I was glad to see some push back against the urban-centric understanding of contemporary church life. Kyle Borg supplied it in the following words:
. . . the benefits of a rural community can (and should) become the benefit of the rural church. I’m not waging a campaign trying to abolish the city church. Even though I don’t want to live in the city, I pray the preaching of the cross would reach the ears of Felix, Festus, and Agrippa. But one of the immediate advantages for the rural church is that our voice can resound throughout our sphere of influence–hospitals, schools, city-boards, league sports, town halls, prisons, nursing homes–quite literally, the whole community. And, at least situationally, it’s easier for us to be heard.
This got me thinking: how would you tell the difference between a rural or urban church? Would the service be different? Would the ministers be folksy in the rural church but hip in the city — say an Amish beard on the pastor in the former and a soul patch in the latter? Would the urban church have more programs than the rural church if only because the former has more resources?
But what if both urban and rural congregations were committed merely (as if) to ministering the word of God through preaching, sacraments and discipline? Chances are that the rural church could use the urban liturgy of Calvin’s city congregation just as much as the urban pastor could. And the reason for that sameness may have much more to do with the word pastors minister and the persons who need the word irrespective of their social location, than with the elixir that urban locations supply to those addicted to seeking influence.
Old Life 