches and student ministries as well. With any small town, the lack of recreational options forces the students to look for ways to entertain themselves. Many of the students viewed their church activity as routine and “something you did on Wednesday nights” in order to fill their schedules. There didn’t seem to be anything special about Jesus or church to them. Helping students understand the value of church, but more importantly their personal relationship and growth in Jesus, was our main focus. We began spending time with students and making Jesus real to them. Jesus wasn’t a convenience, entertainment, or something you just did when you were bored. They needed to know the He was so much more. As they began to see Jesus in a different light, we began to see several students taking steps in their faith. As a result, our student ministry began to grow both numerically and spiritually.
As we grew, we began to see other challenges arise. As a student ministry team, we eventually had to evaluate and consider switching our regular meeting time. We were meeting on Wednesdays nights and experienced major schedule conflicts with sports practices and games. I realized that small towns love their sports, no matter if they’re winning or losing. That’s the part that floored me because, trust me, we weren’t winning anything. It was a major hurdle for our team, myself specifically, but we made the switch to Sunday nights. I was expecting major push back from parents and students due to change, but both welcomed the switch. They saw the opportunities to reach new students and the idea of not having to choose between church or sports. We also realized that if our core group of students were struggling to consistently come to church when they had sports, how can we expect a student who does not know Christ to be willing to make that commitment? Short answer- we can’t!
The more time I spent in Taylorville, the more I became aware of the importance of authentic relationships. I know the line sounds cliché and applies to both big city and small town ministry, but I feel as though it is more important in small towns. Many have planted roots and have family or close friends, so they have plenty of relationships. Being from a small town it also seems as though everyone knows everyone, as well as their business. The issue though is all of these relationships tend to not be fruitful ones. Having several relationships is meaningless if they aren’t pushing you to grow in your faith. This isn’t just a problem within the community, but sadly our church and student ministry struggle with this as well.
We recently had a conversation with our staff about the lack of fellowship and authentic relationships among our students, women, and men. Within the last five years, we have made strides to implement small groups in order to facilitate better relationships. We are aware that it’s a culture shift we must make as a staff. In order to change our community, our church must model authentic relationships. In order to change our church, our staff must model authentic relationships. As overwhelming as it seems, we know what needs to be done and thankfully, we have God’s help to do it.
