Regional Lutheran synod strengthens rural faith communities with CaSTLE project

Regional Lutheran synod strengthens rural faith communities with CaSTLE project

By Caleb McGever | FāVS News Reporter

Kickoff events in Moses Lake, Washington, and Lewiston and Pocatello, Idaho, will mark the beginning of the Northwest Intermountain Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) work with the County and Small Town Lived Ecclesiology (CaSTLE) project grant.

The CaSTLe project is a five-year initiative run by the Wartburg Theological Seminary using $7.4 million funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. 

The Northwest Intermountain Synod’s (NWI Synod) portion of the grant is for “ecumenical experiments.” It will be used to develop leadership and church communities between different denominations within the synod’s small towns and rural areas. 

Uniting church communities

The kickoff events, called “United at the Font: Partnering for the Future,” will feature a day of worship, conversation, engaging scripture, prayer and planning. Events will be held in Moses Lake on Oct. 25, Lewiston on Nov. 1 and Pocatello on Nov. 15.

Invitation is open to Christians from the ELCA, Presbyterian Church USA, United Methodist Church, Episcopal and United Church of Christ families. The Rev. Meggan Manlove, the Bishop of the NWI Synod, said that “we might invite some others that we discover along the way as we publicize these events.”

The grant will also allow the NWI Synod to host a retreat for church leaders from different denominations at Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood, Idaho. 

The goal of the retreat is to learn more about each other’s denominations, theologies and governance, Manlove said. 

“Even though we do a lot together — we work collaboratively all the time — we realized in the process of crafting this grant application that we needed to deep dive into one another’s theologies,” Manlove explained.

Conversation at the retreat will center around a 1982 document from the World Council of Churches called Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, which aimed to unify the Christian church by finding common ground between different Christian theologies. 

Church partnerships play an important role in small-town communities, Manlove said.

She highlighted churches come together around feeding people and pursuing food ministry, as well as creating after-school programs and providing mutual aid. She also highlighted how churches in these communities often come together for communal worship services, running vacation Bible schools and hosting worship events in the park. 

All of these are functions of the church, she said, “and we can just do that better together with our ecumenical siblings.”

Back to small town roots

Manlove began her work as a minister in a small town of about 200 in western Iowa. Besides this, she also grew up in Custer, South Dakota. 

“Small towns are dear to my heart,” she said.

However, she said, it’s often too easy to forget about rural ministry. 

“Yet, the gospel that’s proclaimed in those communities, as with the gospel in the city, is still transforming people’s lives,” she said. 

The Rev. Ramie Bakken, the director of the CaSTLE Project, said the project fits with the Wartburg Seminary’s history of focusing on small town communities, as well as her own ministry work. 

“I have seen firsthand how small town and rural communities are a gift to this world. They model deep relationships. They model deep connections to land and place, and I see those as real strong attributes for what we’re trying to promote with this project,” Bakken said.

Obstacles for rural communities

According to a report on rural America published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rural populations overall show lower shares of the working-aged population and higher shares of residents approaching the common retirement age. 

This creates a high-dependency ratio, which means a higher need for social services infrastructure. However, it also creates a challenge for maintaining the infrastructure and workforce, while maintaining a healthy economy. 

Bakken explained that some of the pressing challenges of rural and small-town churches are declines in population, economics and education capital. The combination of which “has created a dominant narrative of loss, shame and a sense of failure,” she said.

“We hear from these congregations their palpable grief at feeling like no one wants to be their leader, that they are forgotten and that they are dying,” Bakken said. 

Of course, no rural community is exactly the same, and the problems and solutions each community faces present themselves differently. 

For example, Manlove explained that the data farms built in Quincy, Washington, shift the needs and comforts for the community. 

“There’s economic development, but it’s also, it’s very different life,” she said. 

However, she believes that they all share at least one common need. 

“I think that the good news of Jesus Christ needs to be proclaimed still in those areas, no matter what’s happening, and we can just do that better together with our ecumenical siblings,” Manlove said.

Day-to-day ecclesiology

Manlove explained that ecclesiology, broadly speaking, refers to how church-missions are organized. The CaSTLE project highlights “lived ecclesiology” in its name.

“We believe that this ecclesiology creates a new narrative — a story of hope for the future, confidence in the present and a compelling desire to live out one’s faith in the context of the deep relationality that exists in small town and rural contexts,” Bakken said.

The focus for the CaSTLE project work for the NWI Synod is on Baptismal Ecclesiology. This approach focuses not on the work that happens inside of the walls of the church, but on the work that happens outside of them. 

“This is really about getting people to think about how they live their life as Christians in the everyday, and how valid and important that is for the thriving of our small town and rural communities,” Manlove said.

The goal is to encourage partnerships to be “creating space so that they can set goals and aspirations” and “to be bold proclaiming the life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ as our family understands it.”

This is only the start for the NWI Synod’s work with the CaSTLE project. The grant they received gives them funding for it for five-years. 

“We don’t know exactly what the end result will be, but we want to deepen our partnerships for the sake of the gospel, and this may be phase one of a longer journey together,” Manlove said.