After my ordination in 1995, I was settled in a two-point pastoral charge in the little town of Brucefield, about two hours north of London, Ontario, and twenty kilometers east of Lake Huron. The population was around a hundred, and the town boasted one corner store. One of my two churches was in a field. The population was about 90% farmers, and there was no seasonal tourist traffic. Like many rural areas, this was a culture where church-going was much more the norm than is the case in the city. If you polled the people, 95% of them would say they believed in God, 60% of them would say they went to church (although they might mean only Christmas and Easter), and about 25-30% actually do attend church regularly.
Only one way to go
I was the first woman minister they had ever had, and at first they came out in droves just to see me, the new person. After that, I encountered a lot of skepticism, and a lot of disenchantment with the church. One reason for this was that they had a history of pastors leaving after two years. In fact, the longest ministry in their 130-year history was five years. You can imagine the effect on the morale of the congregants. In one sense, it was the worst possible setting, but in another it was the best, because there was only one way to go and that was up.
Nothing was really functioning in the churches. There was a United Church Women’s group. There was a Bible study group that met during the week, with about four ladies whose average age was eighty. And when I first went, a good Sunday congregation was probably twenty at one of the two points and thirty at the other. Three things in particular brought new life into the churches: visiting in people’s homes, a new youth group, and a Moms and Tots group.
When I arrived, the first thing I did was go and visit the gate-keepers of the congregation — the chair of the board, the council, the matriarchs, and the Sunday School Superintendent, to try to get a feeling for what had gone wrong and what had gone right, and what they felt we needed. There were some general reasons people were staying away — "It’s not relevant to me any more"; "It doesn’t speak to me any more"; "We go when we need it. We know it’s there." The commonest scream, however, as in every country church, was, "Where are the young people? We want the young people back. After confirmation, they all disappear."
As a result the first initiative I took was to start a youth group in partnership with the pastor of a neighboring United Church. That gave us a bigger pool of youth to start with. Then — and I believe this is the only way to do a youth group, even in the city — I phoned every single individual and invited them personally. To be honest, I bribed them to come out the first time! We took them down to play Laser Quest in London, persuading parents with minivans to help us with the two-hour drive. Every kid wants to play Laser Quest and it worked brilliantly. It was even quite cheap — $6 or $7 each. So we did something fun, then we had pizza and a bull session afterward. I asked them, "What do you want to do? How can this place be relevant to you?"
Cutting a deal
We had droves out the first time — probably as many as twenty-five. The challenge however, was not so much getting them out as keeping them coming out. With their assistance we developed a program which met their needs and also met the needs of their Christian education. The deal we made with them was that one meeting out of every four would revolve around either a Christian education purpose or giving back to the community in some way. The other three times would be predominantly fun.
We also did an outing once a year — either a retreat weekend way, or we went to Toronto, for example, to do the Street Life Awareness program, taking rural kids around the city streets with city kids. That was a big thrill for them, and it meant there was always something to look forward to as the year went by.
The other initiative I took right away happened because I noticed there were a lot of rural women with little children at home. Their husbands were farmers, out in the fields all day, and the women and children were isolated. So we started a Moms and Tots program. For that I got the help of the UCW’s mostly older women, who remembered their own experience and understood the need. They put money into buying some wonderful playground equipment and toys and we turned one of the rooms in the church into a meeting place. Then we started the Moms and Tots group two mornings a week. I put up posters, once again phoned people personally, and invited them out.
For the first meeting we had four women. My experience has been that at first you get the diehards, who will always come, and you nurse it along at that number for a while. Just recently, I received one of the most wonderful thank yous of my entire ministry: a photograph of that group, now with fifty women and little children, meeting four times a week, and totally run by volunteers.
Children and youth, then families
The Moms and Tots group had the effect of bringing young families back into the church on Sunday mornings. A few of the moms who started the program were already regular church attenders, and they developed new friendships within the community. As a result, families got to remember what church was all about, and they got to meet each other. The children, I discovered, loved being in the building. Then, of course, we needed a good nursery program on Sunday morning, and the nursery program became an extension of the Moms and Tots group during the week. As a result, Sunday morning, like the other mornings, became a break for the moms.
Then, of course, there was the worship service. Basically, the children and the young people were bringing the families back to worship, so we emphasized anything we could that involved youth and their talents in the actual Sunday morning worship, whether it was in the children’s story, or reading Scripture. More and more we tried to involve youth, trying to meet them liturgically where they were. For instance, we had youth who were prize-winning step-dancers, so we had liturgical step dancing at celebratory times, and the people loved it.
There was one special service each month, with something unusual happening in it. Of course, the liturgical calendar lent itself to that, and those would be high attendance Sundays. We also did the first blessing of the animals service — we called it a Celebration of Creation, which worked very well in a farming community.
In a sense, the congregation then built itself, one by one, family by family by family — both returning families, new families, and families that had no history of attending church — until we reached our demographic potential.
Why small groups didn’t work
In the country I found that visiting was critical, in a way that is not the case in the city. Conversely, small group ministry did not fly at all in the country, though it works brilliantly in the city. A program like Alpha, for example, did not work because the people did not want to share, and they did not want to talk about their faith. Finally I figured it out: they already have their small group ministry, but it happens in their homes around the kitchen table. Those are the people they trust and they are not about to talk to somebody else, because everybody is related and everybody knows everybody else.
Visiting, I found, was a priority. The time I did not spend trying to start small group ministries, I spent in people’s homes.
In the country that was not so difficult to do, though it took a lot longer than I thought it would. My aim was that, within two years, I would visit every major family in the pastoral charge, and be there to walk with people through death and dying, and through family calamities of any kind.
In fact, visiting solved all sorts of problems. As I introduced new reforms, for example, I carefully checked on the grapevine by visiting, starting with the gatekeepers. When I found resistance, it would often show itself in terms of plain silence. I would take that person aside, make sure I talked to them, make sure I had the go-ahead. Once one thing was accomplished, others became easier, like dominoes falling. Essentially, after two years, I had carte blanche to do whatever I wanted, because by then I was a known quantity. I found that almost anything could be forgiven person to person. Humour and a personal touch, even with contentious issues, solved just about every church problem. Church problems are usually relational problems, and many, I found, could be resolved by visiting.
In rural ministry, of course, it was possible to take the time to do that kind of visiting without it creating a ridiculously busy schedule. For me, visiting was the joy of country ministry — really getting to know the people by going where they lived, knowing what their farming day was about, knowing what rural life was about, and taking an interest in what they were doing.
The first call for any pastor or priest, after all, is to love people. I had to like them, I had to love them, and how could I love them if I didn’t know them? So I needed to get to know them, and they rewarded me. And the church grew.
The Rev. Cheri DiNovo has returned to her city roots, and is currently Minister of Emmanuel-Howard Park United Church in Toronto. Article reprinted from "Good idea!" with permission.
Congregational Life Vol. 7.1 February 2001