If you visited my home church, you wouldn’t peg it as an example of successful youth ministry. When I started attending there at age 12, Salem United Methodist Church averaged about 45 for Sunday worship. Our youth Sunday school class had six students most weeks, ranging from me up to seniors in high school. We had no youth group, no youth choir, no paid youth staff (no staff at all except a pastor we shared with two other churches). Still, having worked with dozens of rural churches as a support for their youth ministries, I value some of the lessons Salem taught me about rural youth ministry and ministry in general.

Rural youth ministry requires patience. My observation is that “generations” of youth cycle through small churches. I was fortunate to be part of one of those generations, which enabled us to grow a youth group with as many as 15 active youth by the time I was in high school. Within six years, there was no youth at all. I have seen such a pattern repeated in many other rural churches—families attend when other families similar to them are present. As those youth grow up, move away and settle, their families stay involved; but new families with teens and children find no peers, so they look for other churches with youth and children.

That doesn’t mean the ministry ends when the youth are gone. Rural youth ministry is cyclical. Within a few years, my experience shows that churches will have another pocket of children who grow up to repeat the pattern. At Salem, one of my cousins brought her three daughters and started the next cycle. Another member returned after being away a long time and began bringing her granddaughters. Around that time, because we suddenly had some elementary aged children, I began leading a children’s message during the worship service each week. The children’s message grew into a full-blown “children’s church.” Sometimes I came prepared when no children were present, then the next week four or five would appear. I won’t deny that it was frustrating, but it required that I endure the frustration to persist. Within a year, we had a very established group that within a couple of years grew into a middle school youth group. New families joined because they saw that we had children and ministries for them. A small church may not be able to sustain a youth ministry, but it must stand ready for children and youth when they do arrive.

Rural youth ministry is intergenerational. Small congregations with successful youth ministries involve every member regardless of age in the life of the congregation. One Wednesday evening when I was in seventh grade, my neighbor knocked on our door to invite me to join the choir. “I will come by every week and pick you up,” she offered. No other teenager was in our choir, but I would be adding a voice. Although this was not an intentional youth outreach, her effort was part of a move toward intergenerational minstry. It was a genuine invitation to me as an individual. A few years later, we added another youth, and another. All this started with an invitation and an offer—an invitation to join a ministry of the church, not to create a new ministry for the youth–an offer to enable a teen to participate.

At Salem, youth are as likely as adults to serve as ushers or readers. At 19,. I taught the only adult Sunday school class. I know of a church where a young person preached when the pastor was away. By culture and by necessity, rural churches can embody a youth ministry in which teenagers are integral parts of the larger congregation, not isolated from it. Such integration allows rural teens to develop and experience leadership in the church in a way distinct from, sometimes superior to, larger multi-staff churches where the members have less need to lead. Small churches need everyone involved in every ministry, so teens are less inclined to be isolated. Small churches with successful youth ministries may not have hoards of youth, but they allow their teenagers to be a full part of the life and leadership of the congregation.

Successful rural youth ministry is relationship-driven and grace-full. Never once in my years at Salem did I encounter resistance to our youth ministry. Im fact, Salem may have been too indulgent: If a suggestion was for the youth, it was approved without debate. At times our adult leadership abused that influence to accomplish some of their pet projects under the auspices of the youth ministry. Still, when the youth led quarterly worship with praise songs, lyrics projected from an overhead onto the sanctuary wall, the congregation beamed, attempting to clap on beat and sing along with songs unfamiliar to them. When the youth held a chicken barbeque for a fundraiser, literally every active member of the congregation donated supplies, food and time. When our congregation became the home church for more than 40 students from a wilderness school for behaviorally challenged girls, we began having lunches regularly after worship so we could get to know them. Salem offered teenagers a Christ-like love that engulfed each one as an individual, and included him or her in the congregation as fully as any adult.

I have seen the other side. I remember after our district youth worship team led a service in a small church, an elderly woman accosted the pastor, accusing him (and therefore, us) of sacrilege for allowing such behavior in the sanctuary. That church normally had 12-15 present on Sunday morning, none of whom were teenagers. Successful rural youth ministries have congregations of adults who care, who are willing to remain open to their teens’ explorations and experiments, and who spend more time hugging them than reprimanding them.

In successful rural youth ministry, the style of programming is irrelevant. Our youth group met once a month for a business meeting to plan fundraisers, youth trips, recreational activities and outreach projects rather than for spirited discussions about our faith. We were, after all, fully part of the life of the church. We heard the gospel along with everyone else during worship and Sunday school. Our leaders wanted us to have ownership in our activities, as well. Other rural youth groups I know drew numerous teenagers with a short message and lots of games. Others are Bible-study focused. The most successful experience I had in my ministry happened weekly at Dairy Queen. It began spontaneously one week and we just kept doing it. The youth and I talked about everything from the capitals of every country in Africa (studying for an AP geography test) to the meaning of the symbols in the Book of Revelation. One of those youth just completed seminary; another teaches in a low-income school in Austin, Texas, having just returned from a church mission trip to the Dominican Republic and feels called to become a foster parent. Teens in rural churches are seeking the investment of time and relationships, the sense that Christian adults care about them and are offering them a chance to discover and take part in their faith. How that happens depends on the congregation’s culture and leadership. The investment is more important than the style.

Rural youth ministry must be hope-full. A rural church truly committed to cultivating a youth ministry, to being — in the Rev. Dori Baker’s words, a “greenhouse of hope” — a fertile environment where the seeds God has planted are watered, fed and nourished with love to produce a gospel yield. It sponsors a Vacation Bible School even when it has no children within its own congregation. It drives a van down the street on Sundays to pick up children whose parents don’t attend church.

A friend of mine was serving a small, dying congregation in Lumberton, North Carolina. Driving to worship one Sunday morning, she passed children outside their homes playing. “Why aren’t they coming to our church?” she wondered. “What would it take to get them there?” She talked with the church leadership, who agreed this was an opportunity and a calling. She bought a van, and one morning I had the joy of driving with her into minority and immigrant neighborhoods to pick up kids of all ages. When the van arrived, bouncing with noise and energy, certain members of the church shepherded the children into the sanctuary and book-ended them in the front few pews. That vision, that willingness, that calling gave life to a congregation that saw no hope.

Ultimately rural youth ministry is simply youth ministry which is like any other ministry. It requires God-bearing relationships, organization, leadership and congregational commitment. Rural teens are as busy as urban and suburban teens—despite the myth that they go to church because they have nothing else to do. They take AP and dual-enrollment courses, play multiple sports, sing in the choir, play in the band and apply to colleges. Their backpacks weigh just as much as a suburban teen’s. They have the same basic needs as all Christians—to experience the love of God embodied in Christ and made manifest in Christ’s body, the church.

These days, Salem is in a lull once again. Attendance has slipped into the mid-20s. After several cycles of strong youth presence, there are none in the pews most mornings. Yet with prayer and the trust that the God who can bring flesh to dry bones can breathe the Spirit into even the most tired, small-but-willing congregations, they will see that even if there are no teens in the congregation now, there will be again. When they arrive, the congregation will embrace them as Christ Himself would.