NewThing’s First Rural Movement Leaders Roundtable

Rural Church Movement

In the US, cities get the majority of our attention as churches and organizations. It makes sense because that includes the most densely populated areas of our communities, specifically in the suburban context of most cities. There have been trailblazers, however, who have only focused on what we would call non-glamorous, hard soil areas. These would include urban, rural, and specific concentrated areas of people groups, such as the black, brown, and refugee communities. The reason is that they typically have no financial ROI. Most of the pastors who work in these areas will never be employed full-time by the churches or organizations they are leading. That does not stop these brave men and women from leading in these areas God has called them to serve even if they have to work multiple jobs to accomplish it.

NewThing has tried to be an innovator in praying for and locating what we call Apostolic Persons of Peace in these individual areas. We are not saying we are doing it right and churches and orgs that aren't focusing here are doing it wrong. We are just stating this has been very important to NewThing from its launch. With that being said we have some exciting news to share!

We have hosted our first-ever Rural Movement Leaders Roundtable! The NewThing Movements North America team which consists of Jon Ferguson, Eric Metcalf, and Mike Wiggin, started having the rural conversation and asked God to allow us to come alongside leaders, already working in these areas, to help them form networks that multiply and become movements. God answered our prayer!

We started identifying rural area leaders and asked them to introduce us to their friends. We explained to them that we wanted to facilitate a call to ask them how we could help them catalyze rural America into a Nationwide Movement. When it came time to be on our first call we had an incredible turnout with around 10 organizational, network, and church leaders who were excited to have the conversation. We had folks from the Dirt Roads Network, Vineyard Rural, United Brethren, and more! We have two more Zoom calls scheduled and we are excited about what Jesus will do with this new group of leaders serving rural America. We asked the leaders what their biggest struggles were and how we could help. We sat and listened and we realized something. The entire church, specifically in the US, is experiencing the same issues, they are just being addressed differently based on the context in which they are happening. As we always say at NewThing, we are better together. I'm pretty sure someone else said that first, we are just trying to be obedient to that call of Jesus.

Rural America is made up of over 60 million people. We need your help to take on an initiative of this size.

Here is what we need -

1. We need your prayers.

2. We need your introductions to pastors and leaders in rural areas.

3. We need your help funding this initiative.

4. We want you to consider launching a network in your city or rural area if you do not have one yet.

5 We want you to celebrate this with as many people as you can!

Thank you and stay tuned for more exciting updates about our Rural Movement Leaders Roundtables.

Mike Wiggin, City Movements

NewThing