Rural communities often are overlooked in discussions about ministry strategy and resources. One thing youth workers in rural communities have known for quite some time is that many published youth ministry materials often don’t work in the rural context. Rural youth workers don’t have access to resources, funding and church organization that more prominent churches often do. Yet, most communities in America aren’t large or suburban. However, youth ministry can flourish in rural settings. In fact, a thriving youth ministry can make a cultural impact in a small town, and most youth workers in America are volunteers who come from small-town settings.
As part of Dodger’s graduate work, we launched a research project to discover the distinctives of rural youth ministry and the typical struggles and opportunities youth workers have in rural communities. We started in the Midwest and drew a 25-mile radius on a map near Dodger’s hometown. More than 100 churches were situated within that circle that covered more than 1,900 square miles and included a population of almost 23,000. The largest two churches in the area had congregations of about 300, but most were well under 100 in attendance on any given Sunday morning. The research involved surveys of all 100 churches and then four months of interviews with representative representative youth workers from the list.
Joseph is a typical youth worker in the study. He expressed consistent frustration with the limited resources and budgetary constraints. He was trying to lead a successful student ministry, support his wife and infant daughter, and take college courses to pursue a career in law enforcement. Joseph’s love for his students was unwavering, the main quality that kept the enormity of everything he was trying to balance from overwhelming him. However, a lack of resources isn’t always a negative, and Joseph, similar to many successful youth workers, had found ways to leverage the opportunities of working in a small town. He was proud of his ability to make things happen and run an effective ministry without many resources at his disposal.
Surprising Demographics
Of the more than 100 churches listed, only 59 provided searchable contact information. Nearly 40 percent of the churches had no phone number, website, email address or a listed mailing address. As we dug deeper, we found a few of the churches quietly had closed their doors or had combined two declining congregations into one body. Still, most of these churches were led by volunteer pastors and primarily only met on Sundays. They simply had existed for many years, serving and served by the few people in their communities who always had attended that particular church.
Nearly 75 percent of the churches that responded to the study indicated they offered at least some form of youth ministry at their church, but only two churches paid a person part-time, and only one youth worker in the area was full-time. This is not a reflection of quality, however, as many volunteer-led youth groups in this area would be characterized as dynamic, active and transformational. Nearly 100 percent of the volunteer youth workers had no formal youth ministry education, but all three of the paid workers had at least some sort of ministry training at a national youth workers convention. Most youth workers in the study were male, though most of the newest youth workers were female.
Lack of Resources
The most significant issue facing youth ministry in rural communities is that of trying to implement a quality youth program with a nearly non-existent budget. Teens in rural communities watch movies, engage in social media, and are just as active in extracurricular activities. In fact, students at smaller high schools actually can be involved in more extracurricular groups than those at larger high schools. A successful youth worker in a rural community has learned how to overcome a lack of financial support, lack of organizational structure within the church, lack of local infrastructure to take advantage of the areas where they serve. The field of youth ministry would be to discover how these youth workers continue to thrive without the organizational complexity that a larger church possesses to support the ministry.
The under-discussed reality is that many rural youth leaders serve in impoverished areas where reduced or free lunches, government assistance, and housing subsidies are commonplace for many students and their families. While some churches do their best to help send students to camps or retreats, there is often simply not enough money in the budget to support students who don’t have resources to attend these events. These youth leaders always are conscious of this fact when planning events, going on trips, or asking for money for camp. This leaves the youth leader with some tough decisions to make. Does he or she designate the limited budget for solid curriculum to use, invest in replacing some of the aging equipment in the youth room, or help pay for students to go to camp? For this reason, many rural youth workers are stuck developing their own curriculum, patching busted equipment, and begging people for money to help send students to a retreat.
The consistent issue was the inability for the youth leaders to receive training at regional and national training events. The lack also inhibited the group’s ability to afford transportation to go anywhere. Rural youth ministries are forced to find creative means to transport students. This struggle is compounded by the fact that in a rural setting, there is no public transportation, and a trip to the mall, Starbucks or nearest concert is almost always at least a 30-minute drive. Many youth workers often start picking up students hours before an event, and return home several hours after the event once they have finished dropping off students.
One youth leader interviewed said this of rural resources: “Lack of transportation is a big one. It’s harder for parents to get students to church. There is a lack of things to do, lack of entertainment. We have no theater, no arcade, no go-karts, etc. In addition it’s difficult to get the financing to do those things even if we had them. It’s harder to raise money in a poverty-stricken area, and it’s difficult for parents to front the money for events.”
An Opportunity for Collaboration
The lack of resources became an opportunity for churches to pool resources and do youth ministry events together. Several youth ministries in the area decided several years ago to join together to do a New Year’s Eve event. The event grew from about 60 students when separately to more than 150 in the first year and continued to grow from there. This collaborative spirit had carried over to entire churches that saw the success of their youth ministries. Many of the larger churches began to work with smaller churches and assist them.
Joseph and another youth leader in the study area decided several years ago to collaborate on The 30-Hour Famine. Joseph and his students benefited from the larger church’s access to transportation and facilities. The larger church benefited from Joseph’s assistance in planning the event and access to media promotion. In the end, both churches experienced added excitement due to the collaboration, and students gained a greater insight into the fact the kingdom of God is more than just one small church body.
Small Town Connections
As we listened to youth workers throughout the region, we noticed a consistent dynamic that we termed “Small Town Connectedness.” STC refers to the bonds and relationships formed based on common connections and histories among the people in the town. It is a shared heritage that draws people in rural communities together and is defined by the boundaries of a town, school or geographical region. One youth leader interviewed described it this way: “Everything here is so interconnected…It’s just a way of life here. This is simply how these small towns operate.”
The savvy rural youth leader learned quickly to make the most of these connections. During our interviews with Joseph, he expressed that given his budget limitations, he frequently had tapped into these connections to make youth ministry happen. Rural youth leaders have become experts at knowing how to leverage these connections. Youth leaders use these connections in order to get audiences with local school and community leaders, get local media coverage for events they are holding, get resources the church cannot afford to purchase otherwise, tap into the skills of the people in the community, and myriad other ministry assets.
Gary Goreham discusses a type of social capital that is developed in small towns. This social capital is a result of the many connections that these small towns have and is proportional to the amount of time invested in the community. One youth worker illustrated this idea when he said: “It’s different when you aren’t from this area. You just won’t have the same connections as people with roots do. It really is hard to break into a small, tight-knit community because we really are so connected.”
As we dove deeper into the idea of social capital with rural youth workers, we discovered there wasn’t a quick or easy way to earn it. For youth workers moving into rural or small-town settings, this is daunting. Volunteers from the community have more influence than the outside professional pastor. One youth pastor, though, adapted well: “I didn’t try to act like someone I wasn’t just to fit in, but I learned that if key people vouch for you, it makes the work and connections better.”
None of the youth workers viewed these connections as inherently good or bad, but rather as simply a reality of doing ministry in a small, rural town. Sometimes people didn’t accept them quickly; and if the previous youth worker had a bad reputation, it was difficult for the new person to overcome. However, for many of these youth workers, they had learned not only to exist within the system of social capital, but they were thriving.
Implications
It is the ability to leverage the strengths of rural youth ministry (of which there are many) while dealing with the adversity of budgetary limitations, lack of resources and training that is the defining mark of a successful rural youth worker. However, the field of youth ministry must see that with rural schools educating nearly one-third of all students in the United States (Schonert et al., 270), we all would be well-served to start investing in our brothers and sisters who serve in the rural youth ministry trenches, and not only investing but also watching and learning to see what we can learn from them to benefit our ministries.
Youth workers serving in other settings might want to take notice of how these ministries function on such limited budgets and with limited resources. In an era when larger, urban churches are conserving resources for youth ministry, understanding how these rural youth workers reach, educate and disciple students is something that is becoming a lot more attractive to congregations larger than their rural sister churches.
Additionally, the idea of ministry collaboration has been something that is making its appearance on the national stage as a new model of ministry to employ. However, the reality is this has been a way of life for many rural youth ministries for quite some time. Once again, this is something larger churches should begin to consider. As churches begin to collaborate for the good of advancing the kingdom, maybe we should be taking note of our rural brothers and sisters who have blazed the trail.
