Way back in 2017, when a person looking for a book on rural ministry might have to content oneself with a meager selection of titles, many of which were published decades previously, Herald Press took a chance on a book for rural pastors. The book was God’s Country: Faith, Hope, and the Future of the Rural Church. Its author was a young-ish Mennonite pastor named Brad Roth. Roth came to the project with a Harvard Divinity School degree in hand and a couple experiences in rural ministry under his belt. For a nation that had newly discovered (or rediscovered, or re-re-discovered) rural America, the book was well timed.
For pastors (like me) who had cared about rural ministry and small places for a long time, God’s Country was a breath of fresh air. We felt seen and encouraged. Not only was it weighty without being dense, it’s pages were filled with both candor and love—yes, love—for rural folks and the places they call home. Theologian Leonard Sweet summed it up well in the book’s forward: “You can sense Brad Roth’s love for rural people on every page.” I had to agree. When I wrote a review of the book for the Carl F. H. Henry Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, my title was “A Love Song for the Rural Church.”
An Encore
If Roth’s first book was a love song, His most recent book Flyover Church: How Jesus' Ministry in Rural Places Is Good New Everywhere (Herald Press, 2024) provides a fitting encore. While writing one solid book on rural ministry may seem a herculean task for most of us, Roth has managed to provide his readers with a follow up that builds on his previous work without feeling repetitive and—perhaps most importantly—without discarding the original candor and love that defined his first volume. When Roth describes his call to rural Kansas early in the book by saying “and then, because God is good and generous, we were called to rural Kansas,” (17) the reader senses that he really means it.
Roth demonstrates this deep regard and respect for rural communities through his choice of method and tone. Together tone and method serve Roth’s argument like studs in a house—hidden but essential.
A Threefold Method
Few authors of books on the topic of rural ministry have been as straightforward about their methodology as Roth.
Defining Rurality-Near the beginning of the book, Roth describes his method for determining his primary audience. As with any discussion of rural ministry, one of the first questions the reader needs to nail down is Roth’s definition of rural. This is a live question for the knowledgeable reader because there are many different ways of describing and delineating rural North America. (It is worth noting that Roth attempts to include Canada in his study.) While communities of various sizes might technically fall under one or several definitions of rural, Roth is “particularly interested in writing to pastors and leaders serving rural communities that come in under the 2,500 population threshold, places so often casually disdained as ‘flyover country’ in our cultural cartography” (30).
Listening to Rural Folks-A second feature of Roth’s methodology involves putting some of his own advice into practice. Later in the book, Roth argues that “attentive presence that listens and tells stories” is “one of the gifts we give rural communities” (66). His instincts are right on this, and I appreciate that he exemplifies this conviction by weaving interviews with rural pastors and ministry leaders into his argument throughout the book. He also shows his willingness to listen well by drawing on the growing body of rural literature—books like Donnie Grigg’s Small Town Jesus, Stephen Witmer’s Big Gospel in Small Places, Glenn Daman’s The Forgotten Church, and Allen Stanton’s Reclaiming Rural. (As an aside, it is worth noting that the blurbs for Roth’s first book came from a wide array of theologians and ministry leaders, while the blurbs for this book came from three authors of recent books on rural ministry and two leaders of organizations dedicated to helping rural churches thrive. A new community of rural-minded ministry leaders is emerging!)
Following the Life of Jesus-The third and most significant methodological focus of Flyover Country is Roth’s commitment to ordering the book in a way that follows the life of Christ as presented in Mark’s gospel. The book begins with baptism followed by a discussion of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness and then winds through several notable incidents in Christ’s ministry before ending with chapters that follow the contours of the crucifixion, resurrection, and spread of the gospel. (To his credit, Roth finds a way to weave even the multiple endings of Mark into his narrative.) Following Jesus—the first rural ministry practitioner in Christian history—makes sense. It also provides for some helpful entre points into a discussion of topics like discipleship, abiding, and practicing vulnerability.
As helpful as these discussions are, I think this is one area in which Roth could have further developed the theological and biblical edge of his argument. This may or may not be an oversight. It is equally possible—actually, it is more likely—that Roth intentionally limited the scope of his interaction with the gospel accounts based on his own predetermined guidelines of length and content. Of course, the depths of the Gospels can never be fully sounded, so it should come as no surprise that I think there is more work to be done by future authors who can think with Scripture about ministry in rural areas and overlooked places.
The Right Tone
Tone matters, especially when one is talking about difficult issues or topics close to a person’s heart. Many of us who call rural America home are used to encountering a mix of condescension, despair, and “isn’t that cute” in the tones of those who write about or report on rural America. We know that what one says is important, but how one says it also matters.
That’s why Roth’s ability to strike the right tone again and again is important. Throughout the book, Roth’s tone is marked by candor, respect, vulnerability, and joy. Whether he is describing the geography of his week, marked by Tuesday mornings when he often finds himself leaning over an “abyss” that is “the soul-deep threat to meaning that lingers at life’s edges,” (34) or the fact that he is “a terrible evangelist,” the reader senses that Roth is modeling vulnerability almost as well as an author can. In the process, Roth strikes a tone that manages to take rural people and places seriously without taking himself too seriously. This posture provides at least a partial example of the “authentic vulnerability” that Roth proposes for those who serve the church in rural places. “When we practice authentic vulnerability, we take the focus off ourselves and off our capabilities and shift it back to the God” (93).
One of the places we see Roth’s candor and vulnerability on full display is his distrust of his own motives when it comes to moving from one call, church, or community to another. As Roth compellingly notes, one of the greatest fears most rural pastors face “is getting stuck,” or, as Roth terms it, “the Fear of the Dead End” (119-120). He goes on to observe that, “our world pressures us to believe that to be someone you have to go somewhere” (121). As we all know, the assumption is that the somewhere one has to go is usually more urban, not less. Roth speaks with the authenticity of one who knows this urge well. He notes that “it’s hard to stay put in rural communities” (125), and he names the common lie ringing in many rural pastors’ ears “if only you were somewhere else you could really succeed” with a depth of knowledge available to someone who has heard that siren song himself. In fact, Roth admits as much. “I suspect I’ve given up too easily and succumbed too readily to the…urge to move on….Like everyone else, I’ve been acculturated to leave. I know I can’t fully trust my instincts when it comes to moving on” (97).
Perhaps it is here, in this admission and wrestling with the often-competing forces of call, place, ambition, and insecurity, that Roth shows himself to be the kind of guide many rural pastors—and rural residents—can trust. He cares enough about the rural people and communities he serves to pay attention to “the wonderful particularities of the place” (28) and the “beautiful stories” (74) and “frayed stories” (76) that mark the tapestry of a community’s interwoven history and life. At the same time, he is honest enough to admit that he may not, in the end, be able to trust his instincts or be able to fulfill “the basic act of love” for a place and a people—an act he claims is defined by “choosing to live in a place, with a people, over the long term” (27). I would argue that most rural pastors have felt this same tension in their bones. At one time or another most of us have longed to nurture the place where God had called us while simultaneously mulling over the temptation to run for the hills (or, perhaps, the suburbs or city).
The Joy and Hope of Rural Ministry
As real as the temptations and inner conflicts of rural ministry can be, the reader of Flyover Country is not likely to come away from it discouraged. Sure, frayed stories exist and the sirens of ambition and upward mobility (or simply mobility) continue to beckon, but there is real joy in ordinary life in everyday places.
Roth showcases this joy through the very act of writing. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Roth is his writing style. Roth writes with a whimsical style that manages to introduce a playfulness into discussions that might be weighed down by obligation, shame, or fear. As I read this book, I started writing “Rothism” into the margin when I encountered one of these smile-inducing turns of phrase. For instance, Roth recounts that Ignatius Loyola found himself in a Spanish hospital “after losing an argument with a cannon ball” (43), that Jesus left his small town and “went to the beach” (54) to start his ministry, and how, in picturesque French villages, even the cicadas are more cultured than their American cousins as they sing outside in “raspy French” (120). I especially enjoyed his admission that goal driven and transformational leadership marked by those who excel at envisioning the Next Big Thing is something he aspires to “every other Wednesday” (130).
While these examples may strike some readers as silly, I think examples like this, when taken with Roth’s clear and sometimes playful prose, not only makes this book enjoyable, it also demonstrates the goodness of being dedicated to a craft. When Roth says that one of the three callings on his life is to write, the reader gets a sense that Roth has taken this call seriously enough to work at it. In the end, Roth’s commitment to writing well for folks in rural ministry is simply another demonstration that rural people and places matter.
By the end of the book most readers will be convinced that Roth truly believes this. Small places matter. Because they matter, it is essential that all of us in rural churches and small communities learn to tell the stories of our particular piece of the rural mosaic well. This will mean cultivating attentiveness alongside a gospel-informed imagination. If Jesus could minister in the small towns of Galilee, then no place is too small or too much of a dead end.
This is what Roth calls the church to help residents of rural communities imagine. As he notes near the end of the book, “I’m convinced that the great work of our age isn’t just drawing attention to the plight and promise of rural, but to speak with enduring affection of how life in the sticks can be rich and full and authentic” (122). To that end, Roth argues that “the work of our times will involve challenging the noting that the path to rural is a path to nowhere: a Dead End.”
I think Roth is right. I also think that the gospel-informed, Spirit-led church is the voice that can showcase this type of flourishing in whatever corner of flyover country we call home.
Charles E. Cotherman is executive director of the Center for Rural Ministry and an assistant professor of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grove City College. He is also a pastor at Oil City Vineyard, a church he and his wife Aimee had the privilege of planting in 2016. He has written on rural ministry, church planting, and history for a variety of publications including Evangelicals, Modern Reformation, Front Porch Republic, and Plough. He is the author of To Think Christianly (IVP Academic) and a contributing editor of Sent to Flourish: Guide to Planting and Multiplying Churches (IVP Academic). He lives with his wife, four children, and a spoiled cat and dog in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Charlie can be reached at charlie@ruralministry.org
