Sundays in the Country
Joel Tom Tate on the Surprising Joys of Pastoring a Rural Flock
Several years ago I was living next door to one of the nation’s best Evangelical seminaries. It seemed obvious that this was an opportunity to act on, a providential gimme. So I enrolled there, took one class, and then felt strongly that the Lord was telling me that my seminary career was over. Ironically, that one course was on the denominational distinctives of the church I belonged to at the time, so that the one course I did take does me absolutely no good now as I pursue my ordination in the Wesleyan Church.
Later, the kind hand of Providence brought my family and me to a tiny country church in the mountains of Vermont. It was my first pastorate, and we were thrilled about the people, the church building, the parsonage, and everything else that came along with it. I was so grateful to be a pastor that I never thought to complain about being stuck with a very small congregation in a place where our prospects of significant growth were pretty slim, realistically speaking.
A Country Church
And did I mention that it was a country church? If I ever had any doubt, my congregation did everything they could to remove it. Every week for a few months, the children of one family in the church would offer the same prayer request. They asked for prayer about the cow their family had purchased from a local farmer but which had yet to be delivered. It was a rambunctious cow, and the farmer had all manner of unexpected difficulty in capturing and conveying it to their homestead, which was adjacent to the church.
On the Sunday of Pentecost we unfurled Pentecost banners and talked about the gift of the Holy Spirit. During prayer time the children asked again for prayer about the cow, and dutifully we prayed. When the children were dismissed for children’s church, they went down-stairs to help my wife set up for a party to follow the service. It was a beautiful summer Sunday, and we were going to have a Pentecost birthday party for the Church on the lawn, with red cupcakes and red balloons.
Halfway through the sermon, we all heard the rumble of a truck going down the dirt road next to the church. At that point I had already lost the attention of half the men in the church. A few minutes later, with my wife in the distance desperately calling for her to come back, an irrepressible child came into the sanctuary to announce that “the cow’s here!”
The benediction had scarcely left my lips before the men of the church slipped out, grabbing cupcakes on their way. Presiding over the Pentecost party, I found myself wishing I were with them. The meadow and an angry cow, that’s where the action was. I felt like Moses coming down the mountain to find that the people had been swept away by some golden calf from out of nowhere.
On another occasion I found myself volunteering to help someone in the church butcher a batch of his chickens. I know it sounds glamorous, but surprisingly, it is hard, smelly work. I was glad to do it, and anxious to demonstrate that I was game. But as I scooped hot innards out of a chicken’s cavity with my bare hands, I had to laugh: This was very far from what I had envisioned when I responded to God’s call to ministry.
But the more I reflected on these things, the more I began to see a connection between occasionally playing second fiddle to a cow and God’s refusal to send me to seminary. This church is where our God wants us. But had I graduated seminary with a Master of Divinity degree, I wouldn’t have heard a call to a small church where I would have to work a second job and cut wood to help heat the parsonage. I’d like to think otherwise, but I know myself too well.
Joel Tom Tate is the Director of Student Activities and the Campus Minister at the College of St. Joseph in Rutland, Vermont, in addition to being the pastor of North Chittenden Wesleyan in North Chittenden, Vermont, where he lives with his wife Christine, their three daughters, and a flock of ducks.
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