Latest / Small Town Summits / The God of Small Places & Evangelism in Rural Communities w/ Glenn Daman
Transcript
- Ben Whittinghill: First of all, pastors in rural ministry. Their ministry is important theologically and really is an expression of God's heart. It's not just a fill in for something better or just because you can't get a big church you end up in a rural area. But it really is a a theological necessity and of eternal significance for them. That what they're doing out there in these forgotten places is part of an expression of God's heart. Welcome back to the Small Town Summit Podcast. Today we are blessed to be joined by Glenn Damon. Glenn is a longtime pastor and respected author. He's a leading advocate for rural and small church ministry. He knows of what he speaks. He's been a faithful pastor at River Christian Church in Stevenson, Washington since 1991. Glenn is also the author of the recently released book, The God of Small Places. Theological Foundation for Rural Ministry. So we've invited him on to talk about the book and even specifically his chapter on evangelism in rural communities. We pray that this first installment of ⁓ highlighting a few chapters in this book is a blessing to you. All right, Glenn, welcome to the Small Town Summit Podcast. We're thrilled to have you on. For everybody just joining us, I am Ben, I'm one of the hosts. And I am Michael, your other host. So, Glenn, we are thrilled to have you on or excited to talk about small town ministry, rural ministry, and different ways that the Lord's used you to edify the small town church. But before we jump there, would you share a bit about yourself? Your testimony or how you're serving Christ now, where you do that, we'd love to get to know you a bit. Yeah. well, I grew up on a farm in Idaho, so ⁓ I always say I'm just a farm kid. Give me some tractor time and I'm happy. My parents were were believers. My mother came out as a Stonecroft missionary who were missionaries sent out to establish Sunday schools. The farmers thought they were great because all these single gals were coming out. And she met my dad and so I grew up in a small village mission's church of about forty people. Your typical small church. ⁓ it's been a daemon on the board for probably seventy years. So ⁓ you talk about tribal chiefs, I know all about that. But you come from the Chiefs family, is that I come from the Chiefs family, yeah. But so I grew up in the really entered into ministry with a passion for the the small church, 'cause that's where I'm at. The church was your typical country church in a small town of about a hundred people. We knew everybody and ⁓ it was a great place to grow up. But yeah, so you know, I grew up in that environment, went to Bible college and seminary and really felt initially called into teaching languages, so that's what I went to Bible college for. But my uncle, who was ⁓ a teacher at Multnomah university suggested I get some pastoral experience before I go into teaching. So I thought, well, that sounds good. So I took a church in Weebo, Montana. If you don't know where Weebo is, well, it's right at it's not the end of the earth, but it's right near it. And ⁓ pastored there for four years. And that's where I really started getting a passion for rural ministry and pursued my my doctoral ministry on and focused on rural ministry and that's really been my heart and seeing the need out there and and really striving to try to encourage rural pastors because it's a it's a tough ministry and you don't get a lot of recognition. You don't get any rewards, but there's people out there that need to hear the gospel. So so that's kind of my background. Just give me a tractor time and I'm happy. You know, they people always say, you know, you're not you're not going to the small town church to land a book deal and then here you are putting out books from small town ministry. You didn't go into it to get the book deals, but you have written a good number of books. So before we get to this new book that's about to be released this year, ⁓ I'd love to get the background on that. Like did you always were you always a writer? Did you know that you wanted to use that gift to edify the church and how d how did that come about and then what are some other titles that you've written in case people haven't they're not familiar with your other books? Yeah, I I never saw myself as a writer. It's not something that I inspired to do. When I did my doctoral work, I did it on the rural church. And so that became kind of the basis of the first book I wrote. But it was really more because there wasn't not a lot written back in the eighties, nineties. There just wasn't a lot written on rural ministry from my evangelical context. There was a lot from mainline ministries. And so I really felt a need for encouraging pastors in rural areas. So that was my first book then was kind of the the outgrowth of that doctoral project. And so then I wrote a kind of a follow up. That was Shepherding the Small Church. Then I wrote a kind of a follow up called Leading the Small Church, which really the title should be reversed. And ⁓ then I saw a need in in for training rural boards, because most boards are not well equipped in rural areas to lead a church. They function kinda as business managers. And so I did a book on developing leaders in the small church, really for developing the board to be effective leaders. And then then I've written also Shepherding the Small Church, and then another book called When Shepherds Weep, just dealing with how do we understand the pain of ministry and how do we process it through in light of our calling. Because I think sometimes even in rural ministry we think Ministry should be easy. It should be fun. People love us. We're doing God's work. But the the call to ministry is in many ways a call to pain. And it is a call to suffer. So how do we deal with that? And so then this last project on this anthology, and then Jeff and I are also in the process of finalizing the the public publisher for ⁓ a book on Retooling the the small church, rural church for the twenty first century, really looking at how postmodernism is coming into rural areas and how it's gonna change our ministry and how we need to adapt our ministry to the postmodern world. So those are the the books that I've written, but really it's not driven by a desire to write other than a desire to share. what I see is the needs out there for rural pastors and to encourage them. And so one of the things I think that's been most exciting as I look back over the last twenty some years and thirty years of ministry is the number of books that are now being written by evangelicals on rural ministry. Really since you know, about ten years ago. So there's just been a lot written and that's encouraging because I see a lot of younger guys like that are s picking up the the baton and and really promoting rural ministry. Well your next book that you have coming out of this anthology that you're speaking of called The God of Small Places is obviously in that that same vein of of rural ministry. But can you can you explain what moved you to be a part of this particular book and then What would you say sort of sets it apart from the other books that you've written on on the small church? Well, I think there's there's several things that led to this book. One is my concern is that rural ministry kind of has become a fad in evangelicalism. There's a lot of conversation about it. And how do we make sure that it's not just a fad, but it becomes really an expression of the gospel and an expression of our theology? that were theologically driven rather than just it's the latest thing to do. And so that was kind of the underlying motivation for it. Also kind of a a response to Tim Keller's book when he talked about the the city why cities matter and his theology of urban ministry. Well then how does that look for rural ministry? How how do we develop a theological motivation ⁓ For rural ministry that will sustain us into the future. So that was kind of the basis of the theme. And then I really believe that corporate wisdom always exceeds individual wisdom, no matter how smart that person may be. And what I desired to see was corporate body of leaders in rural ministry really. setting forth a material out there that would give that perspective. You know, I I enjoy because we have a lot of variety, a lot of theological variety writing, all the evangelicals, but different perspectives that I think really adds to the our th theological understanding of rural ministry. I love that you you even mentioned to me that one of one of the joys of that is giving voice, leveraging maybe a platform or inroads that God's given you because of your faithfulness and now pulling other guys into that and accessing the wisdom that God's given them from their experience. How did you find the authors that you did? And it sounds you can hear you talking about it, that you share our passion for theological vision. Did they these guys all have that same passion and were able to settle on the chapters that they did, or did you have kind of ⁓ architectural map in your mind and then you asked select guys for certain topics that you had in mind. How did you map this out? Yeah. Well we Jeff and I I worked with Jeff Clark, who is at that time the director of Rural Matters. He knew he had a lot of context because of his involvement with Rural Matters Institute. So he knew people that I didn't know because of that. So we kind of then mapped out what our framework would be and then really sought to get writers that were involved in rural ministry. They had a ministry, kind of a broader ministry and they had written on rural ministry, but maybe didn't have that broader context of being known. And so we tried we recruited them to hopefully help them in their ministry to advance their ministry, but also bring in that corporate knowledge of different perspectives. As you know, rural ministry, as Jeff always says, if you've seen one rural church, you've seen one rural church. Every church is very different. And every region is very different. So we wanted to get kind of a more of a a broader perspective, both regionally, theologically and and culturally that would then I think give a better foundation for the whole of rural ministry rather than just, you know. Eastern Montana. We want to transition to to the chapter that you wrote on this in a moment, but I want to ask very quickly, kind of in in summary of the total book, if you were to say, All right, the primary audience for this book fill in the blank, and if if this is what the God does with it, it would be like this would be a an answer to prayer if if this is how God used the book. Yeah, I I think the audience would be first of all pastors in rural ministry to encourage them that their ministry is important theologically and really is an expression of God's heart. It's not just to fill in for something better or just because you can't get a big church you end up in a rural area, but it really is a a ⁓ theological necessity and of eternal significance for them. that what they're doing out there in these forgotten places is part of an expression of God's heart. And then also for individuals maybe entering into ministry that they would see that this becomes also an important expression of our theology that we need rural pastors. And rural areas are struggling to get rural. pastors. And so how can we encourage them? How can we get more individuals with that calling to go out into these forgotten places when seminary do a great job, but they teach you to go to a urban area. It's it's that's the model that they present. That's where they encourage you, you know, become a staff member, build your career rather than go out into these forgotten places where people near the h need to hear the gospel. So that would be my twofold goal. My desire would be to encourage that guy out there and hopefully help to give a ⁓ a vision and a passion for new pastors coming in to capture the the importance of rural ministry. Well the contribution that you had to the book was in evangelism. You know, other than the editing, you you wrote the chapter on on evangelism. And I think that a lot of people when they Are thinking of evangelism, they're they're thinking of big cities, or maybe that's what they have in their in their minds as you know, the pastor preaching on the street corner in New York City or Atlanta or wherever it might be. ⁓ but when it comes to evangelism, they they probably don't typically think of the small town or they don't think of rural America. And so can you can you speak to the need that there really is in these these rural towns, these small town America for evangelism? Well, I think in several ways. First of all, one of the the challenges we face in rural ministry, especially in regard to evangelism, is that we look at rural areas, they're they're politically conservative, they're morally conservative, but that does not qu equate into a personal relationship with Christ. And so the assumption is, well, rural areas are already over they're evangelized already, so we don't need to go there. We need to go to the urban areas where there's a need. But yet if you look statistically, the number of nons, the number of people who don't attend church is pretty much the same as what you would find in rural in urban areas. So we make the assumption that people don't need the gospel, but if you took rural America and made it into its own nation, It'd be about the twenty-fourth largest nation in the world. Yet we're saying that that doesn't need a gospel. And to really see that, we need to to recognize that not only does it need the gospel, it needs the presence of the church to advance the gospel. And I think that's where we struggle. We think, well, they can they can come to the urban centers. You know, and there was that whole time where, well, we need to create the Walmart church. Centralized rural churches that would be that. place where people could come. But that's not the reality of the the gospel or the Great Commission. The Great Commission is not gather, it's to go. It's it's to to take the church into those these small communities. And you know in your each of your communities, how many people would travel 30, 40, 50 miles to go to a church? It's it's just not going to happen. And so We need to be taking the gospel out to these areas where there's you know, I think of churches that are sixty, seventy miles from the next town where the next church would be. And those people need to hear the gospel. So how are we gonna do that if we don't take it out there? ⁓ how do we gonna do that if the church doesn't go out there? You know, I you know, in our in our soteriology, We need to affirm the value of one. How important is each individual to Christ? If only one person was in need of the gospel, if only one person needed salvation, Christ still would have come to die on the cross, right? Christ came not to die just for the world, he came to die for every single individual in the world. And ⁓ you know, we talk about the example of Philip. going down into the desert. And and I and I always enjoy that story because, you know, he was in Jerusalem where everything was happening. I mean, the church was exploding. They were developing new programs. They were developing new ministries. They were advancing. You know, it was the place to be. There was a revival going on. And God says to Philip, I want you to go out into the desert. You know, you could you could almost see him saying, why? Just Want you to go out there. And he gets out there and he's looking around. And I could just see him saying, There's not even a better one out here. What am I doing out here? And all of a sudden, here comes this one guy in a chariot, and the spirit says, I want you to go to him. One guy out here? We've got thousands coming to know Christ in Jerusalem, and you send me out here for one guy in the middle of nowhere. And ⁓ of course. We know the story that he went up there and and led the person to Christ in church tradition has it that he was the one who went back and started the Ethiopian church that became a significant influence in in Africa. But if God saw the the importance of one, he mentioned it, he says the angels rejoice at the salvation of each other. Well, where does that fit in in terms of our our view of missions? If that's he's that important to God to send his son to die for that one. If angels rejoice at the salvation of one, how important is those individuals that we're ministering to in the forgotten areas of of America and other areas of of our the world? So I think it's important that that our soteriology develops the importance of of one person. Then I think also in terms of our evangelism, we also need to to recognize the importance of two. Because you know the text says that where two or more are gathered, there am I in the midst. And it's in the context of church discipline. And what he's saying is those two individuals, if they're in the act of performing church discipline, they're functioning as the church. And God says, I'm there present. Christ says, I'm there present. So, how many people is a healthy church? You know, we think of the church today, and we think of structures, we think of of programs, we think of staff, and all these things that are necessary for the church, and yet when we look in scripture, you can have a church with two people. If you have two people in Borough Alaska, they can start gathering together and they become the church, the expression of the church. And so it's not the size of the church that determines the value of the church, it's the presence of Christ as we function within the body of Christ to mutually encourage one another. So in our soteriology, we need to affirm the value of one. In our ecclesiology, we need to affirm the value of two. And I think that's what we oftentimes lack in in the church today. We look at it as well, how how big is your staff? How many people are being baptized every day? How many programs do you have? Rather than looking at it and saying, No, if you have two people, that's important enough for Christ to be present. So our ministry is is just as important to Christ as the megachurch is in the urban areas. It's not to discredit those churches, but it's to recognize that both have equal value before God. Well, that reminds me of one of the things that you wrote early on in the chapter that really resonated with me when you were talking about how, you know, there are times where we go to these big conferences and we are sitting underneath these ⁓ This teaching that whether they mean for this to happen or not, it can it can make you feel like, okay, now I gotta go back to ⁓ I gotta go back to my home church. I've got to change everything. We need to ⁓ you know add all these programs and add all these events in order to draw people in because we need to be evangelistic. And you you ⁓ rightly, you know, ⁓ kind of call that out, call that mentality out and say actually, no, the the the primary motivation ⁓ for Evangelism shouldn't be these big ten things and just to see these crowds of people come in. In fact, it starts earlier than that. It starts with your theology of God's holiness. Can you can you speak to that? Why that should be the motivator behind the small town church who can be sometimes in and you know, I'm I'm putting myself in that ⁓ in that those crosshairs, ⁓ can sometimes be Trapped in that mentality of we've got to get people in, we've got to grow this little teeny tiny church and all these kinds of things. But but no, slow down. You need to focus on God's holiness. Yeah, well, the holiness of God, when you think about it, one is I think it's a neglected attribute of God. We love to focus on his love and you know, and his grace, but his holiness is what defines him. And it's interesting that when God calls Isaiah He doesn't give him a vision of his love. He gives him a vision of his holiness. That he is a holy God and that because he's holy, s he cannot tolerate sin. And without grace there is no hope. So it it really starts with the recognition that he demands holiness on our part. So good people don't get to heaven, because good people are still sinful people. And we look at rural areas and they're they're good people, but we need to see them through the eyes of Christ and through his holiness that they are sinful people. You know, and I think of of Christ when he was ministering there in Matthew 9, when the crowds were coming to him there, and you know, what did the disciples see when they saw the crowds? Well, that was in their home territory. I'm sure they saw their friends, they saw The people that maybe were relatives, the people they went in the synagogue with, they were good people in their eyes. And and when they saw them, if they would ask them, they would have said, Yeah, there's Abraham, he's a good old guy. And they would have seen them as as the salt of the earth kind of people, just like we do in in rural areas. But Christ says, he looks at him, he says, They're like a sheep without a shepherd. There they have been attacked. They are in desperate need. Why? Because he saw their spiritual need, not their social goodness. And that's what we need to see, I think, in rural areas when we go out there. These are people, they're good people, but they're still trapped by sin. And unless we see that, that they need the gospel, we're not going to have the motivation then to reach them with the gospel or to even go there. You know, so I think that's where it starts. It starts with our vision, first of all, God, and then allowing God to transform our perspective of our perception of people and how w how they view them. I love that you draw are drawing attention to Isaiah because I was I was really encouraged by reading this book. It accomplished for me what you were hoping and just like it's that shot of encouragement for small town ministry. And I think that guys actively ministering in a small town and guys considering it need the same thing. You're you're bringing the gospel to bear on small town ministry and dignifying it with the gospel and saying, like, look at the character of Christ, look at his worth. He's worth the worship of people everywhere. But it it's like you're bringing the real Bible all the way home into the nooks and crannies of what are we considering being worth the calling on on our lives? So young guys might be thinking about, you know, I even heard in seminary, I think, like image of God per per capita kind of thing. You know, like where's the the most people? Uh-huh. You're talking about Isaiah. He sees the holiness of God. He's willing to go. And then after that, God gives him the fine print. Nobody's gonna listen. You know? And that's not exactly like a a dream calling. And then I was reading Jeremiah this morning. He's getting discouraged and he's like, God, how long? I mean, all these people are flourishing that are wicked and and then God looks he says, If if you've raced with men on foot and they've worn you out, how are you gonna run with horses? He basically tells Jeremiah, It's gonna get worse. Okay, these are your hometown guys. It's gonna get much worse than this. And we read that, but then we want ministry to be like easy, big, flashy stepping board. So man, I would love for you to even drill down on that as guys are considering their calling or maybe they're listening to this and they're actively, they feel like pastoring feels like building a sand castle where the tide comes in. And it's just like five steps forward. Five steps back, sometimes seven steps back. And and eventually you just get tired and wonder. I think I reached a a season a couple years ago where I was just wondering, was I doing the right thing? And I've since learned the fact that it comes down sometimes doesn't mean that you were doing anything wrong. It's part of the rhythms and tides of life and ministry. But I was young and I was just all I wanted to know is, God, are you in this? And God, are you pleased with this? If you're pleased with it, then I can keep going. But if I'm doing something wrong, it just feels like it's too much. So how would you, in addition to, hey, go pick up this book, encourage guys that are listening in, they're like, Hey, can you can you drill down a little bit more on that encouragement around my work mattering? Yeah, well, I again we look at ministry from the standpoint of how many people have we saved? How many people we brought into the church? But the reality is that it God did not call us to save people. He does the saving. Right? That's our our our soteriology that that Paul says, Some plant, some water, but God gives the increase. We cannot change a person's heart. Only God can do that. Our task is to communicate the gospel and to share the gospel with people. So we look at it I think evangelism, we look at evangelism as From our instant gratification culture. I want instant results. I want it now. But when we look at the scriptures, and I go to the parable of the sower, you know, he he casts out the seed. Now I grew up on a farm. You don't bring a combine in right after you've put the the seed into the ground. There's a process that happens. There's there's the growth of the seed, there's the fertilizer, and you have to fertilize it. You have to go in and spread the spray the weeds. And so there's there's a process that happens before the harvest is ready. And sometimes we get we lose sight of that that in rural ministry it's about relationships and forming relationships. And sometimes it takes time for that to happen before that person really comes to know Christ. So it takes ⁓ You know, it takes time, it takes effort, but we want it now. And our culture says you should have it now. And if your church isn't growing, you're doing something wrong. Well, growth is sometimes hidden. And it's sometimes slow. And if it takes years for one person to come to know Christ, for that one person, your ministry has been the most important ministry in all eternity. Because it's affected that one person for eternity. And we don't know the effect that it has in the long term. There's a story in ⁓ about the turn of the century. There was a there was a pastor who was serving in in Duluth, Minnesota, fairly large church, but he started going up to the northwoods of Minnesota. And he started ministering up there. And and that was a rough and tough ministry. I mean, if you didn't drop your The gloves, sometimes you weren't gonna make it. You had to be willing to sometimes deal with rowdies. And so it was a tough ministry that he went up there. And ⁓ the church finally says, Well, Pastor, you need to decide whether you're gonna go up there or are you gonna stay here? And his his answer was, and they said, Take some time to pray about it. And he says, I don't need to pray about it. There's a thousand guys from seminary that'd take this church. Nobody's going up into the Northwoods in the logging camps. Here's my resignation. I'm going. I don't know what his wife would have thought when he came home and said, Dear, I just resigned from the church. And but ⁓ he started ministering up in these northwoods and he eventually recruited several other individuals to help him in that ministry. One of the individuals he ⁓ recruited, was involved at he was in Moody, he was involved in a large church there. They thought he was crazy to join this guy in this ministry to the the logging camps. But he went, he started and he eventually went out to eastern Washington and northern Idaho to start ministering to the to the logging camps there and started doing evangelism in small towns in the area and eventually was Preaching in a small town and and a young man went before came forward to accept Christ. That young man was my father. And you go to the church and in the basement of the church, they labeled it, they called it Faral Hall, which is more like Pharaoh closet. But you know, that that man who went up there to minister to the logging camps was career suicide. for from the perspective of the world. But I'm here today because of him. Because he went up there and saw a vision for logging camps and recruited others for that ministry. There's a book about it, if you want to read a great book, it's called Last of the Giants. They've reprinted it. It tells his story. But that's what ministry is all about. We don't know the long term effect that we have. We may reach one person with the gospel in our whole ministry. But that one person, first of all, is in eternity because of that. But that one person may have an impact on other people that we never know about. So we can never that's why I say we never can devalue the value of one and the importance of where we're at in our ministry and the the long term effect that that has in the lives of people for generations to to follow. Reminded when you said ministry is really a call to suffering and ⁓ our Lord's words when he said, Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, then it remains alone. And you fast forward in the end of John when he's telling Peter by what kind of death he's going to glorify God. And Peter wants to know, Well, what's the plan for John? 'Cause everybody had like I think we know we all have deaths by which we glorify God, but we also have in mind the ways that we would like to die to glorify God. the the ministry that we'd be called to by which we would glorify God. And ⁓ that's just an incredible story of going someplace that nobody else was willing to go or would want to go. And then all the fruit that's been born from it generationally. So thanks for sharing that. And that's what ministry is all about. It's affecting people. And and I think that's what we lose. We equate church growth with church success. And they're not necessarily the same thing. Success is leading people to the kingdom and proclaiming the gospel of Christ. It's not the numbers, it's the individuals. And that's what makes ⁓ I think our ministry important. That if it's important enough for the heart of God to send a church there, it's important enough for us to be there. Yeah. Amen. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and that's that's such an encouragement to me being, you know, five years into my my first pastoral ministry ever. And and doing that, you know, coming from the Bible belt where you just see these massive churches just everywhere. I've I've prayed that the Lord does this work in my heart where I sacrifice this this idol of what I want my ministry to look like to God's actual plan for my ministry, which is far better and far more glorious and far more God honoring. So, you know, hearing you speak those incredible words of wisdom is such an encouragement to me. So do you have any parting words, any last words before we say goodbye to encourage other other ministers who are putting their hand to the plow up here in New England or or even in the ⁓ rural places across the States? Any any last words of encouragement that you have for them? Well I think the most important thing for us to realize is this is not a denominal questi denominational question. It's not a question of validity and sustainability of the church. It's a question of the gospel and of our theology. Does our theology motivate us to go to the rural areas and minister to people? Because if it doesn't, then there's something wrong with our theology. It has it has nothing to do with the size of the church, the pay we're gonna get. it has everything to do with our theological framework. Do we see what we're doing as an expression of the heart of God? And I believe that rural ministry is important because not because our denomination says it is, or because a book says it is, but because God says it is in his his word to go into all the world. He doesn't say go to the cities, he goes to e wherever there's people where to go. That we should be motivated to take the gospel to the remotest parts of the world, even if there's only one person there, because they need to hear the gospel. That's why what we do is important. Amen. Well, Glenn, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, to encourage us, and this has been just a complete joy. So thank you so much for for this conversation. Well thank you for having me. I always enjoy talking about rural ministry. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks so much. God bless. Thank you again for listening to the Small Town Summit Podcast. We hope that it was a blessing to you, and if you are interested in learning more about the Small Town Summit Ministry, check out our website, smalltownsummits.com. We also want to let you know about an exciting opportunity to join us, the Rural Home Missionary Association in Desiring God, at a new England wide conference October 5th through the 6th in Newberry Port, Massachusetts. Our speakers, Dave Mathis and Scott Hubbard of Desiring God, We'll be helping small town pastors and ministry leaders remember that Christ is our treasure and goal in gospel ministry. For more information, visit STSfallconference.com. Again, that is STSfallconference.com. We hope to see you there.