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TYPES OF RURAL COMMUNITIES AND CHANGE

Through your studies you have gained a good understanding of the history of your community, what is happening in it now, and how the global, national and regional forces and trends of change are impacting it. You understand the founding dream and the dream or dreams that inform the current leadership. You also have some idea about where the community is headed--decline, stability, slight change, or radical change and development. And you have some ideas both about how to respond to the impact of external change upon it and what proactive changes need to be made. So let's look at some types of rural communities.

* Single-function, particularly if it is an agricultural service one, towns are likely to dry up. If you are in such a place, help the leadership to consider diversifying by adding other functions (industry, other services, add institutions, e.g., a prison, retirees, recreation), or redefining function as Green Ridge did. Realistically, this approach is not likely to work in many places, such as in small towns in the Wheat and Corn Belts. So there needs to be a plan "B" which means that the town's traditional function may decline and the population shrink. Some towns will die. So plan "B" may have something to do with "death with dignity."

The churches can be a real help with either plan. A friend has shared with me his dream that the layman groups of various denominations will develop corps of businessmen who will provide technical assistance to rural entrepreneurs who want to start a new industry or service. I know of an example where a retired couple moved to a depressed Appalachian coal mining town. With a grant from a denomination for start-up money and a contract from an agency of that denomination, they have developed a quilting factory which employs 40-50 women. An emerging role for rural ministers will be to evoke the entrepreneurial gifts of persons. And the churches can help with plan "B" by developing good programs for senior centers, by cooperative ministries and sharing resources.

The reason that these communities are in trouble is that they were established to service the production of products and their transportation to markets in an era where technology and transportation have made many of these towns obsolete in terms of their organizing function. Simply put, the era of elevator, mill, and gin towns is passed. So they either add functions, change functions, or become a trade center that gathers up the business from other small towns nearby. The alternative is decline and death.

What has happened in Green Ridge will work other places. Its leadership is moving to make it an alternative residential neighborhood within the 30-mile Sedalia community. It doesn't try to compete. It doesn't seek to retain economic dominance over its old six-mile area. And it hasn't industrialized. It has found a different function. I understand that this needs to be better focused, but it is working.

* Emerging trade centers are those places chosen by the discounters to locate their stores. Chains and franchises follow. For example, Danville, Kentucky has become this kind of town. It has really impacted nine small towns nearby. Some will dry up. Others may change function. If you pastor in this kind of town, you too will have some important things to do. The leadership there needs to see that it has taken on a new role. It is no longer one of several similar places in the area; it is now the lead town. It should assume responsibilities to help its neighbors. For example, when Morristown, Tennessee was a growing industrial town during the 1960s and 1970s, it tried to help in the nearby towns. This helped Morristown grow at an acceptable rate, build good relations, and expanded its trade area's population. Everyone benefited.

Towns that are growing toward regional status have a special set of problems. Where money is to be made, developers may need some help in remembering the importance of long-run benefits to the community when a development is planned. Assimilation of new people into the town must be attended to. Towns change very significantly at different population breaks--5,000, 10,000, 25,000. Relationships, services, mobility--many changes will occur. Folk need to be helped through these. Certainly attention should be given to creating public places like parks, public services and community events.

* Suburbanizing places will experience many of these same challenges. I live in such a place. Conyers, Georgia. The seat of Rockdale County, a sleepy cotton town in the Piedmont until the 1970's. Bisected by Interstate Highway 20, it began to draw people who wanted rural living while being employed in Atlanta, some 25 miles from Main street to downtown. It has grown steadily since and by the turn of the century will probably be almost totally urbanized.

Some major conflicts about schools, zoning, roads and who is in charge have marked the process. The long-time residents have wanted to maintain the rural ways. The new comers have wanted many changes, but also want to maintain some rural qualities. Developers have wanted to make a fast buck, equating change with progress.

Tensions have spilled over into the long-established churches. The retirees want to retain the old. The new sometimes want to grow the old church into a mega suburban church.

The issues for Conyers and places like it is whether or not community can be retained and restructured or if it will be caught up on a merry-go-round of change and lose any significant existence apart from Atlanta.

* The town riding the crest of resource development--currently recreation and retirement--will also experience many of these same things. These are the Fairviews about which Alex Sim has written (see Farley, 1-4). Of course, Green Ridge is much like his Mighthavebeenville and Sedalia is something like his Agraville--on the larger end of this type I imagine. And Conyers is like his Ribbonville. When I think of Fairviews I think of places like Aspen, Colorado, Beaufort, South Carolina, or Shell Knob, Missouri. Each is an old town--mining, port, and farm service which has experienced an influx of retirees and recreation seekers. As a result they have some of the same tensions. I see in Conyers, however, each will ultimately have a different reality of tensions. The Fairviews can become their own unique community while Ribbonville will likely not.

Both Ribbonvilles and Fairviews will need new churches--typically urban churches in a rural setting. Changing old churches is difficult and cannot be the only strategy, particularly for those of the free church tradition.

Agraville churches will need to see that they have a responsibility to assist the churches in the Mighthavebeenvilles that surround them. It is in the Mighthavebeenvilles where the work of ministers will be the most challenging. Fewer of the rewards of a success-oriented society will come to those who serve congregations in these places. But as, Sim argues in a more recent book, The Plight of the Rural Church, it is here that the values of the Christian faith--justice and love--would indicate that the most capable clergy serve.

In sum, where you are will impact how you respond to change. In some places you will feel a need to get change started. In other places you may feel a need to guide, even put the brakes on run-away change. A few will need to help communities deal with life-threatening decline; others may help the community through a change of direction and focus; and still others may lead though the changes that come with becoming a different size.