Charles E. Cotherman on Why the Church Needs Small Towns

Interview with Charles E. Cotherman

Why does understanding rural and small town communities matter to the church, and what motivated you to write about them?  

For a long time now, American culture has functioned with an implicit bigger-is-better mindset. As with many cultural impulses, the church often follows the larger culture by emphasizing the biggest and fastest growing churches or celebrity pastors with large platforms. These are more often than not the examples held up for replication and voices we hear the most, no matter where we live. I wrote my book Strip Mine Jesus as an attempt to tell a different story rooted in local context and the reality that the God of the universe is present and active even in the places our culture writes off or looks past. 

How have you seen God work uniquely in seemingly insignificant places? Or how have your experiences in ministry shaped how you think about rural churches?  

From the time I was a boy playing with my brother in our parents’ unreclaimed strip mine, I have sensed the presence and goodness of God. Whether it was in the spoil piles of the strip mine, the surrounding forests, my small-town school, or the church I grew up in, I have witnessed the goodness of God at work time and time again. That’s why I was surprised as I grew older and began notice how denominations, parachurch organizations, and Christian media seldom seemed to highlight the everyday goodness of God in these small places.  

I want to tell a bit of this story to encourage others who live and minister in small places that their work and ministry in small places matters now and for eternity. 

Who is this book for, and what’s one thing you hope they gain from reading it?  

I have taken to describing the audience for this book as threefold. First, this book is for anyone (e.g., pastors, lay leaders, board members, Sunday school teachers) who cares about rural churches and the communities they serve. I hope this book is an encouragement that small-place ministry not only matters but can be a fulfilling and beautiful way to invest one’s life in the Kingdom.  

Secondly, this book is for my students and young people everywhere who have been sold a narrative that one can’t live a flourishing life or achieve meaningful goals in a small place. Strip Mine Jesus is a book-length argument in the opposite direction.  

Third, this book is for anyone who has an interest in understanding rural America from the perspective of a rural insider who is still an insider rather than a person who left rural America in the rear-view mirror.  

This is the book I wish I had when I was in college and discerning a call to ministry. 

You argue that there’s a unique power and beauty in staying in serving in places many might consider a stopping point on the way to something bigger and better. How do you counter the church’s tendency to focus on larger ministries and wealthier places? 

I think the church’s tendency to focus on larger places is entirely natural and understandable. We should focus on large places, but we shouldn’t focus on large places to the exclusion of small places, nor should we focus on small places to the exclusion of large places. The current push for resources and attention on small-place ministry that has come about in the past ten years is a needed corrective, but I pray that people everywhere can cultivate ears more attuned to the call of God no matter where that call takes them. 

Tell us something about you that only your friends or family would know. 

I have consistently journaled for the past 25 years because I have long sensed that local stories matter. 

Charles E. Cotherman shares his experiences and wisdom on ministry in small communities in Strip Mine Jesus: Hope for the Rural Church, Small Towns, and Overlooked Places. It’s a wealth of encouragement for anyone serving in this way and a challenge to the whole church to recognize the outsized impact we can have when we have the courage to root where we’re planted and serve God with joy, no matter what our community’s size or challenges. 

Charles E. Cotherman (PhD, University of Virginia) is executive director of the Center for Rural Ministry and serves as a member of the Brookings-AEI Commission on US Rural Prosperity. Additionally, he is an assistant professor of biblical and theological studies at Grove City College and cofounder and pastor of Oil City Vineyard Church in Oil City, Pennsylvania. He is the author of To Think Christianly and a contributing coeditor of Sent to Flourish.