Last year, I visited a Methodist church in Colebrook, New Hampshire, a small town of about 2,000 people. On a typical Sunday, around 20 people attended the service at the Trinity United Methodist church, and that’s if nobody was sick. Most were in their 80s. Back in the 1950s, the congregation numbered roughly 200.
Despite the decline, the church managed to stay open, in part by sharing its building with a congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which rents the space from the Methodists for services. The arrangement has helped cover heating costs and fund necessary repairs. (You can read the story here.)
The Colebrook church has faced the same challenges that rural and small-town churches are facing across America: aging and shrinking congregations, limited resources, and underused buildings. While these struggles often make headlines, a recent survey from Lifeway Research, released last week, offers a deeper look into life inside these congregations and the experiences of the pastors who lead them.
It shows that there’s more hope and resilience than the numbers alone might suggest.
Most pastors leading small rural congregations are actually optimistic about the future of their communities. According to the survey, 88% of pastors believe their congregations will be strong in a decade, and 53% “strongly agree” that their congregations will grow. The more pessimistic 11% don’t expect their churches to grow. Researchers surveyed over 1,000 Protestant pastors across the country.
While they’re often tired, small-town pastors feel a deep sense of calling; 63% said they felt called to serve the particular congregation they now lead, which just happens to be located in a rural or small-town area. Another 24% said they believe they were specifically called to the ministry in a rural or small-town context, regardless of the church. For many, small-town ministry is inspiring because they can be part of everyday life in their community and appreciate “the pace of rural life.”
The study found pretty high engagement and commitment among those who do attend rural churches, at least from the pastors’ perspective. Over 70% of rural pastors reported that members take on leadership roles, repair relationships and increase their commitment to Christ. Pastors also described their communities as tight-knit, caring and actively involved in one another’s lives.
There are numerous challenges, too. About half of pastors said they are wrestling with “carrying other people’s pain,” and roughly half reported their church struggles with “resistance to change.” A smaller number, a third, described their churches as “inwardly focused,” and a quarter noted tensions within the congregation or broken trust from past missteps. Politics can also be divisive, but data shows it’s not overly so in the rural setting: one in five rural pastors say it causes division or has become overly influential in their churches.
These findings help paint a portrait of religious communities that have an influential role in American politics. In 2024, Donald Trump won rural voters by 40 points compared to urban areas (69%-29%), according to Pew Research Center. One study noted that Trump won 93% of rural counties in the 2024 election.
While rural churches may lag by conventional growth measures, they play an important role in communities that resist the fast-paced attention economy and remain closely connected to the land and place.
“Rural churches are usually not built for efficiency,” Charles Cotherman at the Center for Rural Ministry wrote. “They seldom rely on the fine-tuned systems or specialization a technological society values. What rural churches can offer, however, is an opportunity to be truly known within the church and the larger community.”
Fresh off the press
- Spiritual leaders wrestle with where to draw the line on AI — and how it will affect their own spiritual practices and the well-being of their faith communities.
- A third of Americans get their news on TikTok and that number has grown in the past five years, research found. My colleague Jennifer Graham takes a deep-dive into the TikTokification of the news.
- ‘Surviving Mormonism’ — and it’s just ... a church member showing up with cookies.
Faith in the courts
State officials in Wisconsin believe that Catholic Charities’ work isn’t “primarily religious” because the group serves people of all faiths and backgrounds. Refusing to recognize the charity group as a religious organization precludes it from qualifying for a religious exemption from the state’s employment tax law. Now, state officials are asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to get rid of the religious exemption altogether.
In June, all nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices ruled that Wisconsin wrongly claimed that Catholic Charities’ work with the poor wasn’t religious enough to qualify for a religious exemption (Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission). Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that Wisconsin violated federal law by favoring certain religious beliefs over others and that how faith groups express their beliefs through charity is a matter of theology, not state judgment.
Wisconsin state officials, however, called the tax exemption “discriminatory” and that by ending the religious exemption the state would “avoid collateral damage to Wisconsin workers.”
Last week, Becket asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to comply with the Supreme Court decision and grant Catholic Charities a religious exemption. Eliminating the exemption would harm all religious groups in the state, including synagogues, mosques and other ministries, Becket said in a press release.
“The idea that a Catholic ministry serving those in need isn’t religious was always absurd,” said Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket in a statement. “That’s why the Supreme Court unanimously rejected Wisconsin’s arguments and protected Catholic Charities. Trying to wriggle out of a 9-0 loss is even more absurd. The state should take the L and move on.”
What I’m reading
- Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Ian Marcus Corbin, who directs The Public Culture Project at Harvard University, reflect on America’s moral crisis, attention economy and what it would take for younger adults to thrive again. At the core of their solution is restoring public life: “For that reason, public life also needs to become a place where people can reason together about the physical and spiritual health of society. Fundamental questions should be debated in the halls of government, in companies and schools — not just inside churches and homes.” Their call is to bring back the “‘things of the spirit’ — meaning, purpose and reverence for the good — if America is to endure.” — The consequences of America’s moral drift, The Washington Post.
- The Anglican Church in North America — a denomination of about 128,000 members across 49 states — has been thrust into a national scandal after its archbishop, the denomination’s top leader, was accused of making sexual advances toward a female employee and giving her monetary gifts. — U.S. Anglican Church archbishop accused of sexual misconduct, abuse of power, The Washington Post.
- Valerie Hudson, professor at Texas A&M University, debunks Helen Andrews’ the “Great Feminization” argument. Hudson writes: “We don’t need or want a return to male dominance, and we don’t need or want female dominance in its stead. The obvious alternative is a sincere, meaningful, equal partnership between men and women, the two halves of humanity that constitute human societies and literally create the future of the species together.” — Perspective: First we had to worry about the Great Reset. Now it’s the Great Feminization we’re supposed to fear, Deseret News.
- "Pete Hegseth is bringing his fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity into the Pentagon." — Holy Warrior, the Atlantic.
End notes
The world’s largest Orthodox Christian Church opened on Oct. 26 in Bucharest, Romania, after 15 years of construction, Deutsche Welle reported. The People’s Salvation Cathedral can hold up to 5,000 worshippers. The outlet reported the construction costs at $313 million, mostly drawn from public funds — a point of contention around the project.