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Your Needs

We have also made every attempt to listen to rural clergy persons in order to learn about your perception of needs. Among our findings are the following:

Who we were in the 1950s was atypical; that is, city and suburban raised persons pastoring rural and village churches. Both you and denominational leaders tell us that this has since become the norm, at least for mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic Clergy.

We hear that your current experience is much like ours was. Perhaps some rural-urban differences have been diminished since the 1950s, but major ones still remain. We hear pastors saying that they do not know or understand the structures, processes and dynamics of life--personal, group, institutional and community--in rural places.

You tell us that you feel a need to know more about the larger forces that are impacting the lives of the people to whom you minister.

You express a desire to obtain some tools whereby you can become an effective agent of leadership in improving the quality of life for the people in your church and community.

Therefore, it is our goal to provide you with a process, materials and a setting in which the whole set of needs expressed above, and others, may be addressed. Candidly, the RSSE project team hopes that the process will have two "latent" functions. First, we pray that in and through the process of reflective study, relational bonds will be formed that will make your ministry in and to rural America not only more effective, but also more pleasant. Secondly, we hope that the study will equip you for more effectively deal with the forces of change in your ministry.