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Welcome to the Future

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by Catherine Neelly Burton

I began this blog series with a working hypothesis: I live in the future of the PCUSA. What’s happening in southern Kansas is where the national church is headed. My conversations over the last five months haven’t entirely proven this as true, but there’s more data to support my hypothesis.

Between 2014 and 2019, the Presbytery of Southern Kansas declined in total membership by 25%. In that same period these presbyteries based in large metropolitan areas declined as well:

  • Mid-Kentucky (Louisville) – 20% decline
  • Heartland (Kansas City) – 17% decline
  • Charlotte – 11% decline
  • Greater Atlanta – 10% decline

I did not contact every presbytery in the PCUSA, but of the ones I contacted, none are growing. Yet, there is still this myth that success equals growth. This myth is particularly detrimental to our rural communities. We know that every year fewer and fewer Americans go to church. If churches in growing cities are in decline, our small shrinking communities have almost no chance by the metric of growth.

In 2009 the PCUSA launched the “For Such a Time as This Initiative.” This program took applicants through at least 2013. According to PCUSA literature the program was “designed to renew and grow small churches and help them to become healthy, missional congregations. The program pairs small, underserved congregations in rural, small town and urban settings with recent seminary graduates for a two-year pastoral-residency relationship, during which they are supported and guided by a cluster of pastor-mentors.”

On one hand I applaud this initiative because the PCUSA tried something new and creative. On the other hand, anyone who looked at the data for rural churches from the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s could have told you that numerical growth in churches in rural and small towns was nearly impossible. This initiative frustrated me because it set churches and pastors up for failure. I’m sure good things came from this initiative, but in the end, the church in my presbytery that had this program was back where it started and maybe even more defeated.

I appreciate the shift in conversation that our national church has made from growth to vitality with the Vital Congregations Initiative, but we’re way behind. The initiative will benefit the churches that participate, those with presbyteries who could staff the initiative. In general though, I think we’re headed for four distinct church models. My hypothesis continues.

The first model is that of the called and installed pastor. It will continue for churches that can afford it. As more and more urban congregations shrink, they’ll move to part time or bi-vocational models for pastoral leadership but (likely) still expect the same work out of their pastors. Because a lot of pastors choose to live in urban areas (for good reasons such as jobs for spouses and community) they’ll (likely) keep doing the work. The Board of Pensions recognizes this and is doing more for part-time pastors. This part-time or bi-vocational structure is model two and is what we’ll continue to see in big cities where there are more pastors than available calls.

In smaller cities, like Wichita, those churches that might get a part time pastor in a larger city like Atlanta, will close. We closed five churches in the city of Wichita between 2014 and 2019. This is model three, let the churches die. It happens in cities, towns, and rural communities.

My hope is that other cities and towns like Wichita, without seminaries or big draws for pastors, will fall into model four. Model four is let the people lead the churches. Several of the churches I got to know in this blog series are doing model four.

There aren’t a lot of pastors interested in moving to small Midwestern towns to be, perhaps, a congregation’s last full-time installed pastor. I don’t blame them. I don’t want that. I serve a church with an amazing staff in a lovely small city. My husband’s vocation means we’ll never live in a rural community. I’m not pointing fingers.

If these small and/or rural churches won’t have full-time installed pastors, what’s left? What’s left are the people, the people of God. What’s left are the people in Chase, KS, who supplement monthly food for 20% of their town. What’s left are commissioned ruling elders who figure out how to get trained despite no guidance and manage to capably lead congregations. What’s left are churches who band together to share resources and serve their communities. What’s left are the people who pray for one another and learn to preach and lead worship.

We don’t lack motivated, called people who love Jesus. We lack care about God’s people who live in small towns and rural communities. Fortunately, many of them haven’t waited for permission from the PCUSA, or presbyteries, or big churches. They’ve gone forward to be the church. With a little help, more could do the same and could teach the rest of us. Otherwise, we are the ones who get left behind.

Catherine Neelly Burton serves as the pastor of what is most easily categorized as a ‘traditional’ PCUSA congregation, even though that era is gone. She serves at Grace Presbyterian in Wichita, KS. Grace has about 350 members and is an amazing congregation with wonderful people. She is married to John, and they have a four year old daughter and a nine year old dog.

Catherine is also a member of the NEXT Church blogging cohort and her writing focuses on rural ministry in Kansas. 

Ad Astra Per Aspera – To the Stars Through Difficulties (the Kansas state motto): a portrait of rural ministry

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by Catherine Neelly Burton

I am not a native Kansan, but after nearly 10 years here I claim it as home. Coming from the Southeast it took a few years for me to appreciate the beauty of open space. Now I treasure drives through the Flint Hills where the tallgrass goes forever. When my family drives west for Colorado vacations, I far prefer the southern route through small towns and farmland to the quicker (but boring) drive on I-70 across northern Kansas.

While it took time for the geography to grow on me, I was drawn to the people immediately. Kansans are good people. Sure, that’s a generalization, but it proves true time and again.

I serve as the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita. Wichita is a city of about half a million people and Grace a church of about three hundred and fifty. Most of Kansas is rural, and many in the congregation I serve have roots in farms throughout the Midwest. If they did not grow up on farms, there’s a good chance that their parents did. No matter how many advanced degrees they have, or office jobs, or fancy titles, the Midwest farm spirit is part of them. In church life, this plays out as a lack of pretension and a willingness to do most anything to help.

Wichita is in the Presbytery of Southern Kansas, which stretches for four hundred miles, east to west. There are no installed Teaching Elders/Pastors in the western 175 miles of our presbytery. This does not mean there is no leadership, but it looks different than it does in the church I serve.

One of those churches in Western Kansas will likely call a pastor in the next year. There are a few Commissioned Ruling Elders (CRE’s), and a few ordained Teaching Elders who serve in different capacities. Then there are the church members, whose leadership makes all the difference.

I moved to Kansas from Atlanta where, when a PCUSA church closed, while sad, it often meant financial gain and opportunity for the presbytery. If the building was somewhat maintained it could be sold and the money could start new ministries. That doesn’t happen in places where the towns are dying too. The reality in many of these small towns in Kansas isn’t just dying churches, it’s communities with maybe one physician, and a thirty to forty-minute drive for groceries.

I sometimes tell colleagues that I live in the future of the PCUSA, which is to say that the greater church needs to pay attention now to what’s happening in rural America. Conversations at the national church level about bi-vocational ministry, adjusted Board of Pensions rates with Pathways to Renewal, and even encouragement for clergy to go rural are important, but they don’t fit out here. Out here those conversations needed to happen twenty to thirty years ago.

A church with 30 members in a town of 400 people will never install a full-time pastor again, and I can’t imagine anyone moving to rural Kansas for a quarter time call. Still, that church created a food pantry to feed their neighbors, and they send children in their town to camp each summer. Churches like this need a different conversation, and they can be leaders in it.

Churches in southern Kansas have recreated themselves to be the church in their communities, and I want to tell you their stories. Each month I’ll visit (Covid-19 allowing) a different church and highlight the ways they are very much alive and active. I look forward to you joining me.

Catherine Neelly Burton serves as the pastor of what is most easily categorized as a ‘traditional’ PCUSA congregation, even though that era is gone. She serves at Grace Presbyterian in Wichita, KS. Grace has about 350 members and is an amazing congregation with wonderful people. She is married to John, and they have a four year old daughter and a nine year old dog.

Catherine is also a member of the NEXT Church blogging cohort and her writing focuses on rural ministry in Kansas.