Learning to
Number Our Days

Last week, I wrote about the joys and challenges of small church, rural ministry. To be sure, these kinds of ministries come with a unique set of challenges. But they also come with many wonderful opportunities. I mentioned my first ministry among the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) in Manitoba. My family lived in a Métis community of less than twenty people located adjacent to the Hollow Water First Nation, a community of about 2000, half of whom lived on the reserve, while others lived off reserve locally or elsewhere, such as Winnipeg. A paper written in 1990 suggested that when we lived in the area, there were less than 1000 people between the four communities—Hollow Water, Manigotagan, Seymourville, and Ahgaming. It was a small community.

The unique life opportunities there abounded and the blessings were rich! I spent a lot of time with the men of the community in their daily activities—fishing, trapping, cutting wood, and participating in community life. It was thrilling to live and work among them. For a time, I participated on the local school committee as a representative for Ahgaming, Frontier School Division #48. We didn’t run the school as a school board, we only provided local input to the school division. I spent time on the trapline with some of the men, went out on the lake (frozen or otherwise) when they “lifted” their nets, sat with them at the weigh scales while they waited for trucks to weigh, attended their wakes, often speaking briefly, attended funerals or marriages and enjoyed the community suppers, sometimes saying grace as the only resident minister. One of my favorite events was their annual wild game dinner—delicacies like moose, beaver tail, muskrat, lynx, wild rice, bannock, local freshwater fish of various kinds delighted our palettes. We learned much and laughed much with neighbors many of whom became our friends.

When we moved north, Rebecca and I had been recently married and we knew little of life and living in the bush. We heated our home with a wood stove. The first winter, when I hooked up the chimney pipe, I put the damper (it looked something like this but much more simple forty years ago) at the top of the pipe near the ceiling. Melvin came walking into the house laughing one evening for Bible study. My placing the damper so high meant that every time the wind blew, it would suck heated air out of the house. He informed me that the damper should be placed as low down the pipe as possible so that it would pull cooler air out of the house. The stove needed the damper to keep the wind from drawing air through the wood stove increasing the speed at which the wood burned. I just didn’t know what I was doing. Another time, he came into the house laughing, seeing that I was burning wet wood. “You have to season the wood” he said, to which my wife asked if that would make it smell better! We were so young and inexperienced. But they loved us and taught us how to live.

The women were equally helpful to my wife as a young mother. Yvonne helped my wife learn how to handle and bathe our first child. Neighbors and friends taught her how to embrace the cold winters, make bannock, cook wild rice and moose, string beads and socialize. They laughed with her and sometimes at her, not in a malicious way, but because she was so young and inexperienced. That helped her to learn to laugh at herself. Such a joyful group of people and such great memories!

In exchange, we learned their way of life, their joys and their trials. This week Pope Francis is in Canada apologizing to the indigenous peoples for the mistreatment their children faced when they were forced to attend religious schools. They were punished if they spoke their own languages while on the school grounds and they were given English names rather than using their indigenous ones. Sometimes they were sexually abused. Many died and recently mass graves have been brought to light. I once asked a man with whom I was visiting why the reserve was divided by religion. The Catholics lived at one end, while the Anglicans lived in the other direction. At one time, there were two schools on the reserve, one run by the Catholics, and the other run by the Anglicans. The man looked at me and suggested that it was the fault of my people—Christians—who had divided the reserve along religious lines. Of course, he knew I didn’t personally do it, but I heard him loud and clear. In this particular case, Christianity did more harm than good! We had work to do to win their trust.

There were occasional tensions because I was a gitchi-mookomaan, big knife, an American, but I sought to show them respect and appreciate their way of life. I worked to gain their trust. Though it wasn’t necessary to learn their language to communicate, I learned words and phrases, some of which I remember to this day. As I was learning these, sometimes the old timers would try to teach me embarassing words. Ambrose, an old fisherman, told me to walk over to an older lady and say “o-geem-shin” or something like that. But he laughed when he made the suggestion. It turns out he was trying to get me to say “give me a kiss!” It was such a great privilege to live and serve. They taught us much. The attitude of the white man was often “can all you get and get all you can.” Their attitude was to share and share alike. If someone killed a moose, neighbors showed up to get a piece of the meat. A piece was freely given, even to the waabishkiiwe.

I also helped one of the schoolteachers run a boy scout program for a brief time. I took reserve kids to camp and used my chain saw and pickup truck to help them cut wood to sell to raise money for camp. It was here that I developed my passion for cutting wood. I would cut 4­–6 cords per winter, full cords, not face cords. Because I had a truck and a saw, I would help others gather their own wood. It was a great way to serve.

Before we had children, Norman, who worked for the Manitoba government, hired me and my Toyota Land Cruiser to take he and his wife up the winter road for his work to the Bloodvein First Nation and the Paungassi First Nation. The winter road literally started at our front door and went north along the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg, across rivers, over the muskeg and through the bush, to connect remote communities that didn’t have an all-weather road. Food and fuel were trucked north in the winter to supply these remote areas. What an experience! What an opportunity! Thanks, Norman for the pleasure!

I was doing some work on the home we were living in and a local contractor came to see me. He saw my drywall finishing and asked me to finish drywall for him. I did a few houses. Because our home was poorly winterized when we arrived, we were without water from late November to April. I knew how to sweat copper, so I replumbed the house. Word got out that I had this skill, and I was asked to repair a rotted bathroom floor in a local man’s home. I quoted the man a price, but he had a hard time saving the money. He and his wife went to bingo regularly.  When he said God hadn’t answered his prayers supplying him with sufficient funds for the job, I challenged him about his spending habits. “That’s what I like about you, you don’t always tell me what I want to hear!” was his response. Soon his floor was fixed. On another occasion, I had the opportunity to install a flush toilet for an older couple in their 70s. It was the first time in their life they had indoor plumbing!

It was a rich and rewarding ministry and one we will never forget. Was it hard? At times. But it was a great place to begin our lifetime of service for Christ. I received a number of good comments from my essay last week. One brother spoke of his father’s long ministry in a small rural church. It certainly gave a solid foundation for this brother as he entered into his own ministry. Small church rural ministry is a great place to serve the Lord if He opens the door! You might have to work hard, but isn’t life about hard work? The ministry certainly is.

Recently, I had the joy of ministering to a church in a community in southern Minnesota whose posted population was 1322. The village is on a secondary road that runs north to south and is located about forty miles from the third largest city in Minnesota—Rochester. Rochester itself boasts a population of less than 160,000 so it’s a major urban center with a good base that sustains the surrounding towns and villages, but its long drive makes it impractical for the rural people in the town where I preached to attend church there. The town itself has four churches—Lutheran, Methodist, Roman Catholic plus a Baptist church. This paucity of churches is not surprising given the town’s size. There are two other Baptist churches within twenty miles. Without the local church, people who wish this type of evangelical ministry would have a half hour drive on good days or longer during bad weather. The town is the county seat, a county with just over 21,000 people. The church is not large, with perhaps forty there the Sunday I spoke, but there was a good number of children present, plus a nice mix of adults across the ages. It may be a smalltown church, but recently, they took fifteen teenagers to camp and about the same number to children’s camp.

The brother who has been there for the last six years was converted about a dozen years ago at a similar rural church across the state. His wife trusted Christ soon after her husband when she witnessed the change in his life. Though he had no undergraduate education, he came to seminary as a special student, giving up a well-paying job, relocating his family to the seminary town. During seminary, he also had a well-paying job that allowed him to drive late model vehicles. Yet after graduation, he quit that job to accept this rural pastorate.

Spending Sunday with him reminded me of the great ministry opportunities in rural settings. These small towns can be good places to live and raise a family. While the congregations may not always be able to financially compensate their pastor with a living wage (I heard from another former student last week who is having to take a side job to help pay the bills after a year at his new church to allow his wife to quit working to care for their growing family), but the side benefits may include the occasional side of beef or half a hog (or in the case of my Alaskan friend, fresh salmon) or produce from a parishioner’s garden.

Rural pastoring can be challenging and rewarding, but it is a vital part of Christian ministry. Those brothers and sisters who choose to labor in these small communities reach many who would not otherwise be reached. Yet many brothers are fearful of smalltown ministry. They think that ministry opportunities will be limited, fellowship will be hard to come by and rural churches will often be ingrown and difficult to pastor. They fear being stuck in a place where they will have a hard time living and few opportunities for growth and development. They are concerned they will have insufficient funds to adequately care for their families.

Having served in a rural ministry in Canada—our first ministry was among the Ojibwe people in a place that had maybe 2500 people among the three or four small communities that were in close proximity—we found that life in that setting was deeply rewarding. We were able to get to know people on a very personal level that you might not attain in a city ministry. For example, our mail service was at a small Co-op store seven miles away, where you had to go to pick up the mail. Mail was usually up by 1 PM, so there would be a flood of people there to get their mail. It gave us regular opportunities to interact with many area residents. In fact, that Co-op was one of three very small stores in the community where you could buy milk, bread, Pampers, etc. Major shopping needs would require an hour to travel to a larger town or two and a half hours to an urban center. Our second ministry was in a community of about 15,000 while our final pastoral ministry was in a city with a population in excess of 100,000 and another 75,000 in the surrounding county. Of these three ministries, the rural ministry has a special place in our hearts.

Our first two children were born while we lived there, and we learn much about life while living and ministering among our small community of neighbors. They were like family to us, inviting us into their homes, to their weddings or funerals and to their community celebrations. Once a neighbor borrowed a 5-ton truck that I had to pull himself out of the snow. When the RCMP questioned me about this, I asked, “Did he put it back when he was finished?” “What’s the problem then?” It was just a different life but one we enjoyed immensely.

One of our closest neighbors was a fisherman on Lake Winnipeg who had a license to catch walleye and jack (northern pike) during the three fishing seasons, spring, fall and winter. They commercial fished in the winter, using nets that were skillfully set under the ice. A board of about six feet in length was inserted through a hole drilled with an auger. A line was tied to the board and a metal device was attached to the board that would allow the fisherman to pull the line and release it, causing the board to scoot along the bottom of the ice. When the board had travelled about 100 yards (you could either see the brightly colored board or hear it as it moved), the fisherman would bore another hole, insert a hook and catch the line and extract the jigger. I occasionally went with him on these cold days to help and I was rewarded with fresh walleye to eat. In fact, he used our freezer to store walleye fillets that he prepared for sale and always told us to help ourselves! We had fish all winter long. Once he brought me some white fish which I subsequently tried my hand at smoking. They were pretty good.

Then there was the wild rice and moose meat which our neighbors regularly shared with us. Anytime we needed meat for a guest, our neighbors shared with us. In more temperate climates, the sharing might be corn, tomatoes, pork, chicken, or beef. One friend who lived in a rural area had a farmer who would load his corn planter with sweet corn which might be the three or four outside rows of a field—just for the preacher! Our neighbors and especially our church family made sure we were cared for. Help with our children, help with our vehicles, help with our wood needs, help with understanding the community, they were always available to help us.

Now I have painted a pretty rosy picture of rural ministry, and some might say what about the problems? Unable to pay the bills? I took outside work, sometimes as a drywaller later driving a school bus and working on an ambulance. My ambulance was another great opportunity to get to know the town people. In addition to emergency work, we participated in parades, did standby at the rodeo, assisted in the small hospital when they needed additional “hands.” I received on-the-job training and became an EMT. The consequence of this was the occasional request to do a funeral. I once carried an older man in my ambulance whom I’d never met. Sadly, he died shortly after he entered the hospital. The person, not a family member, who arranged his funeral, asked me to officiate, since I was the only minister he had any recent contact with! It was a great opportunity to share the Gospel with a group of people that I might not have had the occasion to under different circumstances.

Sure, rural ministry has its challenges. Churches sometimes have families interconnected by birth or through marriage. Patience, love and wisdom will be needed to minister in these circumstances, Surely, someone needs to care for these people! The relative isolation from ministry colleagues may be difficult. The salary may be challenging, and outside work may be necessary. However, none of these things should discourage a man from answering God’s call to serve him in a place like this. I know of one man who sought for ministry but seemed pretty selective in what he would take. Consequently, he never was called to a pulpit. He seemed unwilling to consider rural ministry, despite being a new graduate. Too bad really. Many churches would have been glad to have him, and he might have had a good ministry. Rural ministry is an important place to serve. May God raise up men who will fill these pulpits for the glory of God and the evangelism of small towns world-wide.