Volume 21 - March 2007

I grew up in a sprawling old farm house. We had a large storage room that our family referred to as ‘the big room'. I am not sure how that name came to be but that was what we called it. Everything and anything could be found in the big room. There were old and broken toys, our winter or summer clothes depending on the season, items that were no longer needed and children's clothes stored waiting for the next child to grow into them or ready for the town cousins who came for holidays on the farm and needed some old clothes to wear to the barn. There were also stacks of magazines and papers that we might want to refer to for some as yet unimagined reason. Those old magazines always came in handy for students doing school projects and it was not uncommon for neighbouring children to come looking for articles from the pile of old National Geographic magazines. Other things might get tossed aside and discarded but the National Geographic magazines held a place of reverence in the big room. Those yellow magazines opened up a world to the reader and so were never thrown out. The National Geographic captured our imagination and through its pages took us to distant places and introduced cultures and peoples that until then had been beyond our knowledge. Many an idle afternoon or evening was spent paging through the pictures in the magazine.

You can imagine my delight when I recently viewed a DVD featuring Dewitt Jones who spent his life as a photographer for the National Geographic magazine. He spoke of the vision of the National Geographic magazine which is ‘to celebrate what is right with the world'. In the video Mr. Jones says, “As I photographed for the Geographic I realized what a powerful force our vision can be. As I celebrated what was right with the world, I began to build a vision of possibility, not scarcity. A vision that showed me that no matter how dry and devoid of possibilities the situation might seem, that if I was open to it I could always find perspective. I would find a perspective that would transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.” He goes on to speak of the perspective that we often employ in a time of change and transition. He challenged the viewer to think of change as not something to fear or resist but as a time of possibility and potential. This raises interesting questions for the rural church. Can we see change as our ally? Can we look at times of change and see them as times if possibility rather than trouble? How do we find potential in an era of change?

Last year my colleague Nan Hudson conducted workshops across Bay of Quinte Conference on Asset-Based Mapping. This is a process of visioning which begins the process by considering what we have rather than what we lack. It helps us consider our assets, our gifts, and move from a position of strength rather than dwelling on what we don't have and beginning from a deficit position. I would encourage you to look at what your rural church is offering to the community and move from that perspective to build on your assets and celebrate what it is you offer as a Christian community.

Volume 22 - May 2007

The farm where I grew up has a meandering creek that traverses the rolling and rugged pasture field that forms the back bone of the 120 acres. We called it “the crick”. As I child I spent many an hour playing in the clay banks, watching the minnows dart through the murky depths and chasing the frogs that would plop into the water. Even now when I think of that place it conjures up fond feelings and a deep sense of nostalgia.

I am fortunate the farm has stayed in our family and so I can still visit and walk through that old pasture. It is surprising to me that over the course of the years the creek has changed its course. The force of the water and the persistence of its flow have caused bends and turns in new places and the old path has dried up. The clay bank has pretty much eroded away. Now in the early spring if we are lucky we can spot large rainbow trout spawning in the gravel bottomed bed. This is new as this species was not a visitor to our creek when I was a child. Change happens in nature. Transformation happens when we are not looking.

Diana Butler-Bass is one of the prolific writers on American Protestantism. In her latest book “Christianity for the Rest of Us – How the Neighbourhood Church is Transforming the Faith” she explores the state of the mainline Protestant church. Over the course of three years of research during which she visited fifty mainline congregations she uncovered the elements that lead to transformation in a congregation. Although it is in America and of urban churches the truths of her research have much to teach us in our rural churches in Bay of Quinte Conference . Upon reflection I realized that her book underlines what I learned from the creek of my childhood. Change and transformation are a part of life. In fact, as Butler-Bass reminds us in the opening chapter of her book “In the New Testament, Jesus asks everyone to change. With the exception of children, Jesus insists that every person he meets do something and change. The whole message of the Christian scripture is based in the idea of metanoia, the change of heart that happens when we meet God face-to-face. Even a cursory knowledge of history reveals that Christianity is a religion about change. The Christian faith always changes – even when some of its adherents claim that it does not.”

Change is all around us. Social change has pushed those of us in the church to either embrace change as an opportunity or hunker down and deny it. Our rural churches are affected by the broad change within society not the least of which is rural depopulation and the move to an urbanized culture. Many of us in the church resist change. We like the familiar, the comfortable, the predictable and even the nostalgic. But as Jesus taught years ago that doesn't guarantee survival let alone transformation. If we are to be the church we need to be open to the working of the Spirit and the push and nudging of the new thing that God is doing in our midst and to build the skills needed to live in a time of constant change.