UMRA news & updates

June 2021

WE ARE ...
THE UNITED
METHODIST
RURAL ADVOCATES
You would not ignore a community
more than seven times larger than
New York City. Yet the rural
population in the United States, with
over 60 million people, is often
overlooked because they are not all
living in the same area.

Whether your church is urban or

rural church, large or small, the
UMRA invites you to join our
association of clergy and laity in
reaching out to meet the needs of
people from rural communities, their
churches and their pastors.
We provide advocacy at General
Conference and Annual
Conferences to affect rule changes
that enable churches to better
minister in their communities,
provide educational opportunities for
the leaders of rural churches to
better serve their church bodies, and
support church leaders in personal
growth and ministry.
Officers
2021-2024
Chair - Randy Wall -
RandyLWall@aol.com
Vice Chair - Andrew Coon -
revcoon@live.com
Secretary - Doug Flinn -
doug.flinn64@gmail.com
Spiritual Director -
Orrinda Stockton -
ostockton@hotmail.com
Communications Dir -
Michele Holloway -
chele101953@gmail.com
Technology: from Novice to
Learner to Still Learning
by Deb Ketcham
I had always depended upon another’s knowledge of
technology, having someone to tend to the electronics
and tech at church and at home. So the past 14 ½
months have been overwhelming, and at times
emotionally crushing, as all of us have survived an
unprecedented upheaval of life, while at the same time
having to cope, re-orient, and move forward in mission
and ministry in the midst of so many unknowns. Many in
church leadership took on responsibilities they never
considered or had the aptitude for. Yet, for the sake of
the mission of Jesus Christ, the Worship services and
other functions of the church had to proceed.
After getting back from vacation in March of 2020, we
were able to hold one last in-person service. After a
quickly called ‘combined Sunday service’, I explained
how we would move forward with mailing and emailing
bulletins that included the words to the songs and
liturgy, so people could fully participate in Zoom Worship
each Sunday. A few days later, four of us, with limited
sound/technology experience, spent hours trying to
figure out how to input into an older computer the sound
 Advocacy Dir - Mollie Stewart
- Molliecstewart0128@gmail.com
Membership - Sue Grace
smgrlg51@yahoo.com
Treasurer - Judy Hill
judyh@plainstel.com
from both the speaker system and key board. Our
technology person died unexpectedly, three months
earlier, at 36, so we were struggling.
Most weeks revolved around numerous hours of online
training since I had only used Zoom for hosting
meetings. Eventually we added a song leader, liturgist,
and a couple people singing. After losing the signal one
Sunday during the service, we realized we needed to be
connected to the router by an Ethernet cord. After a
couple months, I stopped logging the hours of webinars,
podcasts, and technology videos. We purchased a
media license. Eventually we were able to return to one
limited in-person worship. Eventually, after people were
immunized, as protocols were relaxed, a majority of
persons returned to worship, while others ‘Zoomed’ from
home.
In the midst of it all, ministry continued. We were able to
keep connected with our young families with a weekly
lesson and craft each week, and included other children
in our community. The joy and excitement from the
children, of the un-churched families, when I delivered
their packets some weeks was awesome.

Zoom helped us reach out. One member of our church had invited her friend to
church numerous times. Yet, on that very first Zoom, Jill was on, and continued to
Zoom with us for months. After her mother became seriously ill, she no longer
watched, yet I kept in contact with her. When her mother died, the family said they
didn’t know any pastor. Jill said, "I know a pastor," and I became the family’s pastor
and built new relationships. One gentleman who had visited a few years ago found
us through our website and Zoomed with us. As we returned to in-person worship, he has become
a part of our fellowship.
Zoom has opened the door to many who are unable to come to church. They can join us from
home or vacation, from Ohio to Florida. Facebook Live has connected us with unknown numbers of
people in our community. As I paid for my meal at a local McDonalds a few weeks ago, the teen
taking my money said, “I know you.” Then she said, “You're McKenzie’s pastor! You go ‘Live’ every
Sunday!” Her connecting and learning about God’s love for her is because of a young adult who
has also been uploading a Facebook Live recording of our services from her own phone.
In June we will shift from our one blended service back to our Traditional and Contemporary
Worship services. We will continue to Zoom the Traditional service and await an Audio
Visual/Sound Company to hook up our new computer, high pixel camcorder, and new processer so
we can record, and upload for both services to YouTube, thanks to the conference and district who
helped off-set some of the costs. Our young adult will record for Facebook Live. The congregation
now understands the value of technology and has been gracious, as we muddled through these
past 14+ months.
I continue to learn through coaching, special webinars, and will connect with United Methodist
Communications to help us upgrade our website and create a logo for our media. I invite you to
consider also moving forward from novice, to learner, to always learning, so together we can
connect with others, in new ways, to make new disciples of Jesus Christ, in our fast paced
changing world.
Rev. Deb Ketcham, UMRA Event Coordinator
Can the church make a comeback? by Bill Pike
For the past 10 years, I have worked for my church. Prior to this, I spent 31 years in public
education.

With church work, I observed that churches and schools have commonalities. Each pivots off of
people, pennies, buildings, traditions and a desire to improve the world.
Additionally, churches and schools were turned upside down by COVID-19. Leaders in both
environments scrambled to adapt. Technology played an impactful role in meeting the needs of
congregations and students.

Ultimately, the ability to bring virtual worship services and classroom instruction to their
communities depended upon infrastructure. Churches and school systems that previously had
invested in these technologies were able to engage more quickly.
As COVID-19 restrictions retreat, it will be interesting to see how churches reconnect with their
congregations. Based upon results from the most recent Gallup poll on religion, I sense churches
are approaching a critical crossroad.

To finish reading this article by Bill Pike, please click here.

Annual Conference by Randy Wall

This is the time of year when most Annual Conferences are
meeting. Due to the lingering affects of the pandemic, our Annual
Conference in Western North Carolina (like perhaps many others) will
meet virtually. Instead of enjoying mountain views along Lake
Junaluska, I will participate in Annual Conference in front of my
computer at home.

What you might not know is that the first Annual Conference for the
Methodist Episcopal Church after it was created in Baltimore at Christmas, 1784 was held in North
Carolina in April 1785 at a private home, the Green Hill House, outside of Louisburg, NC. Many
years ago, I was in Louisburg working with a church youth event. My friend, Steve Hickle, and I went
to the Green Hill House. As we went to the home, we soon discovered that while it was a Methodist
historic site, it also was a private residence. The owners of the home were gracious to the two young
United Methodist preachers that stood at their door that afternoon, and let us see the place on the
second floor where 20 preachers from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia met for 4 days in
1785. Green Hill and his wife not only hosted the Annual Conference at their home, but they fed and
lodged the preachers in their home or in tents set up on their lawn. (Sorry, layfolk, other than Mrs.
Hill there seem to be no laity at this first Annual Conference.)

In reading the account of the first Annual Conference on the website of the General Commission of
Archives and History (http://www.gcah.org/research/travelers-guide/green-hill-house ), there are a
few things that stand out for the writer of this article. First, the first Annual Conference was a small
church gathering. While many Annual Conference gatherings today number in the thousands, the
first Annual Conference was composed of less than two dozen people. A second thing about this
first Annual Conference is that it was composed of mostly rural folk. There were no metropolitan
areas in the Carolinas or Virginia in 1785 but there were a lot of small towns and communities where
these Methodist preachers went as they shared the gospel story. A third and final thing about this
first Annual Conference is that it was filled with some controversy as Bishop Thomas Coke shared
his views about slavery. Slavery continued to be a source of controversy among people of faith and
people of the United States that led to not just debate, but also division.

Such is our heritage, my friends. The people called Methodist started out as a small church
movement from a group of friends meeting in a Holy Club to 20 preachers meeting at the Green Hill
House to just a few dozen meeting in many churches today in small towns and rural places across
this land. And while there is little debate about slavery today in our churches, debate and controversy
continue. As Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote many years ago, “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage
for the living of these days”. - Randy L. Wall, UMRA Chair 2021-2024

UMRA-RFD NETworX from Alan Rice

Some of you are familiar with Crystal Imes who is one of the board members of UMRA and is Communications
and Training Coordinator of NETworX. Fewer of you have met Annette Weston who is the national NETworX
operations director. Alan who also is on staff at RFD CDC, asked Annette to provide a brief overview and update
of NETworX for the UMRA newsletter:

NETworX is a national movement to measurably reduce poverty at its holistic core, not through well-doing for
others but through well-being together. NETworX is individuals and communities seeking together to build
intentional relationships through education and love of neighbor as well as love of self.

At the model's core are weekly meetings that include shared meals, time for relationship-building and mutual
accountability, goal setting, and celebration. Childcare and transportation, frequent barriers to regular
participation, are provided as needed without cost. Education around the topics of self-awareness, racial equity,
addiction in all of its forms, aspects of privilege, holistic poverty, social capital, the role of personal and community
trauma, and community transformation form the topical base of the training classes.

Reciprocal relationships, built over a period of time, are central and are built through the shared cohort
experience and shared vulnerability. Participants support one another as they develop their individual strengths,
capacities, and potential. Finally, because the level of transformation desired takes place over time, participants
are asked to dedicate 18-36 months to training and relationship building.

As a part of the affirming strengths, capacity, and potential of our participants, NETworX uses an Organic
Leadership model. An example of this would be what is happening in Columbus County in Eastern NC. A
participant who has completed the NETworX Curriculum has had her abilities affirmed her NETworX community.
She is stepping into a leadership position that will allow her to use her experiences and passions to lead new
participants. This place-based form of leadership is what we encourage in all of our sites.

A NETworX Intentional Community is created through cohorts that mirror the community at large. They should be
diverse and inclusive of participants from various racial, economic, and social backgrounds invested in personal
and community transformation through connection and igniting human transformation.

One of our intentional communities is in Rutherford County in Western NC. As all communities have suffered at
the hands of the Covid 19 pandemic, one of the Rutherford County NETworX initiative participants, unfortunately,
contracted the virus and ended up in the ICU at the local hospital. Her NETworX community was in constant
prayer for her well-being, but because she was in the ICU, no visitors could visit or bring comfort to her.
Thankfully, she began to recover and was transferred from the ICU to the Covid floor. Though her voice was
raspy from being intubated, she requested an IPad so she could join her NETworX family via Zoom to let them
know she was going to make it, and she knew they were praying for her recovery. Her connection to the
reciprocal relationships within her NETworX community was a part of her healing process. NETworX communities
keep showing up for each other even in the midst of difficult times. We look forward to the growth that will
continue as we heal from Covid.
Let us know of questions or interest in your community!

3 Unique Gifts of the Rural Church

by Allen Stanton

Rural churches often have several strengths that are

relatively unique to their own social and geographic locations
and that might not immediately translate to large churches or
churches in urban and suburban settings.
Rural congregations have a unique, and frankly enviable, position in the
community. They are places that can speak to the story and life of the
community.

1. Rural churches are permanent stakeholders in their

communities.
Often, the local church is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, of institutions in the community.
Hospitals struggle to stay open, newspapers fold, small businesses come and go, and even
schools might close or merge. Many of our rural churches, though, have displayed a
remarkable resiliency, as the same few families congregate week after week for a century
or more. These churches have a long social memory and have witnessed the whole of the
community.

2. Rural churches are still trusted institutions in rural communities.

Rural communities tend to be more religious, and the local church is still seen as a
trustworthy institution. While people might be skeptical and even embarrassed to seek
mental health care at a county clinic, for instance, they display little shame meeting the
pastor for coffee or heading into the fellowship hall for a meeting. Because they are
ingrained into the DNA of the community, the rural churches carry a level of trust that other
organizations, particularly outside organizations, do not.

3. Rural churches are one of only a few places where a cross section of the
community shows up each week.
A few years ago, I was at an event with a colleague who worked in public policy. In the
room, we had gathered a wide variety of community leaders: health care professionals,
business owners, teachers, and local elected officials. My colleague leaned over to me and
whispered, “I wish there was a way to get a group like this together more frequently.” “There
is,” I replied. “They show up at my church every week.” In our church’s pews, I had retired
college professors, teachers, nurses, an occupational therapy graduate student, and small
business owners. Aside from places like Rotary Club, we were the only place where this
cross-sector group gathered on a weekly basis. And, unlike Rotary, people who gathered in
our sanctuary each represented their whole self and not simply their profession.
When these unique assets are combined, we notice that rural churches have a unique —
and frankly enviable — position in the community. They are places that can speak to the
story and life of the community. When rural church congregations understand their
strengths, they can recognize and act upon their position as community leaders and agents
of community change.
“This article is reprinted by permission from Leading Ideas, a free e-newsletter from the Lewis Center for Church
Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary and available at churchleadership.com.”

Devotions by Orrinda Stockton

“Creativity in worship” was the watchword over the past 15 months as
churches scrambled to keep their congregations together during lockdown.
Normal activities were suspended and new ways of being the Body of Christ
were put into motion.

One of the churches I follow on-line holds socially-distanced adult and infant
baptisms at the river. Another pastor conducts Sunday morning prayer from
his couch with his wife and children sharing in the reading of the liturgy.
Traditional methods of doing church have, out of necessity, been laid aside for safety’s sake.

My favorite part of church tradition, for a long time, has been celebrating communion. And I especially like that in
the United Methodist structure, our communion table is open to all seeking to acknowledge and strengthen their
relationship with God and the Christ. Receiving the loaf and the cup during worship is a very intimate act. How,
during lockdown, do you maintain that feeling of togetherness with God when the liturgical norms have been
scrapped?

Some churches held services in their parking lots; some had pre-packaged elements available for pick-up to use
during an on-line service; some had members of the congregation choose elements of their own to be used during
on-line worship; some simply chose to not include communion in whatever form their worship took as it
presented too many logistical/liturgical problems.

I “attend” worship with a congregation several hundred miles away from my home. I
love the freedom on-line worship gives me. I don’t have to put my shoes on. I can knit
during the sermon and not annoy anyone. And I can choose my own communion
elements. My favorites are my morning coffee (with a generous dash of chocolate milk)
and a handful of Goldfish crackers. (Have you tried the carrot ones? So tasty!)

I have been putting this modern-day adaptation into context. Jesus did not send out for
“specialty” items. He used what was on the table--normal food and drink. And I
imagine it was spur of the moment. I doubt he spent a lot of time in sermon preparation other than prayer. And I
somehow doubt he was intentionally setting up the parameters for centuries of church ritual. Jesus’ admonition to
“remember me” when partaking of the bread and wine was a call to keep it simple.

The message of Jesus is simple--multi-layered, but simple: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one
another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)
As our churches navigate the paths to re-opening for in-person worship, will it be a return to the familiar? Or will
some take this opportunity to re-evaluate what sharing in the life of Jesus can truly mean?

Gracious and loving God, give us the wisdom to see you in the simple things of life. Give us the strength to seek a
path that follows the love of Jesus. And give us the courage to show that love to those around us. Amen.
SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

The national organization, United Methodist Rural Advocates, is pleased to announce we have a limited number
of scholarships to offer for attending programs or trainings that can enhance rural ministry. An applicant can be
considered for a scholarship of up to the lesser of $400 or one half of program/event fees, etc. It is through the
UMRA IGNITE fundraising campaign that these scholarships are being offered.

Please contact Treasurer Judy Hill to learn more. Contact information is listed below.

Judy Hill, Treasurer UMRA

3642 Road D
Joes, CO 80822

Email: judyh@plainstel.com

RURAL TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES

• NETworX WEBINAR sponsored by UMRA. Information may be found on the

UMRA website under events. http://www.umruraladvocates.org/vision--mission-
webinar.html
• RURAL MINISTRY CERTIFICATE is not sponsored by UMRA. This is an online
program through Southwestern College in Winfield, KS. There are currently two
courses being offered: Engaging the Bible in Rural Ministry and Practical
Theology in Rural Communities.
• ACADEMY FOR SMALL CHURCH MINISTRIES in affiliation with UMRA. Check
out larcm.org for ongoing and upcoming training opportunities.

NETworX INFORMATION

NETworX-Securing Well-being Together

Measurable outcomes, measured at six-month intervals

throughout NETworX participation, include:
• Increase in income to at or above 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines,
• Decrease in use of public assistance,
• Decrease in revolving debt from credit cards, rent-to-own, or predatory
lending,
• Increase in assets,
• Increase in safe, supportive, and nurturing relationships, and
• Increase in perception of overall quality of life.
If you are interested in hearing more, contact Alan Rice, a member of the UMRA Executive
Committee at 336-239-1526 or visit www.NETworXUSA.org

SHARE MINISTRY/BEST PRACTICES STORIES WITH US

Are there ministries and outreach in your churches that you want others to know about?
We celebrate the truth that rural/town and country churches are vital and active within
their communities and we want to share that information around the country. Do you have
a story of joy or hope that you would like to have shared here? There are others who could
greatly benefit from what has worked for you and even what hasn't worked but that has
allowed you to grow. Send stories to Michele Holloway at chele101953@gmail.com and
your stories will be published in upcoming editions of this eCommunication.
This newsletter is published every other month: February, April, June, August, October, and
December. Please send all submissions to the above email address no later than the 25th of
the month prior to publication.

UMRA MEMBERSHIP

Memberships are available in the following categories:

Limited Income (What you can afford.)
Student $10.00
Basic One-Year $30.00
Church One-Year $50.00
Advocacy Membership One-Year $250.00
Membership Letter and Form - click here
Two Easy Steps to Membership
1. Please fill out membership form:
United Methodist Rural Advocates Membership
2. Pay Membership Dues through PayPal
For more information or membership, contact:
Email: smgrlg51@yahoo.com
Sue Grace - Membership Secretary
2755 Independence Ct,
Grove City, OH 43123
740-707-2901
Five Reasons to Join UMRA
5. Network and collaborate with other rural groups and agencies around issues of concern for the rural church
and rural places.
4. Utilize technologies which will help us build relationships, share information and resources, and connect
rural leaders.
3. Discover and learn about sustainable, effective, replicable, generative ministries.
2. Be part of an organization which creates and advocates for General Conference legislation that has had a
positive effect on the rural church; such as NOW (Nurture, Outreach, Witness) leadership format, development
of "Born Again in Every Place," and the Certified Lay Minister. An Organization which will continue to create
and advocate for General Conference legislation that may affect ministry in town and country churches and
their communities.
1. Together we can make a difference as we advocate for the work of Jesus Christ in rural and town and
country communities.
UMRA membership provides not only voice and vote in the organization, but also includes a subscription to
the UMRA E NEWSLETTER.