I was traveling when a blizzard grounded me and gifted me some space to write.  I hunkered down in my hosts’ basement and looked out the rectangular window at a world dialed to static.  I wanted to be at home, but then again, home was filled with sons on spring break, and that’s not always the best environment for putting words on page.  

Writing doesn’t require many tools, though space and quiet help.  However, there are a few necessary disciplines.  The writer must learn to write for God, to act deliberately, and to try something interesting—which is not unlike what we need for rural ministry.  Here are some insights from great writers that I think also speak to rural ministry.

Write for God / Minister for God.  Thomas Merton, the Kentucky monk, was a writer before he became a contemplative at the Abbey of Gethsemani.  He initially thought to give up his ambitions to the writerly life when he entered the monastery, considering them worldly.  Instead, Merton shifted focus and wrote magnetically of the life of prayer.  In his book, New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton wrote “if you write for men…you may make a noise in the world, for a little while.”  “If you write only for yourself you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted you will wish that you were dead.”  Yet “if you write for God you will reach many…and bring them joy” (p.113).  

Swap “write” with “minister” and you’ve got a maxim for the rural church.  Minister for God.  If we judge our ministry by the contentedness of congregation or community—some Them that occupies our mind—we may or may not be considered successful.  At some point, we’ll move beyond what They want, especially in times of change.  We may find ourselves ostracized or sidelined.  But if we minister for God, with an ear to the Spirit’s leading and an eye to Christ’s Kingdom, then “we will reach many…and bring them joy.”  We lead and labor and preach to an audience of One.  We can learn to say with Paul in 1 Corinthians, “It is the Lord who judges me,” and it is He “who will disclose the purposes of the heart” (4:1-5).

Act Deliberately.  When a friend asked Ernest Hemingway for career advice, the great novelist told her “Never confuse movement with action” (Papa Hemingway, p.26).  Too easily, we think that movement—any movement—is good.  We all know what a pastor once told me: any dead fish can float downstream.  Living things move.  Right?

But movement in rural ministry is not necessarily action.  Sometimes we do to do, move to move, driven by the inner whipcracks of some make-bricks Pharaoh.  We confuse frenetic energy with purposive direction.  Early in my ministry, a critical member claimed that I was not “available” (whatever that means).  So I drove through a blizzard to make a series of pastoral visits, just to prove them wrong.  It was dumb and dangerous and totally unnecessary—movement confused for action.  

The alternative is to let Christ set our pace.  Plan.  Try to learn what your course of action will really mean for the congregation.  Pray.  And act deliberately.

Try Something Interesting.  I attended a conference in which Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead, Reading Genesis, and much else good, said: “Try to make life interesting and see what happens.”  We might imagine that writing is simply a process of siphoning ideas from our heads and blotting them onto the paper.  The page is the empty medium.  In my experience, the reality is far different.  The page is a workshop.  Ideas form as we hammer them out.  You don’t really know what you’re writing until you write it.

So too rural ministry.  We don’t really know what we’re doing until we do it.  The smartest strategies flop.  The folks we were sure would connect aren’t interested, go another direction, ghost us.  Sometimes, the scale of rural ministry confounds our plans.  Or there can be relational torque forces we were unaware of.  What I’ve learned is that rural ministry requires experimentation, and experimentation requires planning and a willingness to fail and rejig.  Even if we don’t immediately get the results we were aiming for, the process of thoughtfully trying something new will give us hope and energy.  Striving for good goals brings happiness.  So try to make life interesting and see what happens.

Winter up north finally quieted and the planes flew again.  I got back to Kansas spring and hammered out the rest of this essay while our little son built Legos on the floor.  Time is a gift.  Write and minister with what you’re given.

This post originally appeared on the Town Square Collaborative Substack.

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