Ministry everywhere is challenging. I’m not complaining; it’s meant to be this way, and it’s a privilege. The fact that God has entrusted such important work to people like us is evidence of his grace.
But it can be hard, particularly in post-Christian Canada. “I’ve ministered in eight countries,” says my friend Pete Blundell. “This is the hardest.” We face cultural headwinds that make the work of Christian ministry particularly challenging — and necessary — today.
My heroes are those who serve faithfully in this context. I praise God for faithful pastors, church planters, elders, and other church leaders and faithful Christians who serve well. Over the past decade, I’ve met a lot of them, and I’m encouraged. I recognize that all of them are facing the same challenges, and the vast majority are serving faithfully and well despite the obstacles they face.
The Challenge of Urban Ministry
Although ministry everywhere is challenging, I want to suggest that urban ministry faces a set of unique challenges. I’m not saying it’s harder than everywhere else, but I am saying it’s different.
For the past ten years, I served as founding pastor of Liberty Grace Church near downtown Toronto. I count it the privilege of my life. The ministry has seemed humble. It’s never achieved the numbers that mark “successful” church plants everywhere. But we’re the only church in our rapidly growing neighbourhood, and one of only a relatively small number in the urban core. Our cities need more churches to reach the growing population.
But urban ministry presents some unique challenges. It’s expensive. Living in Toronto is costly; sustaining the costs associated with church life is a constant challenge. It’s a challenge everywhere, but this challenge is intensified in the city.
It’s slow. Nobody’s cracked the code for ministry in Toronto. We’re all working hard, but it’s slow work. In our community, 70% of people move every two years, which adds to the slowness. It can be challenging to maintain momentum when people leave so often.
Don’t get me wrong. Serving in this context has been the privilege of a lifetime. We’ve seen God at work, and I feel blessed to have served as a founding pastor. But realistically, we have to acknowledge that this kind of ministry presents unique challenges, ones that are worth engaging, but that must also be admitted.
One of my friends has counted the number of new churches that haven’t survived in downtown Toronto because of these challenges. He calls Toronto a graveyard for new churches. I’ve spoken to other church planters who’ve planted successfully elsewhere, but who’ve told me, “I didn’t know it would be like this here!”
The Challenge of Rural Ministry
I’m less familiar with the challenges of rural ministry, but I know they exist. I’ve travelled through idyllic villages and towns to speak at churches. As I do, I pass churches that have been shuttered. Sometimes one has to drive a long distance to find the closest gospel-preaching church. I know church planters who are starting churches in these areas. The work can also be challenging, and progress can be slow.
But rural ministry is essential. Just as we need more churches in urban areas, we need more rural churches to reach the communities that lack gospel-preaching churches. Rural and urban ministries are different, but both are essential, and both present different kinds of challenges.
How Suburban Churches Can Help
I don’t pretend that ministry in a suburban context is easy. Suburban churches face a different set of challenges, and also require sacrifice and hard work. But, generally speaking, I’ve seen suburban churches thrive in ways that I don’t see in urban and rural settings.
Suburban churches often grow faster. They’re often able to gain more traction. They also seem to be better resourced than ministries elsewhere.
Given this, I want to make a modest proposal.
I want to suggest that suburban churches may have a role to play in helping urban and rural churches. This will look different in every church, but it could be that growing suburban churches adopt either an urban church, a rural church, or both, and begin to pray for those ministries and help them financially. Don’t just write a cheque; visit them. Encourage them. Pray for them. But partner and invest in areas where churches are needed and couldn’t otherwise survive without help from better resourced churches.
This is what I experienced at Liberty Grace Church. We couldn’t have lasted without the help of larger churches in suburban areas who said, “You serve an area that needs a church. You’re doing the kind of ministry that’s needed, but you need resources, and we can help.” They’ve invested in us. They’ve encouraged us. And we couldn’t have done it without them.
As more churches are planted in both urban and rural areas, we need more strategic partnerships like this.
“You might be surprised to find out what Paul actually spent the most time, energy, and relational capital pursuing during his first decade of ministry: he worked to build a partnership of Gentile churches to support the struggling Jewish Christians in Jerusalem,” write Chris Bruno and Matt Dirks in Churches Partnering Together. Gospel partnership mattered to Paul, and allowed churches in one area to help churches in another. It mattered in Paul’s day; it matters now.
Ministry is challenging everywhere, but it may be that we’ll get a lot more done together when we help each other. Right now, I wonder if one of the most strategic things we can do in Canada is to build partnerships in which growing suburban churches intentionally help urban and rural churches that might otherwise not survive.
