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I got out. That’s how it felt looking back at my rural hometown after I moved to Texas and then California. It was a weird way of thinking, because growing up I never imagined leaving. But once I was gone, especially after I settled in Southern California, I was able to see clearly the brokenness…

Interest for small town and rural ministry is on the rise. What are the reasons for this and what are the main areas of renewed interest?

“He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds…

Jim Quigley had been sober for four years and was one semester away from graduating from Bible college when his stopped car was rear-ended by someone going 50 miles an hour. “I ended up having two artificial discs put into my spine,” he said. He also ended up with a prescription for opiate painkillers.

by Scott Berg, US Field Director Of Small Towns for Young Life I met Scott in 2017 at a Small Town Jesus conference in West Virginia. He’s a man who deeply loves the gospel, the local church, small towns and lost kids. Since then, I’ve had the chance to hear more from him and many…

I’ve realized through the last almost nine years of church planting that missional churches, like the one I pastor, are giving in to a busyness that drives many of their pastors and leaders to the brink of burnout and beyond. This has left me to consider that it may be that personality, ambition or just…

I said in my book, Small Town Jesus, that good missionaries learn to identify what their small towns worship, they show the insufficiency of that idol, they call out the idol for failing to do what only God can do and they show how Jesus is better. I also said that a good missionary doesn’t worship…

Recently I wrote an article for The Gospel Coalition and in this article, I wrote about some of the challenges that I faced leading a church in a small town. My hope is that you’d be able to relate to and learn from our experiences whether you are planting a church or working to strengthen an existing church…

A few years after planting One Harbor Church, we ran out of seats for the fourth time even with multiple services. We also ran out of parking and kids’ ministry space. Even if God had sent us more people, we had nowhere to put them. Trying to find another building in our small town, including…