home

Administration of Activities

What a church does is based on what it is. According to Gary Farley in "The Single-Staff Church and Its Annual Events" (article 9-7), pastors of rural churches must identify the annual events in the church. They must affirm the importance of these events, become involved in them, and be aware of the functions these events play in the life of the church. For example, do these events play a worship function, a nurture function, or a fellowship function? The pastor can use these events to accomplish additional activities important to the church.

James Krile, Randall Cantrell, and George Donohue in "Effects of Centralized Control on Local Church Activities" (article 9-8) discussed the issue of ecumenism among rural churches. In a study of rural Minnesota congregations, they found that churches that were more autonomous from denominational controls tended to be less involved in local civic programs. However, such churches tended to be more involved in local ecumenical activities.

Central to many of the church's functions are its financial resources. Kent Hunter in "Rural Church Finances" (article 9-9) examined some of the distinctive features of money and how it is handled in rural churches. He noted several unique challenges of rural church finances: (1) agriculturally-oriented people typically identify themselves as poor, (2) long-range financial planning is difficult, (3) rural people often have sporadic income, (4) they are financially conservative, (5) some church income may be "in kind," (6) profit, on which charitable giving may be based, is difficult to define, (7) market profits potentially may be availability, and (8) many farmers are cash poor and real estate rich. Given these challenges, Hunter offers several suggestions to maintain rural church finances.

We now turn to the projects at the end of the unit. They are designed to help you evaluate and improve your "church work" and thus, the "work of the Church."