Newsletter # 18

CANADIAN RURAL CHURCH NETWORK

Writer / Editor: Joyce Sasse (Rural Minister)

Index of 18th CRCN Newsletter

INTERNATIONAL NOTES

●                  A Call to Prayer in Face of Persecution

●                  Hope for Villages in Baltic Sea Region

RURAL ISSUES

●                  Peace on Earth

●                  Rural Clergy: Professional Demands and Personal Lives

WORSHIP RESOURCES

●                  Embrace Adversity

●                  Christian Unity

●                  Born Again In Every Place

RURAL MINISTRY (life and faith)

●                  When a Church Closes

●                  Must a Seed Die - Reflections by Marvin Anderson

INTERNATIONAL NOTES

A Call to Prayer in the Face of Persecution

             "At this Christmas time, " Catherine Christie writes,  "I am reminded that some Christians are on the line for their faith. "

            News comes to Christie from friends in a remote area of North India where she enjoyed a pulpit exchange a few years ago. The trouble, it would appear, is coming from the RSS, which Christie believes to be  "a Hindu Extremist group ".

            Informers, e-mailing on December 24th and 25th, point to the fact these two days were targeted by the RSS as a time to  "disturb the Christian celebrations ". The violence created included gunfire (with some people seriously injured) and the churches of several denominations were attacked and burned down. A Catholic Convent and a World Vision office were also burned to the ground. Out of fear, many are spending the night in the jungle.

            While a curfew was imposed in one region,  "everything is going on in front of the police ", but they make no effort to stop the instigators of this violence.  "Actually the Government is not serious (to impose order), " her informer writes.

            The call is for our prayers and our efforts to let the world know what is happening.

(Written by Joyce Sasse from notes by Catherine Christie. December / 07)

Hope for Villages in Baltic Sea Region  (Part 1)

             "The deepest problems of poverty and lack of perspective " are found in the villages of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, Rudi Job reports when describing the outreach work he is trying to do through the churches of Sweden and these Baltic countries.

            The European Union burdens villages with oppressive agricultural and fisheries policies on top of a heritage of problems that seems insurmountable for many farm families. Hopelessness and pessimism saps the will of these people who live close to the land, and threatens to destroy their potential to act.

            The reality in the countryside of NW Poland reflects what is happening in other regions also.

●    high level of unemployment (about 35%) and an aging population

●    lack of regular income over the year

●    high cost of production and low profitability

●    difficulties with marketing agricultural produce

●    no 'cooperatives' for pooling risks, expertise, marketing (many in the Baltic region have memories of the Soviet system which meant that 'cooperation' equates with 'robbery'.)

●    destruction of eco-system and plundering of natural reserves

●    low level of education; educated people tend to leave

●    lack of social activity (people are de-motivated in many areas, alcoholism and suicide rates are increasing)

            However, the Swedish Mission Covenant Church, in partnership with Tony Addy, European Contact Group for Urban, Industrial and Rural Mission, has helped Rudi Job develop a workshop process called  "Hope For The Villages " (2004 - 2005) in which resource people visited rural regions in each Baltic Country to help them look at  "What gives hope? " and  "What steals hope? " Christians and churches are present in almost every village, so this is where they started: bringing church folk together with civil society members of local communities to talk about what is, and what the possibilities are for their communities.

            In the background of their thinking are three significant principles:

●    The village movement in Sweden tries to mobilize people in the Swedish countryside. Every 2 years it organizes a 'rural parliament' to present the key issues in the public domain. While this is not a church-initiated movement, the presence of churches in these areas is evident.

●    The key is that every village had a right to exist, but the people must be motivated to find their resources. It is no good to wait for someone else to take the initiative.

●    There must be a theological perspective based on the social and economic necessity of the countryside for the life of the people. The New Testament imperative that the church as to be built 'from below' by the people is most instructive.

(Notes by Joyce Sasse from Rudi Job's report on 'Hope For the Villages'. Written December '07)

RURAL ISSUES

Peace on Earth

 INTERNATIONAL RURAL

    CHURCHES ASSOCIATION

To decision-making bodies all over the world:

Peace on Earth

At this time in the Christian world remind us of God's greatest gift for the world:  "peace on earth good will towards humankind ". Thus IRCA calls for a worldwide effort to transform this holy offer into reality.

●    We call all decision-making bodies in politics and economy to keep in mind that  "peace on earth " means not only military but in the same way social peace.

●    We ask decision-making bodies all over the world to take care that people may live their own culture and spirituality honestly and peacefully.

●    We salute the new developments in using renewable energy and welcome the possibilities to give the rural region a new importance. Nevertheless we forewarn of the danger of the misuse of food by transforming it into energy. Such developments have to be stopped.

●     "Peace on earth " does not mean only peace for those who are living on earth, but in the same way  "peace for the earth ". Thus we ask for respectful and sustainable relations with natural resources.

●    We call for an immediate stop to all nuclear experiments in the ground and to inform people completely about the impact of such experiments on the energy balance of the earth.

●    We call all decision making bodies of the world to remember, that the earth was here before them and will be after them too. She is lent to us by God to live on her and to leave her better and more peaceful for the next generation.

May  "peace on earth " lead us the closing weeks of this year and guide us through the next year.

          Lothar Schullerus, IRCA Chairperson          Garry Hardingham, IRCA Secretary        

Rural Clergy: Professional Demands and Personal Lives

            For a sociologist like me (Muriel Mellow, Sociology Department, University of Lethbridge) who studies work and occupations, rural clergy are a fascinating group. Their professional lives confound the ways most people think of paid work.  Some of clergy's most significant activities occur in informal settings: the community potluck, the foyer of the post office, across a kitchen table. They are concerned with things like emotions, relationships, and spirituality that have been distanced from conventional notions of work as an instrumental or physical accomplishment, particularly in occupations traditionally filled by men. Few boundaries clearly differentiate clergy's work and non-work time. In the intimacy of rural places, professional and personal identities - and work spaces - may be difficult to separate. As a result of all of this, the process of defining work becomes a challenge; in practical terms, it involves on-going negotiation as clergy work and live with others around them and try to keep their own  "body and soul " together and avoid burnout. For Protestant clergy, one also can ask whether women and men face differing challenges in this regard. Finally, their experience raises important questions about how rural life may necessitate somewhat different approaches to work than found in urban places.

            Over the next several months, I am going to share findings from a study of rural clergy which I carried out. In it, I asked rural clergy how they defined their professional work, how they balanced it with their personal lives, and the degree to which gender played a role in these dynamics.  This study has recently been published as a book entitled by Defining Work: Gender, Professional Work, and the Case of Rural Clergy (2007, McGill-Queen's University Press). 

            The question of how we define  "work " has important practical implications for individuals. It affects how we set priorities and organize our time. It helps us to recognize the value of our activities and acknowledge the effort, skill, or strain that may be involved.  It allows us to make sense of our routines for family and friends, and helps us acknowledge when we have worked enough and when it is time for play. Most people in the labour force do not have to worry about this definition: paid work happens in a specific time and place, focused on a particular set of activities. Everything else - the unpaid work of caring for family and home, and leisure, happens in the time left over on weekends and evenings. For rural clergy, however, the definition is often not so clear or so easy to convey to others.  Sometimes that ambiguity may be a reason for burnout and strain in the pastoral relationship. Other times such ambiguity may offer opportunities for clergy to get close to people and do some of their most satisfying and creative work. My study considers the strategies that clergy used to make sense of their professional and personal lives along side the dilemmas that they face while doing so.

            For my study, I interviewed forty rural clergy from the United Church of Canada, including twenty men and twenty women. All of them served congregations located in towns of less than three thousand people. Thirty-two lived full-time on their pastoral charges; the remainder either lived off the charge and commuted to it, or only lived there part-time. Three quarters of the group lived full-time in the manse, while the rest either owned their own home on or off the charge. Thirty-one were married. Seventeen had children in their care at the time of the interview, and two more were caregivers for an elderly parent. The clergy interviewed ranged from twenty-seven to sixty-five years old, and had between one-and-a-half and thirty-two years of experience.  The issues I discuss are told from the perspective of clergy alone; I did not interview any congregational, community or family members.

            I gave each person the chance to accept or reject the use of the term  "work " during the interview to describe what they did as professionals, acknowledging that ministry has a tradition of talking about vocation and  "calling. " Only one person rejected the term; many were glad that someone was allowing them to talk about their occupation in that way, acknowledging its complexity, and sometimes arduousness, without trying to mystify it. I asked each person about what their work involved, letting them tell me about all the things, from potluck suppers to hospital visits, that constituted their work, and how often, they could not know in advance when an activity would end up being work-like. I inquired if there were things that they considered to be work, which their congregations would not consider to be so; that led to insights about the difficulties encountered in trying to account for what they did to their congregations, including how some things had to remain invisible as work. I asked them to tell me stories about ways in which they thought that their gender made a difference in how they did their work and heard women's stories about requests to bake pies and men's stories about the dilemmas of when to use touch to comfort people. I posed questions about how professional demands and personal lives were integrated and was told about how family members engaged or distanced themselves from congregational life, and about the need to  "escape " the pastoral charge in order to stop work. Often the hardest question I asked was,  "how do you know when you're not working? "

            In future issues of this newsletter, I will talk about specific findings of this study, and share some of the stories that people told me. Next month, I'll begin with the ways in which the clergy who I interviewed tried to define, in their own minds, when they were and were not working and the challenges they faced in conveying that to congregations. In subsequent months, I'll describe how gender shaped their experience, the strategies that individuals employed in balancing professional and private lives, and the dilemmas posed by personal friendships.

(Notes by Muriel Mellow, Department of Sociology, University of Lethbridge, December /07.

Further discussion papers on this topic to follow.)

WORSHIP RESOURCES

Embrace Adversity

            The stark world with all its skeletons and ghosts is so very much with us these days. At times it seems overwhelming.

            News of the world comes at us from every side with menacing statistics. What was once the longest undefended border in the world now has chain-link fences at key crossings, and guards asking for passports as we travel along wilderness trails.

            Government agencies, meant to attend the well-being of our country's citizens, too often tend only to the well-being of big business.

            Once respected countries now have to be chided by the populace and embarrassed by smaller countries before they will make serious commitment to try to help reduce pollution.

            Promises are made to right previous wrongs with First Nations Peoples, but there is no evidence that those commitments are being taken seriously.

            We live in a world that has grown cynical and crass, where power corrupts those who promise to lead, and the lack of funding dilutes the pool of investigative reporters.

            On the cusp of a New Year, we need to name the names and repeat the litany by way of giving voice to our doubts and our fears. But if we stop here, the fears will leave us feeling impotent, and the wrong-doings will become even more entrenched.

            How important to start with the litany, then look ahead to the positive possibilities. By embracing our adversities, we can learn from them - and thus become passionate dreamers who look for positive possibilities.

            How important to call on our seniors, who have lived through many adversities, to show us the way. By telling their stories, by naming the progressive steps that have been made, all can enlighten and enliven succeeding generations.

            Memories, time, and active imaginations are our most effective resources for triggering all who live in a world of adversity to believe in positive God-given possibilities.

(Written by Joyce Sasse, December / 07)

Christian Unity

            In our family there are many differences in religious beliefs, so we avoid talking about religion.

            What a shame when there's so much we could learn from each other. We need to talk about some of those spiritual values that lie at the core of our being - not to label, not to convert, but simply to exchange insights and understandings.

            As a retired minister no longer committed to being with a specific cluster of congregations, I enjoy worshipping with other faith communities. And through the week I attend the prayer gathering of colleagues whose faith language is very different from what I'm used to.

            What I'm discovering is that my own thinking is broadened. In turn, I struggle to find ways to give voice to my way of thinking. It is as if we are looking at a beautiful multi-faceted diamond, one face at a time. But the more we step back for perspective, the more we catch sight of the whole.

            None of us have a corner on theological truths. None of us have the right to label and define the other person. But when we come together in humility and awe to share the parts of what we understand to be true, the more our lives are enriched.

            The Week of Christian Unity is soon upon us. For even one or two Sundays of the year this focus challenges us to look beyond our comfortable pew. We can encourage our clergy to arrange for pulpit exchanges, or go a visiting ourselves. We can invite Native elders to talk with us about what it means to be Native and Christian. We can talk with each other about how our own connection with the land, and within the community, and with pain, has helped us give depth to what we understand about God's relationship with us and with the Creation.

(Written by Joyce Sasse, December / 07)

Born Again In Every Place

             "... You have been born anew, not of perishable but imperishable seed, through the living and enduring Word of God ... " (I Peter 1)

            The United Methodists' (USA) convention theme will be  "Born Again in Every Place: Seeds of Hope ", and members are challenged to think about the ways their congregations have been seeds of hope.

             "Is it a story of how you were established to meet the spiritual needs of a group of families and individuals? Or is it a story of how you met the needs of local people in the '30's' or some time after that? Is it a story of diversity? A story of how you have welcomed new people to the area? A sharing of music? ... "

            The leadership team is looking for examples of seeds of hope from history, diversity, capacity, and creativity for ministry that they can use as they plan for their coming-together.

(Notes about these thoughtful probings were written up in the United Methodist Rural Fellowship

Bulletin by Town and Country Ministries Secretary Carol Thompson, Fall 2007.)

RURAL MINISTRY (life and faith)

When a Church Closes

(United Methodist Rural Fellowship Bulletin Editor Ronald Williams reminds us there are things that need to be remembered when a congregation closes.)

1. This is a time of grieving and reconnection.

The closing of a church which has been a lifetime place of worship has often been described as like having a death in a family. The persons who are new to a congregation when their congregation has closed, need to have much the same kind and intensity of pastoral care as those who have recently lost close loved ones. They are facing a loss of community, while not yet used to the new community. I wonder if the lack of attention to this loss is not an explanation of the fact that often so few of those active in a church that closes become members of a new congregation.

2. What happens to those who have depended on that congregation for spiritual sustenance, but have not attended. (Our church which we do not attend.)

In every congregation I have pastured where there is nearby a church that has closed, I began to discover people who should be on my thought-list for pastoral care, who were on the edge of the closed congregation. They may have been inactive members, taken off of the role, or people in the community that do not attend, but think of the church as 'their' church, or who are baptized in the church as children, and whose families never have followed through with the baptism vows. ... When a congregation closes, along with the membership transfers, there should be a list of those non-members for whom the congregation was responsible...

(From the United Methodist Rural Fellowship Bulletin, Fall 2007)

Must A Seed Die - Reflections by Marvin Anderson

            I have been serving as the interim Program Coordinator for Rural Ministries at the General Council Office of The United Church of Canada for the past two years. I am profoundly grateful for this opportunity to serve in this capacity at the national level. It was a wonderful segue from teaching full-time in the Endowed Chair of Town and Country Ministries at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri, from 2002-2005. It has been indeed a privilege and pleasure to work in the newly-formed Congregational, Educational, and Community Ministries Unit, and to collaborate, in particular, with my two colleagues, Michelle Hogman and Rob Dalgleish, in the Cluster on Congregational Renewal & Community Development.

            I am regretfully leaving this position now as a consequence of the GCO staff cuts on June 25. The historic and important portfolio of Rural Ministries was eliminated as part of those cuts. As I leave, however, I am encouraged by the emerging leadership and international profile of the Canadian Rural Church Network in carrying this work across our largely rural nation. I want to reiterate my thanks and congratulations to Rev. Joyce Sasse and Rev. Catherine Christie for their perseverance, determination and vision in founding the Canadian Rural Church Network.

            I am grateful to my Executive Minister, Rev. Dr. Harry Oussoren, for delegating me with the task of organizing and convening the 2006 National Consultation on Rural Ministry just a year ago last November, at the Calling Lakes Centre near Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan, on behalf of the General Council Office. That the Rural Ministries desk and portfolio has been eliminated by the GCO at the United Church―only eight months after the National Consultation―begs more questions than I have answers. Since Harry is committed to assuring that the overall work of rural ministry will not be neglected by his Unit, I hope and pray that you will support him and my former CECM colleagues in that endeavour. I will be resuming my professional consulting practice on rural ministry and congregational renewal in the New Year, in addition to teaching at the University of Toronto. I can be reached through the Canadian Rural Church Network.

(Notes by Marvin Anderson, United Church of Canada General Council Office, December / 07)