Rural Ministry Evaluation and Report

Director, Dr. Trisha Wheelock

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Evaluation is an important part of Moses Project planning. Each Fall, a Grand View faculty member interviews all in-coming Moses pastors and writes a preliminary report. At the May Celebration, final interviews are conducted. Here are the highlights from Grand View’s evaluator:

2023-2024 Cohort Overview

     - Six who identified as male and 14 as female.

     - Two participants identified as being in the LGBTQ+ community.

     - Their calls were to rural areas in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota,

        Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

     - Seven participants indicated growing up in urban or suburban communities and 12 reported

        having been raised in rural areas.

 

Strengths in Rural Ministry:

Intrinsic or personal qualities noted as positively affecting their ministry included:

• flexibility and the ability to easily adjust

• tenacity

• and openness to learning 

• While being an introvert was seen as a challenge and discussed in the section related to that interview question, one participant indicated being an introvert meant they had fewer social needs so was less uncomfortable being an “outsider”

Connecting with congregants:

One pastor explained, “I think I have skills and gifts for…loving people where they are with the recognition that we are all in need of transformation, myself included." Another noted this willingness to meet people wherever they are in life means serving alongside congregants.

Connecting with the community:

Members of congregations are part of a larger community, and a strength noted was the ability to connect people to settings beyond their own congregation. An example is the ability to connect congregants to other congregations, such the other churches in the pastor’s multi-point call. This was accomplished by intentionally helping members see how each church was connected to the others. Another pastor spoke of “being willing to get out there in the community and get to know what is happening and why it's happening, and how we can change it” as well as working to connect congregants with resources within the community.

Appreciating rural life:

Many participants spoke of understanding and appreciating small town life and its cycle, which they saw as a strength when called as a pastor to a rural context. One pastor explained the impact of being “willing to be there” (live within the rural community) helped build “immense trust” with members of the congregation. Others noted having grown up in a rural setting, they knew the “lingo” (16) and were aware of how people may be treated if they are not from the community:

Pastoral skills:

Participants mentioned a variety of practical skills and ministerial activities they saw as strengths in their role as a rural pastor. Some of these were directly related to ministry, such as

• “inviting people into prayer” 

• connecting religion to what is going on congregants’ lives. Similarly, one participant said, “I can make the connections that they need to hear about, you know, Jesus and life.” 

• One pastor mentioned their longevity in the “church world” as a strength.

• Being creative in the development of worship and educational opportunities was also noted as strengthening their pastoral role.

• Other strengths were not specifically associated with ministry although seen as benefitting their congregations, such as the ability to:

  • develop marketing and communication materials\

  • having musical ability 

  • being adept with technology 

  • offering consistency in availability through activities such as regular office hours 

Challenges in Rural Ministry:

Themes in their responses to challenges can be viewed in themes of environmental, church-related, and personal.

Environmental challenges:

• Isolation and navigating the small-town experience. Isolation was an issue mentioned generally (1, 15) as well as specifically in relation to lack of colleagues and personal friendships.

• Uniquely, one participant identified that social isolation was less of an issue as due to being an introvert, they did not have strong social needs.

• Another said they were only friends with other pastors or deacons, and it would be nice to have friends who didn’t have anything to do with the church.

One pastor shared that as a single person, living in a rural setting was especially isolating (17). Even when involved in activities in the community, one participant felt “I’m really only invited into their lives to bless the food at parties.” 

Navigating the small-town experience was noted as being additionally challenging when the pastor has more liberal or progressive values or political beliefs than other residents. One pastor noted frustration in “working with small town attitudes that tend to be more conservative than I am.” This was especially personal for a participant with a family member who is transgender: "It’s really hard having a child who is transgender in a rural part of [state name withheld]. It’s very much an anti-trans and anti-gay state. And we have some members in the rural congregation that are not very affirming and so walking that is challenging."

Church related challenges:

• Lack of resources within the church and communication styles of congregants were noted as challenges associated with in the call where the participant was appointed.

  • Scant church resources were seen as mostly associated due to not having enough congregants or having members unwilling or unable to be involved. One participant said, “I have some young families, but they're busy raising their kids, all the different school events, sporting events, those kinds of things. There's not a lot of time and the people that would love to do to do things and have the time to do things aren't physically able to do them.” 

• Limited technology was also noted as a challenge, and it was not a matter of having the latest technology, it was having any technology, including microphones, sound system, or reliable access to the internet

Personal Challenges:

Nearly half the participants identified inherent traits or characteristics that made rural ministry more difficult.

• Three indicated being female was a challenge, noting that interfaith collaboration didn’t seem to happen due to their gender. One participant indicated being continually “mansplained.” Another said the congregation had never experienced a female pastor, and that anything I brought forth that was like in any way connected to being a woman was really an uphill battle. So, it was really hard to ever have authority in a small town like that, because to them, I was not a pastor. So that was always a challenge which felt unfair because it wasn't a challenge of my character. 

• Personal feelings of not fitting in made acclimating to the context difficult and were shared by both genders.

• One pastor reported such lack of engagement from congregants to the point of asking, “Okay, God…why am I here? What are you teaching me?”

• Another pastor achingly shared, “I lost my way for a bit…I felt like nothing I did was quite right or quite enough,” and challenges were “with myself, and my ability to trust that I actually am capable of being a pastor.”  

• One participant stated simply being new to the profession of ministry was a challenge. 

• Boundary management. Frequently mentioned as a challenge was the ability to navigate boundaries. One participant noted during the pandemic, they set boundaries more easily, and since then, has needed to “claw my way back” into setting limits on their time. Pastors reported having difficulty stepping away, relinquishing control, and over-functioning.

  • External factors beyond the pastor’s control, such as balancing time in a multi-point call (12, 13), which in turn results in always feeling as though they should do more also contributed to challenges in managing boundaries. One pastor noted the way in which they attempted to navigate this challenge was to “be committed to have the main thing be the main thing and not getting distracted by X, Y, or Z.” 

• ​Skills affecting ministry. Three participants noted specific skills that created a challenge in their call.

  • One noted working with youth to be difficulty, as the youngest population they had worked with before was college students.

  • Another noted time management, which they said was especially important when serving a multi-point call.

  • One person recognized their tendency to disorganization contributed to challenges in communication with stakeholders in the congregation.

What participants hope to get from Moses:

• Connection and support

• Professional development

• Renewal and discernment-- "In many ways I have felt like I’ve been white knuckling it for a while. When I got the acceptance and the email came in [that they were accepted to the Moses Project], I just had a somatic response of teacher like, oh, sweet Jesus, this could be part of what will help me continue in ministry. Because I love what I do. I want to be found faithful. I don’t want to just show up and go through the motions."

Most meaningful aspects of Moses:

• The connections with each other and support provided to them as pastors and between each other.

• The next most frequently mentioned aspect was resources provided as a part of the professional development associated with the program. These are discussed below along with feedback on the programming structure.

Here are a few quotes that capture the experience of the 2023-2024 cohort:

"I realized what a gift it is to have come from [a rural community] and understand that and being able to relate to people without having to do the work of learning about agriculture or what it's like to grow up in a small town. I've just come to appreciate where I've come from and how that's helped me be a minister in this time and place."

"I entered the program feeling pretty defeated, and I think that I could say that now I’ve got a positive attitude and have more hope for the future of rural ministry.”

 

One pastor explained they learned challenges they have are universal: “It’s hard everywhere. Welcome to being a leader. Welcome to being a human being.”